Elektra Entertainment Group | Origins in the Postwar Era
Origins in the Postwar Era
The man behind the creation of the independent Elektra record label that grew into today's Elektra Entertainment Group was Jac Holzman. He was born in 1931, the eldest son of a well-to-do family residing in New York City's Upper East Side. His father, a Harvard Medical School graduate, was a highly successful doctor who, according to his son, was domineering and quick to dismiss him as a failure. Holzman ran away from home a number of times, and at the age of 12 actually made it to Trenton, New Jersey, before he was found in a hotel and brought back to the family's Manhattan apartment, where the one saving grace was top-of-the-line phonograph equipment. To escape his unhappy home life, Holzman became obsessed with music and electronic equipment. His grandmother headed the National Council of Jewish Women and did political commentary on a local station. He often accompanied her and developed an interest in radio, even trying his hand at building crystal radio sets. His father indulged his passion to some extent, buying him as a 15th birthday present a semi-professional disc recorder, equipment which Holzman then used to record bar mitzvahs and weddings. Despite his father's judgment that the boy failed to measure up to his exacting standards for a firstborn son, Holzman managed to graduate from high school by the age of 16 and start his university studies in Annapolis, Maryland, at St. John's College. What especially appealed to Holzman about the school was its electronics lab, in reality a Quonset hut supplied with an array of army surplus equipment. At St. John's, he also came to appreciate folk music, which would become a staple of the Elektra label years later. During his first two years in college, the idea of starting his own independent record label began to take root in Holzman's mind. The concept came to fruition in the fall of 1950, at the start of his junior year, when he attended a recital at school featuring soprano Georgianna Bannister, who performed a number of poems set to music composed by John Gruen. Impulsively, he asked Bannister and Gruen if they would record the songs on his nonexistent record label, and they accepted.
Holzman quickly cobbled together a record label. He took $300 from his bar mitzvah bank account and convinced a classmate, an ex-serviceman named Paul Rickolt, to match that amount. For the label's name, Holzman drew on his classwork, settling on the Greek demi-goddess Electra, who was associated with the artistic muses. Holzman ultimately used the Germanic spelling "Elektra" for the name of his record label. He then substituted the Es with sideways Ms as an inexpensive way to create a distinctive look for the company name that could also serve as a logo. According to company lore, Holzman made his first entry in the Elektra ledgers on October 10, 1950. To establish an off-campus mailing address, he then bartered a free copy of his first album for the right to make use of Wally's Tobacco Shop in Annapolis. Recording for the album was conducted during a three-hour session in a New York studio in December 1950, and the resulting tapes were taken to RCA Records to be mastered and custom-pressed. Unfortunately, surface noise all but drowned out the music. Holzman personally oversaw the next attempt, and in March 1951 the fledgling label's first effort, New Songs (EKLP-1), was delivered to Holzman's dormitory. The 500 records were stored in an empty room, which became Elektra's de facto shipping department. To sell the album, Holzman turned to a so-called national distributor, Jay Wesley Smith, who agreed to take 100 copies if he would also receive an additional 50 for promotional uses. Although New Songs was well received by obscure musical publications, Smith sold few copies. Those that he did sell came out of his free promotional copies. The 100 that he "bought" were all returned for credit, so that Elektra in its first outing took back more records than it actually sold.
Despite this inauspicious start, Holzman left college (at the urging of a dean who suggested he take a year off "to get his bearings") and moved back to New York to follow his dream. He found a cheap walk-up in Greenwich Village and for a while helped to make ends meet by installing sound systems, mostly for family friends. He then started his own record store, taking over the lease of a local sheet music store, which he renamed the Record Loft, although it was actually a street-level shop. A large portion of his stock was devoted to folk music, prompting a number of area "folkies" to visit the store to browse and chat. One of these customers was George Pickow, who was married to a Kentucky folk singer, Jean Ritchie. After listening to her, Holzman decided to make her Elektra's second recording artist. Unlike EKLP-1, Ritchie's collection of Appalachian mountain ballads, not only received excellent reviews, it also sold well, perhaps as many as 2,000 copies. More importantly, the success of the record validated Holzman's decision to launch his own record label. Because it was inexpensive to produce, Holzman concentrated on recording folk music.