During the same year, Columbia executive Frank Buckley Walker pioneered some of the first country music or "hillbilly" genre recordings with the Johnson City sessions in Tennessee, including artists such as Clarence Horton Greene and "Fiddlin'" Charlie Bowman.

Other favorites in the Viva-tonal era included Ruth Etting, Paul Whiteman, Fletcher Henderson, Ipana Troubadours (a Sam Lanin group), and Ted Lewis.

Columbia was added in mid-1932, relegated to slower sellers such as the Hawaiian music of Andy Iona, the Irving Mills stable of artists and songs, and the still unknown Benny Goodman.

Most fortuitously for Columbia in its Depression Era financial woes, in 1936 the company entered into an exclusive recording contract with the Chuck Wagon Gang, a hugely successful relationship which continued into the 1970s.

Hammond's work for Columbia was interrupted by his service during World War II, and he had less involvement with the music scene during the bebop era, but when he returned to work as a talent scout for Columbia in the 1950s, his career proved to be of incalculable historical and cultural importance – the list of superstar artists he would discover and sign to Columbia over the course of his career included Charlie Christian, Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and in the early 1960s Hammond would also exert an enormous cultural effect on the emerging rock music scene thanks to his championing of reissue LPs of the music of blues artists Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith.

[20] In a 1941 court case brought by unhappy shareholders of Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. ("CBS"), Edward Wallerstein, a high executive with RCA Victor from 1932 thru 1938, was asked to comment on ARC.

(Columbia Records had originally co-founded CBS in 1927 along with New York talent agent Arthur Judson, but soon cashed out of the partnership leaving only the name; Paley acquired the fledgling radio network in 1928.)

Corporate offices, studio and Pressing Plant would also continue at 1473 Barnum Avenue, Bridgeport, CT. John Hammond was hired by Wallerstein as "Associate Director Popular Recording" (at 7th Ave).

"It is understood that CBS and the Levys are not interested in retaining American Record's hillbilly department, and that Art Satherly, who has been running this section for many years, will take it out of the company with him".

Ward Botsford writing for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Issue of High Fidelity Magazine relates: "He was no inventor—he was simply a man who seized an idea whose time was ripe and begged, ordered, and cajoled a thousand men into bringing into being the now accepted medium of the record business."

CBS research director Dr. Peter Goldmark played a managerial role in the collaborative effort, but Wallerstein credits engineer William Savory with the technical prowess that brought the long-playing disc to the public.

)[40] Miller quickly signed up Mercury's biggest artist at the time, Frankie Laine, and discovered several of the decade's biggest recording stars including Tony Bennett, Mahalia Jackson, Jimmy Boyd, Guy Mitchell (whose stage surname was taken from Miller's first name), Johnnie Ray, The Four Lads, Rosemary Clooney, Kay Lande, Ray Conniff, Jerry Vale and Johnny Mathis.

[42] To enhance its country music stable, which already included Marty Robbins, Ray Price and Carl Smith, Columbia bid $15,000 for Elvis Presley's contract from Sun Records in 1955.

Under his leadership the corporation's music division soon overtook RCA Victor as the top recording company in the world, boasting a star-studded roster of artists and an unmatched catalogue of popular, jazz, classical and stage and screen soundtrack titles.

Lieberson also convinced long-serving CBS President William S. Paley to become the sole backer of the original Broadway production, a $500,000 investment which subsequently earned the company some $32 million in profits.

One of Columbia's first stereo releases was an abridged and re-structured performance of Handel's Messiah by the New York Philharmonic and the Westminster Choir conducted by Leonard Bernstein (recorded on December 31, 1956, on 1⁄2-inch tape, using an Ampex 300-3 machine).

[57] In September 1961, CBS A&R manager John Hammond was producing the first Columbia album by folk singer Carolyn Hester, who invited a friend to accompany her on one of the recording sessions.

In 1965, Dylan's controversial decision to 'go electric' and work with rock musicians divided his audience but catapulted him to greater commercial success with his 1965 hit single "Like a Rolling Stone".

Dylan's late 1960s albums John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline became cornerstone recordings of the emergent country rock genre and influenced The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers.

Terry Melcher, son of Doris Day, produced the hard driving "Don't Make My Baby Blue" for Frankie Laine, who had gone six years without a hit record.

1 hit in 1965 when Columbia producer Tom Wilson, inspired by the folk-rock experiments of Dylan, The Byrds and others, added drums and bass to the duo's earlier recording of "The Sound of Silence" without their knowledge or approval.

Indeed, the duo had already broken up some months earlier, discouraged by the poor sales of their debut LP, and Paul Simon had relocated to the UK, where he only found out about the single being a hit via the music press.

These recordings were backward compatible on conventional two-channel stereo playback systems, but played four-channels of surround sound when heard with special amplifiers and additional speakers.

Many quadraphonic recordings were reissued in new surround sound formats such as Dolby Digital, DTS, Super Audio CD and Blu-ray, however, multichannel music still did not reach mass-market acceptance.

At this point, according to music historian Fredric Dannen, the shy and introverted Yetnikoff began to transform his personality, becoming (in Asher's words) "wild, menacing, crude, and above all, very loud".

In Dannen's view, Yetnikoff was probably over-compensating for his naturally sensitive and generous personality, and that he had little hope of being recognised as a "record man" (someone with a musical ear and an intuitive understanding of current trends and artists' intentions) because he was tone-deaf, so he instead determined to become a "colourful character".

[71] Yetnikoff soon became notorious for his violent temper and regular tantrums: "He shattered glassware, spewed a mixture of Yiddish and barnyard epithets, and had people physically ejected from the CBS building.

Asher became increasingly concerned about the huge and rapidly growing cost of hiring independent agents, who were paid to promote new singles to radio station program directors.

As of 2025, the current Columbia Records roster includes Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, Celine Dion, Beyoncé, Adele, Rosalía, Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus, Lil Nas X, Blink-182, Addison Rae, Jennie, Dove Cameron, Central Cee, Chlöe, Halsey, Ive, Tyler, the Creator, Pharrell Williams, and many more.

In addition to White's Earth, Wind & Fire, the Columbia Records-distributed label artist roster included successful R&B and pop singer Deniece Williams, jazz-fusion group Weather Report, and R&B trio the Emotions.