The association of the Brunswick name with popular music goes back a long way. Brunswick-Balke-Collender, a company based in Iowa, was a manufacturer of pianos and sports equipment, that began trading in 1845. In 1916 they began making phonographs and then records too. In 1930, they sold their record business to Warner Brothers, who developed it until 1941, when it was sold to Decca. The Brunswick label had fallen out of use in 1940, but was revived by the new owners, mainly for re-issues of older material. At last, in the early fifties, Decca started issuing new pop and R&B songs on the Brunswick label, notably recordings of Buddy Holly & the Crickets. By the end of the fifties, the R&B focus was dominant, with the Chi-Lites and Jackie Wilson finding success. Jackie Wilson’s manager, Nat Tarnopol, who had joined the label in 1957 as head of A&R, became Executive Vice-President in 1960, when Brunswick was set up as a separate company under the Decca umbrella. Tarnopol acquired fifty percent of the company’s shares in 1964 and the other fifty percent in 1969.
In early 1966, Carl Davis met with Tarnopol to discuss the possibility of Brunswick signing Gene Chandler. With that deal done, Tarnopol also decided to employ Davis as a producer at Brunswick, hoping that Davis could reignite the career of Jackie Wilson as a cross-over artist. When Davis duly worked successfully on the production of Jackie Wilson’s hit “Whispers (Getting Louder)”, Tarnopol established Carl Davis as the Head of A&R and lead producer in Chicago in 1966. The following year, while still employed at Brunswick, Carl Davis set up Dakar Records to try out new and up-and-coming artists. He signed a distribution deal with Atlantic Records subsidiary Cotillion. Artists who signed for Dakar included Tyrone Davis, Johnny Sales and Prophets of Soul. Brunswick took over distribution rights from Cotillion in 1972, and now owns the Dakar catalogue. The label folded in 1976.
In 1967, Tarnopol and Davis were able to set up new headquarters for the Chicago offices of Brunswick. They purchased most of the assets of Vee-Jay Records, that had recently ceased trading, and moved in to 1449, South Michigan Avenue. The recording studio was on the first floor and the offices on the second. One of the first recordings made in the studio by Davis was the backing track for Jackie Wilson’s “Higher & Higher”, with the vocal being added by Wilson at Bell Sound Studio in New York.
Brunswick artists included the Chi-Lites, Jackie Wilson, Barbara Acklin, Young-Holt Unlimited, Gene Chandler, the Artistics, LaVern Baker and Little Richard. Main producers for the labels were Carl Davis, Eugene Record and Willie Henderson. Sonny Sanders, Tom Washington, Quinton Joseph and Willie Henderson were amongst the arrangers employed by the company.
The Chi-Lites’ “Oh Girl” was the label’s only release that reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart, but Brunswick/Dakar singles topped the R&B chart ten times, with six songs by Jackie Wilson, two by Tyrone Davis and two by the Chi-Lites.
Brunswick had its last chart hit in 1982, after which no further records were issued on the label, due to some legal and financial problems. In the mid-seventies, Brunswick and other labels were the target of a federal investigation into the practice of “payola”, paying radio DJs to play particular tracks. Tarnopol eventually succeeded in clearing Brunswick of all the charges against the company, but there was no way back to the glory days of the sixties and seventies. Tarnopol licensed all the recordings made at Brunswick from 1957 (when he had joined!) to Columbia Records’ special products unit. Carl Davis and the majority of the artists left the company. Nat Tarnopol died in 1987.
Chicago Soul was put on the map by Vee-Jay Records and made famous by Chess Records, but the contribution of Brunswick was also significant, thanks largely to the work of Carl Davis.
The Brunswick Records official site lists over one hundred and forty singles that entered the top 100 of the Billboard R&B or Pop charts during the golden years of Chicago Soul.
In 1995, Nat Tarnopol’s children revived the company. They have overseen the re-issue of many of the classic hits on the Brunswick and Dakar labels.
