Brown Meggs

• 1. Early Life And Military Service

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  Brown Moore Meggs was born on the 20th of October 1930 in Los Angeles. His father Charles Winfield Meggs worked as an art director for Paramount Pictures and brought film scripts home to evaluate them. The young Brown read these scripts with more enthusiasm than books, dreaming of becoming a scriptwriter himself. He attended Black-Foxe Military Institute in Hollywood before transferring to St. Luke's school in Connecticut. Later he took college courses at both California Institute of Technology and Harvard University, eventually graduating with an English degree. During the Korean War he served in the U.S. Army counterintelligence unit stationed in Japan for one year. After his military service ended he lived in Laguna Beach writing freelance articles for various magazines.

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• 2. The Beatles Distribution Deal

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  In early November 1963 Meggs met with Brian Epstein who played him a demo copy of the single I Want to Hold Your Hand. Capitol Records had previously rejected earlier Beatles songs like Love Me Do because executive Dave Dexter Jr. deemed them unworthy. Epstein pressured Capitol head Alan W. Livingston to accept the new track which featured intentional American gospel elements. Meggs predicted mass appeal immediately and signed the band to a major distribution deal promising a forty thousand dollar promotional campaign. By early December he discovered the UK single had amassed one million advance orders before its release on the 29th of November. A British copy flew over the Atlantic to deejay Carroll James of WWDC in Maryland who began broadcasting it on the 17th of December. Capitol scrambled to move the release date from January 13 to December 26 and increased pressing numbers from two hundred thousand to one million copies. They covered the country with warnings that The Beatles Are Coming using stickers and mop-top wigs given to staff and students. By the 1st of February 1964 the song reached number one in the US just one week before their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

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• 3. Capitol Records Executive Career

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  Meggs joined Capitol Records as manager of merchandising and promotion at the Los Angeles building in September 1958. He rose to director of public relations handling both Capitol artists and visiting EMI acts by 1959. In March 1962 Capitol moved him to New York City where he became director of operations for the U.S. East Coast nine months later. He reorganized Angel Records for better profitability and signed an agreement with Soviet label Melodiya to sell recordings by pianist Sviatoslav Richter. Meggs conceived a fan club magazine called TeenSet starting in March 1964 which became a free insert for Beach Boys Concert albums. Issue number two printed five hundred thousand copies making it the largest teen-oriented advertising campaign in CRDC history. He was promoted to vice president of CRDC in 1964 overseeing all advertising needs after hiring Foote Cone & Belding. In 1971 he became worldwide marketing while still covering classical responsibilities. Capitol promoted him to chief operating officer in 1974 reporting to CEO Bhaskar Menon. He resigned from this role in July 1976 stating that other things needed his attention.

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• 4. Classical Music Label Revival

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  Meggs founded Seraphim Records in September 1966 to promote high-quality classical recordings sold at bargain prices. The label used the slogan Champagne at beer prices and remastered classic recordings by artists like Paul Hindemith and Myra Hess. It drew from unsold stock primarily from Angel Records to give titles another chance at lower costs. In 1984 Capitol asked him to return as president of Angel Records with more autonomy as a separate division. He revived the label by reissuing its titles on Compact Disc. Meggs also modernized Seraphim Records by stopping all vinyl pressings so bargain titles were released only on Compact Cassette. Mid-priced lines were issued on both cassette and CD formats. He left Capitol for the last time in 1990 after his wife was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Throughout his years at Capitol he worked closely with pop artists including the Beach Boys and Bobbie Gentry despite preferring classical music himself.

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• 5. Documentary Film Achievements

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  Sponsored by the Appaloosa Horse Club of Moscow Idaho Meggs wrote the script for the documentary film Appaloosa. The thirty-minute color film was shot in Idaho in 1961 and narrated by television actor Dale Robertson. Meggs co-directed the project with producer Fred Rice. National Cowboy Hall of Fame named it the best documentary in 1962 awarding each filmmaker a bronze statuette representing Wrangler. Earlier in 1958 he published an article about English race car driver Richard Seaman who died crashing during the 1938 German Grand Prix. His account appeared in Omnibus of Speed a collection of short biographical pieces on race car drivers. These works demonstrated his ability to blend historical research with visual storytelling across different genres.

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• 6. Mystery And Historical Novels

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  Meggs' 1974 book Saturday Games received an Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination for Best First Novel though Gregory Mcdonald won that year for Fletch. The crime mystery plot involved three bachelor playboys implicated in the death of a free-spirited woman they had all known. A police detective tried to find the truth behind their actions. He originally submitted the manuscript to Barbara Norville at Bobbs-Merrill Company but she returned it with suggestions for improvement before Random House published it for more money. His 1978 novel Aria revealed the inner workings of a classical record company struggling to produce Giuseppe Verdi's Otello. The story drew from the real-world debacle of Maria Callas attempting to record La traviata over more than a decade until Aristotle Onassis stopped funding it in 1968. In 1981 Meggs wrote The War Train based on tales told by his step-grandfather about American soldiers enduring a hellish train ride in March 1916. He confirmed facts using microfilm records of the cavalry unit fighting Pancho Villa near Hachita New Mexico. The Detroit Free Press reviewed the book positively despite one error regarding Ty Cobb's position.

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