In their first two decades their artists included Gertrude Lawrence, George Formby, Jack Hylton and Vera Lynn in Britain and Bing Crosby, Al Jolson the Andrews Sisters and the Mills Brothers in the US.

[5] The first classical recording took place four days later at the Chenil Galleries in Chelsea, and featured the violist Cecil Bonvallot in an arrangement of J. S. Bach's Komm, süßer Tod.

[7] A premiere recording of Delius's Sea Drift conducted by Julian Clifford was in less than ideal sound,[8] but marked Decca's first association with the baritone Roy Henderson which lasted for the rest of his career.

Lewis, although he remained nominally merely a board member, effectively took over the direction of the company and at his instigation Decca made substantial cuts in the prices of its records.

[13] In 1934, Jack Kapp established a country & western line for the new Decca American subsidiary by signing Frank Luther, Sons of the Pioneers, Stuart Hamblen, The Ranch Boys, and other popular acts based in both New York and Los Angeles.

[10] Decca had acquired the small Crystalate record company in the late 1930s, and with it its sound engineers Arthur Haddy and Kenneth Wilkinson, as well as its studios in West Hampstead.

The company's popular music catalogue now included recordings by, among others, the Ink Spots, Jimmy Dorsey, Judy Garland, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald.

[25] The dramatically enhanced frequency range now possible prompted Decca to move its main London recording venue from the West Hampstead studios to the acoustically superb Kingsway Hall in 1944.

[27][28] Another technical advance that greatly benefited Decca was the invention of the long-playing record (LP), pressed on vinyl rather than shellac and playing for five times longer than 78 r.p.m.

[29] Decca's main British rival, EMI, comprising the Columbia, HMV and Parlophone labels, lagged behind, having initially reached the conclusion that there was no future in LP, devoting itself instead to an unsuccessful two-year attempt to perpetuate the 78 format.

[30] Most recording contracts had expired or lapsed during the war, and consequently many eminent artists, previously exclusive to rival labels, could be enticed by Decca's technical edge.

The company instituted an ambitious programme of international classical recordings in many European centres, building up an artist roster comparable with those of its pre-war competitors.

[45] In popular music American Decca assembled a substantial list of performers in the 1950s, including Bill Haley & His Comets – whose 1954 "Rock Around The Clock" was an especial success and Buddy Holly.

British Decca also licensed from independent record companies Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Eddie Cochran and Jerry Lee Lewis which were issued in the UK on the London label.

Artists thus recorded included Pierre Monteux, Arthur Rubinstein, Leopold Stokowski, Jascha Heifetz, Joan Sutherland, Birgit Nilsson and André Previn.

Culshaw and his engineering colleagues set out to capture on disc performances that would recreate in listeners' minds the drama that Wagner intended, compensating for the lack of visual images with imaginative production, making use of the newly available stereophonic technology.

Among the classical recordings released on Decca's "Gold Label" series[61] were albums by Leroy Anderson, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conducted by Max Rudolf and guitarist Andrés Segovia.

[62] Technically it surpassed its competitor – in 1965 The Times commented that Decca's engineers were incomparable[63] – and it had expanded its overseas operations to include not only the completion of the Ring cycle but extensive repertoire from Karl Münchinger and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in baroque music, Solti and Tullio Serafin in Italian operas with the Santa Cecilia Academy Chorus and Orchestra, Sutherland in the bel canto repertoire, and the Vienna Philharmonic in operatic and purely orchestral works with Herbert von Karajan and in a Beethoven cycle conducted by Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt.

[68] Culshaw left the company in 1967 to become head of music for BBC television, but Decca had a team of experienced producers to replace him, including Erik Smith, Christopher Raeburn and James Mallinson.

[71] In popular music British Decca missed some opportunities in the 1960s, including blocking the release of Ray Peterson's "Tell Laura I Love Her" in 1960,[72] and rejecting the Beatles in 1962.

[77] In 1966 Decca set up a "progressive" subsidiary, Deram Records, which became home to bands like the Moody Blues, whose Days of Future Passed became one of the best-selling albums of its time.

[86] Culshaw cited as an example Rosengarten's opposition in the previous decade to the signing of Pavarotti because it might upset the ageing tenor Mario del Monaco, who had been recording for British Decca since 1952.

James Mallinson's "Headline" series was devoted to contemporary music and during the rest of the 1970s issued recordings of works by, among others, Berio, Birtwistle, Cage, Henze, Ligeti, Maxwell Davies, Takemitsu and Xenakis.

The Rolling Stones left to set up their own label in 1971 and the Moody Blues were the only international rock act that continued to record for Decca.

[91] Among the company's major commercial successes of the decade was Dana's two-million selling single, "All Kinds of Everything", issued on British Decca's subsidiary label Rex Records.

[21] In his memoirs Culshaw wrote of "an era of decline", and lamented the missed opportunities of Lewis's later years, when his entrepreneurial flair and his instincts for the market had been overtaken by a cautious conservatism.

During the 1980s there was some activity in popular music, with hits from Bananarama, Bronski Beat, the Communards and Fine Young Cannibals,[21] but as a classical label British Decca was a stronger presence, making numerous records with Solti in Chicago, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit, the Cleveland Orchestra with Riccardo Chailly, Dohnányi, and a long-time British Decca artist Vladimir Ashkenazy, and soloists including Kiri Te Kanawa, Renée Fleming, Pascal Rogé, Joshua Bell, Cecilia Bartoli and Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

[21] British Decca's prominence in the crossover repertoire dates from 1990 when Pavarotti's recording of the aria "Nessun dorma" from Turandot was used by the BBC to introduce its coverage of the FIFA World Cup.

When Decca's recording of the tournament's opening concert performance by Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras was released, it became the biggest-selling classical album of all time.

The three tenors' record paved the way for Decca's crossover artists such as Russell Watson, Andrea Bocelli, Katherine Jenkins and Alfie Boe.