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to NEB 0019 - 1974 |
to NB 843 - 1975 |
to NB 856 - 1976 |
to NB 889 - 1977 |
| Casablanca
Records was started in september 1973 by Neil Bogart, who partnered with
Cecil Holmes, Larry Harris and Buck Reingold, after all of them left
Buddah
Records. Bogart initially financed the label partly through borrowing
some cash from Warner Brothers Records, who in return set up a deal to
distribute the new label's product.
In 1974, Bogart was sure he and his crew could do better on their own. He approached Warner Brothers and requested that he be released from the promotion deal, and agreed to pay back the financial loan. Bogart moved the corporate office to 8255 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, where he built new buildings and styled the offices after the movie set of the Humphrey Bogart film Casablanca. Everybody got a leased Mercedes. "If you were cruising along Sunset Boulevard in the late seventies and saw what appeared to be an enormous Mercedes dealership, chances were good that you'd just stumbled upon the parking lot of Casablanca Records." In 1977, PolyGram acquired a 50 percent stake of Casablanca for $15 million. In 1980 Polygram pushed Bogart out due to accounting irregularities and poor label performance. Afterwards, the label had hits with Lipps Inc and Irene Cara. The label was shut down in 1985 with the artist roster and catalogue absorbed into Mercury. After he left Casablanca in 1980, Bogart started Boardwalk Records. |
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