Gramophone AB Electra
The Gramophone AB Electra was a Swedish record company that existed from 1956 to 1990.
history
prehistory
The history of Grammofon AB Electra is closely linked to the work of Sixten Eriksson (born November 17, 1905, † March 5, 1990). His beginnings in the music industry were in 1928 with the company Vox, which was taken over by Orchestrola, which in turn went to the German-Czech Ultraphon . This was acquired by the German Telefunken company in 1932 . In 1933, Telefunken established the company SATT (Svenska AB Trådlös Telegrafi) in Sweden and appointed Eriksson as managing director. Business purpose: To supply Sweden with phono equipment and records - in addition to Swedish music, mainly German hits and classical music.
Sixten Eriksson was responsible for the record branch in the company - from Swedish recordings to sales and contact with Telefunken. Even during the Second World War, business relations remained undisturbed, and Telefunken employees regularly came to Stockholm and Gothenburg to make recordings. Telefunken producer Herbert Grenzebach (formerly Ultraphon) and the technical unit manager Alexander Seeland were among the frequent visitors to the Eriksson family. In April 1945 there were regular flight connections between Berlin and Stockholm.
Development after 1945
After the war, the Swedish government expropriated all German companies and trademarks. Sixten Eriksson found a new job at AB FW Bennet, the licensee of the English Decca. As early as 1946 he received news from Herbert Grenzebach that Telefunken should be rebuilt from the rubble. From this a new collaboration developed: Eriksson found in the owner of Elektroholm, EA Bolle, a financier for the start-up TEFAB (Telefunken Försäljnings AB). The owners were the Bolle family, CEO Sixten Eriksson. TEFAB was founded on January 1, 1948, Telefunken recordings appeared under the label name Telestar. The fact that Eriksson succeeded in bringing the American record company Capitol and Telefunken together opened up the German company's access to the US market. In September 1948 the contract between Capitol and Telefunken was signed, which also included TEFAB. For many of the Capitol imports during this period, the orders came from Sweden. Pressing took place at the Telefunken plant in Nortorf near Hamburg.
A big upswing for the Swedish record company came from the fact that the US label RCA Victor could be won as a replacement for Capitol when Capitol moved to EMI (Electrola). The agreement, which was signed by Eriksson in New York in December 1955, was part of a contract with Hamburg-based Teldec, a merger of Telefunken with England's Decca. Since the RCA did not accept the company name Telefunken (TEFAB), Eriksson founded the company Grammofon AB Electra on January 1, 1956 in Sweden and Finland in the name of the EA Bolle family for cooperation with RCA. In 1960 Eriksson took over AB FW Bennet and with it the labels Decca, London and Brunswick.
Relationship to the Federal Republic
With the business relationship with RCA , Teldec had secured a significant share of Anglo-American music in addition to the Decca and LONDON labels . Grammofon AB Electra played a major role in the import of RCA records, as did TEFAB with Capitol Records . The panels were pressed for the Swedish market in Nortorf . Initially, in addition to the RCA logo, they bore the mark of origin "Product of Grammofon AB Electra as Licensee of Radio Corporation of America". Pressings for the German market, which were manufactured in parallel in Nortorf, were shown as "Product of Teldec 'Telefunken-Decca' Schallplatten G. mb H. Germany". In the course of 1957 Grammofon AB Electra also took over the German labels. At Teldec in Nortorf (Schleswig-Holstein), Sixten Eriksson's son Hans-Ove Eriksson (born December 8, 1935) did an internship in 1954. Hans-Ove, who changed his name to Regén in 1985, had been with the company since 1953. In 1958 he continued his training with an internship at Telefunken in Stuttgart. The future CEO trained from the bottom up, from plate pressing to sales, in his own company and with the German partner.
The connection to Grammofon AB Electra promoted the evaluation of the RCA catalog by Teldec. In particular, the implementation of Elvis Presley records, which were only hesitantly accepted in the Federal Republic, was initially the responsibility of the Swedish company. In the so-called Teldec group, which sold RCA records for the Federal Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Benelux and Scandinavia, Grammofon AB Electra had an important voice. In 1975 the record companies were spun off from the Bolle family company. Sole owners of the new joint stock company: the Eriksson family (father, son and daughter). Over the years, in addition to Telefunken-Teldec, the company has represented all labels from the Anglo-American region that Teldec and the English Decca had under contract in Scandinavia - in particular: Capitol, Decca, RCA, A&M Records , Monument Records , Warner Bros. . , Reprise Records etc. Also: Ariola , Arista Records , MCA , Motown etc.
80s
In 1980 the company moved into a new building in the Kista district of Stockholm. In 1982 a second recording studio with a 24-channel mixer was built there. In 1981 the Eriksson family founded the Danish AG Grammofon A / S Electra and in 1983 the Norwegian Grammofon A / S Electra with Hans-Ove Eriksson as CEO of both companies. In 1984 he also became CEO of the Finnish company AB Discophon OY, in which Sixten Eriksson was involved. In 1986 the family sold their shares in the Electra group to Entertainment Invest Group AB, which liquidated the company in 1990.
literature
- Hansfried Sieben: Herbert Grenzebach. A life for the Telefunken record. 1991
- Helmut Brünn: Overview of the development of Telefunken / Teldec in Nortorf and their connections to Sweden. 2014