Jack Kapp
Jack Kapp (June 15, 1901 Chicago, Illinois – March 25, 1949 New York City) was a record company executive with Brunswick Records who founded the American Decca Records in 1934 along with British Decca founder Edward Lewis and later American Decca head Milton Rackmil. He oversaw Bing Crosby's rise to success as a recording artist in the early 1930s; four decades later, Crosby still gave appreciation to Kapp for diversifying his song catalogue into various styles and genres, saying, "I thought he was crazy, but I just did what he told me." Kapp could not read or sing music, but to his talent he stressed the credo, "Where's the melody?"
Biography
Born to a Jewish family, the son of a distributor for Columbia Records in 1905 and the founder of the Imperial Talking Machine Shop in Chicago. Kapp worked at the store after high school, and was known for having memorized the catalog numbers of every record in the inventory as well as the addresses and phone numbers of his father's best customers. After marrying his childhood sweetheart Frieda Lutz in 1922, he opened the Kapp Record Store with his younger brother, Dave Kapp. In 1926, Kapp joined Brunswick Records and was put in charge of their "race" label (Brunswick 7000 and Vocalion Records 1000 series), where he scouted, signed or produced artists including, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Pinetop Smith, Leroy Carr, Frankie Jaxon, and Cow Cow Davenport, among others.
Podcasts:
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by Camper Van Beethoven
Jack Ruby
by: Camper Van BeethovenI remember his hat tilted forward
His glasses are folded in his vest
And he seems like the kind of man who beats his horses
Or the dancers who work at a bar
We saw on the screen his face for a moment
No time to plead or even ask why
Jack Ruby appeared from out of nowhere
Then disappeared in broad daylight
'Cause he's a friend of that cloven-hoofed gangster the devil
He's been seen with the sheriff and the police
Drinking whiskey and water after hours, saying
"Let's do business, boys. The drinks are on me."
So draw the box along quickly
Avert your eyes with shame
Let us stand and speak of the weather
And pretend nothing ever happened on that day
Grant us the luxury, 'cause all our heroes are bastards
Grant us the luxury, 'cause all our heroes are thieves
Of the innocence of the afternoons
Now we think it's a virtue to simply survive
But it feels like this calm it's decaying
It's collapsing under its own weight
And I think its your friend the hangman coming
Choking back a laugh, a drunkard swaggering to your door
Now do you feel that cold, icy presence?
In the morning with coffee and with bread
Do you feel it in the movement of traffic