Casablanca Records - History

History

Neil Bogart was the head of Buddah Records, which was owned by the Viewlex Corporation. Also employed at Buddah Records were Holmes, Harris, and Reingold. Bogart had an unorthodox approach to the music business and he eventually grew tired of answering and conforming to Viewlex's business mode. In 1973, he arranged financing through Warner Bros. Records whereas he could start his own record label, which would be a sudsidiary of Warner Bros. After much back and forth, the green light was eventually given by Warner and Bogart started the new label, bringing Harris, Holmes, and Reingold with him. Bogart called the label Casablanca as it was the name of his favorite film, and he also had the same last name as its star Humphrey Bogart. Also, since Warner Bros. owned the rights to the title of the film Casablanca, Bogart knew there would be no lawsuit against him regarding the name Casablanca Records. The label's first signing was the rock group Kiss, however, the label's first single was Bill Amesbury's "Virginia (Touch Me Like You Do)" which became a minor hit on the US Hot 100.

From the time of its inception, Casablanca didn't quite fit within the Warner scope of music, especially with the signing of a then-new act known as Kiss. Neil Bogart was also quite brash and sure of himself, which rubbed some Warner staffers the wrong way. Thus, Casablanca experienced lukewarm relations with Warner Bros, its parent company. Warner manufactured and distributed albums for its own acts, as well as all its sudsidiary labels. Both Casablanca and Warner handled promotion for Casablanca artists. However, a few years later when Warner began experiencing manufacturing problems, it began focusing mainly on manufacturing albums by Warner acts and not so much the sudsidiaries. Thus, Casablanca found itself with only modest success with its releases as it had limited distribution. Once Bogart realized this, he took the issue to Warner head Mo Ostin who had not been aware of the lack of attention being given to the sudsidiary labels. Ostin, who didn't feel strongly about the Casablanca venture anyway, decided to handle the situation by completely breaking Casablanca Records away from Warner Bros. and giving Bogart ownership of the label, thus making Casablanca an independent label. Bogart was thrilled at the opportunity to own his own record company outright and being able to make all the decisions, but he did insist on paying Warner Bros. in installment payments for the Casablanca label as opposed to taking it for free.

The now independent Casablanca Records was suddenly put in a tenuous financial situation as it still had yet to score a major hit album, and now it no longer had the backing of Warner Bros. Casablanca was banking on the success of an upcoming album it was planning; a two-record set of audio highlights from television's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The album was entitled Here's Johnny: Magic Moments from The Tonight Show and it was released in November 1974. Although the album was certified gold by the RIAA for shipments to stores of over 500,000 copies, the album did not sell well, and returns from retailers of unsold copies were high. Even the promotional copies were returned, initiating the joke that "it shipped gold and went back to the label platinum". Casablanca had realized that even though The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was immensely popular, the show didn't carry over well to recordings.