Swan Records

• 1. Introduction

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  Swan Records, a small Philadelphia label founded in 1957, became the label that almost missed the biggest act in rock and roll history. On the 21st of March 1964, a record catalogued as Swan 4152 climbed to number one on the American charts. The song was "She Loves You" by the Beatles. Swan had not gone looking for it. The British music company EMI had simply needed an American home for the single after Capitol Records, EMI's own U.S. subsidiary, declined to exercise its option on the Beatles' early releases. A modest regional label suddenly found itself at the center of a cultural upheaval. But Swan's story did not begin or end with that single hit. Who actually built Swan? What artists called it home before the British Invasion arrived? And how did a label that scored one of the most celebrated American chart-toppers of the 1960s end up filing for bankruptcy just three years later?

• 2. Building Blocks

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  Bob Crewe and Frank Slay were the staff producer-writers who supplied the creative engine Swan ran on in its earliest years. Their work gave the label a sound and a commercial identity before any major break arrived. One of the first genuine hits to emerge was "Click Clack" by Dickie Doo and the Don'ts, a studio recording produced by Gerry Granahan under a pseudonym. That pseudonym was no random invention: it was the nickname Dick Clark used for his infant son, Dick Clark Jr. The record reached the top 30 on the Billboard charts in February 1958. A release by Billy and Lillie had already gone further, though. "La Dee Dah" reached number nine in January 1958, making it Swan's first top-ten hit. In 1958, an artist named Mary Swan recorded "My Heart Belongs to Only You", catalogued as Swan S4016B, and followed that the next year with "Prisoner of Love" on Swan 4028, which earned a moderate chart showing.

• 3. Freddy Cannon and the Palisades

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  "Palisades Park" arrived in 1962, written by Chuck Barris and performed by Freddy Cannon, who became the most successful artist on the Swan roster. Cannon had already scored earlier hits with "Tallahassee Lassie" and "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans" before that record. He left for Warner Brothers in 1964. The Rockin' Rebels contributed another well-remembered Swan moment with the instrumental "Wild Weekend", which had an unusual path to national success. Originally released on the Masters Releasing label Mar-Lee in 1960, the track was reissued in 1962 after Buffalo disc jockey Tommy Shannon, who was also a partner in ShanTodd Records, had been using it as the theme for his night show on WKBW. A second disc jockey, Jimmy O'Brien of WNDR in Syracuse, New York, picked it up as his own theme, and the combination of regional airplay attention drew Swan to re-release it nationally. The group followed it with "Rockin' Crickets". Link Wray, whose 1958 instrumental "Rumble" remains one of the best-known guitar records of the era, placed a modest hit at Swan with "Jack the Ripper", which had originally appeared on the Masters Releasing label Mar-Lee in 1960.

• 4. Ownership and Payola

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  Swan was co-owned by Bernie Binnick and Tony Mammarella. Dick Clark was reported to have held a financial investment in the label as well. When the payola scandals broke in the early 1960s, Clark divested himself of all outside business interests to avoid a conflict of interest. Distribution ran through Cameo-Parkway Records, a fellow Philadelphia company that was at that moment the dominant label for teenage dance crazes, its catalog spanning "The Twist", "Limbo Rock", "(Do) The Bird", "Wah-Watusi", "Mashed Potato Time", and several more. Swan also carried a civic message pressed directly into the vinyl: many of its releases bore the phrase "Don't drop out" to encourage young listeners to stay in school. The Three Degrees recorded for Swan during this period, placing a moderate hit with a cover of the Five Keys' "Close Your Eyes", though they would later find greater success on Roulette and on Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's Philadelphia International Records.

• 5. The Beatles Rescue and the Aftermath

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  EMI's decision to lease "She Loves You" backed with "I'll Get You" to Swan rather than to a larger American label traces directly to Capitol Records choosing not to pick up its option on early Beatles singles in the United States. That oversight handed Swan catalogue number 4152 and a number-one hit on the 21st of March 1964. Swan also assumed rights to the German-language version of the song, "Sie Liebt Dich", which peaked at number 97 in 1964. The revenue from "She Loves You" kept Swan solvent while competing small labels were overwhelmed by the wave of British acts entering the American market in the same period. That protection proved temporary. Swan filed for bankruptcy in 1967. In 1973, Masters Releasing, Inc. acquired all of Swan's sound recording rights, including the master tapes, from the bankruptcy trustee. Masters Releasing was owned at that time by Steve Brodie and Leonard "Lenny" Silver, who later formed Amherst Records. Freddy Cannon subsequently acquired complete control and ownership of his Swan recordings from Masters Releasing, along with those released on Warner Bros. Records, and in the 1980s he released a single on Amherst Records. In 2007, author Bruce Spizer published "The Beatles Swan Song: 'She Loves You' & Other Records", a detailed account of the Beatles' releases on Swan and several other labels, including United Artists, Decca, Atco, MGM, Polydor, and Capitol issues from the 1970s and 1980s.