You've got to be a person of a certain age, maybe in your 50's to remember the "classic" K-tel records and the TV commercials associated with that company's products. I sure am, and I sure do recall the ads for K-Tel's music collections on vinyl and their other endless array of wacky household gadgets and gizmos. Like the Blitzhacker food-chopper, the Fishin' Magician, Mood Shirts, the Patti-Chef, Salad Queen, the Veg-O-Matic, and the K-tel Record Selector, of course (I had one!). Check the original TV ad here:
I have fond memories of one of my early music purchases, an 8-track tape of K-tel's Music Express. That tape introduced me to Elton John, War, and The Stampeders, among other rock and pop stars of the 70's. That was the one and only K-tel purchase I made back then, and for decades, until a couple of years ago, when in a fit of re-building a record collection, I ordered several vintage K-tel albums online. Expecting seriously worn grooves and record sleeves, I instead was happily surprised to see (and hear) clean-sounding and clean-looking album packages. Nice!
The history of K-tel is an odd one: in the early 1960's, Philip Kives, a demonstration salesman in Saskatchewan, began to buy and market on TV a series of unique and unusual household items. Kives even worked with the Ronco company (similar stuff) for a time, until in '68 he formally incorporated K-tel. The company thrived through the 70's (notably selling hundreds of millions of LP records internationally), until late in the decade, when too much product diversification forced its previously successful international divisions to fail and shut down. But after a lot of legal and financial struggle, the Canadian side of the business was saved through Kives' determination to keep K-tel going. He regained the Canadian company in '91, and within a few years, posted incredible growth and sales that lasted during the rest of the 90's.
K-tel still exists, but its main income is thanks to Kives' foresight in acquiring the rights to reproduce the songs of many popular music artists back in the day. He actually negotiated directly with the artists and labels, adding their recordings to the K-tel catalogue, thereby securing a long-term asset that would serve him and his company well into the future. Those were mainly songs from the 50's through 80's, but K-tel continues to flourish by distributing those hundreds of thousands of hits to digital platforms like Spotify, Amazon and iTunes. They also license songs from their catalogue for use in TV shows and commercials.
To quote a Wikipedia entry: "K-Tel helped define the way people purchased music in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2013, Forbes wrote a piece on K-tel, entitled "K-tel Records: The Spotify of the 70s", pointing out that the way people discovered new music in the 70s was through K-tel compilations, in the same way that Spotify playlists are now used to find related artists." (article by Michele Catalano, Forbes)
The colourful and often gawdy album sleeves certainly were eye-catching, always boldly proclaiming: "20 Original Hits, 20 Original Stars" and "As advertised on TV!". From what I understand, these records were assembled very cheaply, cramming as many tracks as possible onto each side of the vinyl. That sometimes meant editing songs down in length and by reducing the width of the already narrow groove... which reduces the audio fidelity. But did we care? Did we need to know? Not really. These records were an introduction to artists and their top hits. If something caught your interest, well, then you'd go out and buy the proper album recording by the artist. There you go. These were pre-internet days, so this was the best way to test drive a variety of new music, aside from the randomness of radio programming. K-tel was a huge part of pop culture, and their still-existing records and tapes are a gateway back in time, each album a time capsule of a given year, so listening today is full of nostalgia. The warm and fuzzies.
Oh, and K-tel also created original recordings, including the Grammy-nominated Hooked On Classics series of classical music.
Anyway, enough about them. Now on to my K-tel records. As I said before, a couple years back, when I was beefing up my fledgling vinyl collection, I found an online seller with a bunch of K-tel albums that interested me. Through these records, I got a cool cross-section of several musical genres, like pop, rock, soul, funk, disco, country, R&B, and so on. I don't have a lot of these albums, but there's a large and diverse selection of music packed on what records I've got. All fun for DJ-ing an evening of retro listening.
K-tel's Mind Bender collection, 1976
Super Star Collection, 2 LPs!, 1978
Star Power, 2 LPs, 1978
Dynamite, 1974
Expressions, 1980
Right On, 1977
MusicExpress, 1975
... also, a Marty Robbins "Gold" original 20 hits album, a K-tel release
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