- ABKCO Records
ABKCO Music & Records, Inc. is the successor company to a business that was founded in 1961 as Allen Klein & Co.
Allen Klein was then a business manager specializing in music clients includingBobby Darin andSam Cooke and, later, managedThe Rolling Stones andThe Beatles . ABKCO Industries was founded in 1968 as an umbrella company involved in management, music publishing, film, TV and theatrical production. (The acronym stood for "Allen & Betty Klein and COmpany," although Klein would often joke that it stood for "A Better Kind of COmpany.") Later that year,Cameo-Parkway Records was acquired by ABKCO, bringing the legendary Philadelphia label’s decade-long run of hits into the fold.Today, ABKCO is home to catalog assets that include recordings by
Sam Cooke ,The Rolling Stones ,The Animals ,Herman's Hermits ,Marianne Faithfull ,The Kinks as well as the Cameo Parkway label, which include the original master recordings of by such artists asChubby Checker ,Bobby Rydell ,The Orlons ,The Dovells , Question Mark & The Mysterians,The Tymes andDee Dee Sharp . ABKCO administersPhil Spector Records and itsmaster recording s including hits byThe Righteous Brothers ,The Ronettes ,The Crystals and others. ABKCO also controls the rights toAlejandro Jodorowsky 's early films, includingFando y Lis ,El Topo , andThe Holy Mountain , all of which were recently released in a boxed set by ABKCO.The label had been heavily criticized for keeping the Cameo-Parkway material unavailable until 2005, which affected the later careers of Rydell and Checker.
The company’s music publishing division comprises over two thousand copyrights including songs composed by
Mick Jagger andKeith Richards ,Sam Cooke ,Bobby Womack ,Ray Davies ,Pete Townshend and other composers. ABKCO also administers several publishing catalogs includingPhil Spector 's Mother Bertha Music.Today ABKCO is active in the release of compilations and reissues from its catalogs, film and commercial placement of its master recordings and music publishing properties. As of late 2006, the day-to-day affairs of the company are reportedly being overseen by Jody Klein, due to the ill health of his father, Allen Klein. Jody Klein has been credited in not only getting the Cameo-Parkway recordings finally released , but also oversaw an extensive remastering of The Rolling Stones, the Aminals, Herman's Hermits , and Marianne Faithful's 1960s recordings .
ABKCO successfully sued
The Verve over their song "Bitter Sweet Symphony ", which samples an Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra recording of "The Last Time" by The Rolling Stones.Cultural references
"Beware of Darkness" is a song by
George Harrison that featured on his first post-Beatles album "All Things Must Pass ". When he was demoing this song for Phil Spector during 1970 he jokingly changed one line of the lyrics to "Beware of ABKCO". This later became the name of a bootleg LP containing the recordings from that session.References
ee also
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List of record labels External links
* [http://www.abkco.com/ ABKCO Official site]
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