Label Guide: Pickwick

Pickwick Records (originally formed as Pickwick Sales Corporation, later Pickwick International) was founded in 1950 by Cy Leslie and entered the LP market in the mid-1950s with very low-priced albums of mostly inferior quality, both for used material and musical content. Pickwick basically invented the budget labels (also 'junk records') that were sold for less than one dollar, often in drug stores or at gas stations.

Many of Pickwick's releases were so-called "soundalike" records which would often claim to be original, but had nothing more than in-house bands covering popular themes or hits. Some famous musicians started their career in those budget label studios, like Al Kooper or Dolly Parton. Several of Pickwick's soundalike albums from 1964 to 1965 feature Lou Reed as an uncredited session musician, who was employed as a staff songwriter for the label.

Pickwick used many different brands for new releases and repackagings of previous albums, including Design, Bravo, International Award, Hurrah, Grand Prix, Cricket and Happy Time. The UK branch of Pickwick had imprints like Hallmark, Harp and Allegro. The label also worked as the American distributor for smaller labels like Groove Mechant, De-Lite or Sonet Records.

In the 1970s the label changed direction, and began reissuing albums that had been deleted from catalogs of the major record labels, in particular the RCA Records subsidiary RCA Camden, itself a reissue label. Pickwick also reissued numerous LPs from the Motown catalog during the 1970s. On many of these albums, the cover art was changed, and/or the track listing was altered with two or more songs deleted.

Pickwick was sold in 1977 to American Can Company and its assets were purchased by PolyGram in the late 1970s. Pickwick's catalog is now owned by Universal Music which merged with PolyGram in 1998.