Label Guide: RCA Camden

RCA Camden was named after Camden, New Jersey, original home to the Victor Talking Machine Company, later RCA Victor. Camden was RCA's budget label and its long play albums originally sold for $1.98 retail and consisted of strictly monaural recordings, often drawn from 78-rpm discs. About 1958, Camden began releasing stereo albums and subsequently diversified into popular music when it was mostly reissuing RCA's classical back catalogue (under pseudonyms) before.

The label is of no particular interest for collectors as most of its releases are either direct reissues or recompilations of previously released material. Some notable exceptions are RCA Camden editions of Elvis Presley albums from about 1968 on, which often contained previously unreleased songs, or those that weren't previously available on LP records.

RCA Camden was active in many different markets from Latin America to Australia, additionally to the United States, United Kingdom and Europe. This label guide does not attempt to include all the dozens of RCA Camden label variations, just the most important designs of the early years. Again, most of the output of this budget label is of little or no interest for collectors.

more RCA Label Guides: RCA Records (USA) | RCA Records (UK)