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| K-Tel were famous for advertising 20 original stars and 20 original hits on their compilations. (Supplied: My music through the years) |
By Phil Brandel
If you grew up in the 1970s or 1980s, you probably owned at least one (if not many) K-Tel records.
K-Tel were synonymous with compilations, releasing albums that contained everything from polka hits to country music, classical music and everything in between.
Before 1981, K-Tel made more than $150 million in record sales in 34 countries, selling more units than some of the major record companies.
After some bad business decisions and other record companies eventually realising there was money to be made in compilations, K-Tel started losing money.
By 1984 its US parent company had filed for bankruptcy.
Music journalist and record collector Barry Divola said K-Tel was started by someone with no music knowledge.
"Philip Kives was a Canadian travelling salesman selling kitchenware, knives, brushes and frying pans," he said.
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| Songs on K-Tel compilations often had to be edited to fit them all on the record. (Supplied: Discogs) |
"He came out to Australia and got some cheap airtime on TV, literally sold millions of these products.
"The first record he put together was 25 country hits in 1966 and it ended up selling 500,000 copies.
"Before this nobody had ever bought compilation albums with different artists on them."
K-Tel's second release, 25 Polka Greats sold 1.5 million copies in the United States alone.
Australian connection
Even though K-Tel started in America and Canada, it had an Australian connection through record executive Don Reedman.
"In 1971, I was working for a music publishing company in London and a friend of mine, who was running K-Tel in the UK got in touch to say he wanted to introduce TV advertised compilation records, which already had success in Australia," Mr Reedman said.
"I met with Philip Kives, [his cousin] Raymond Kives; they were the K in K-Tel which meant Kives television.
"They had started with the products like the Brush-o-Matic and the Fishin' Magician which were very successful."
Through the success of their infomercials, Australia ended up becoming a testing ground for K-Tel records.
"I introduced Philip Kives to CBS and EMI records. They supplied some repertoire to K-Tel, and they put out an album called Dynamic Hits, and it sold over a million copies," Mr Reedman said.
"After that they could see that there was a future there, so in 1973 they asked me to join them.
"At first, I turned it down, so they offered me the job again, with the proviso that they gave me the freedom to create my own productions."
One of the ideas Mr Reedman came up with was combining disco with classical music.
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| Don Reedman stands behind recording engineer John Kurlander at a Hooked on Classics recording session. (Supplied: Don Reedman) |
Hooked on classics
In 1978 Mr Reedman had co-produced an album called Classic Rock, where the London Symphony Orchestra played rock songs.
"I heard a record called Stars on 45, which was a Beatles medley, and it was clever the way it had been put together," he said.
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| Hooked on Classics was K-Tel's highest-selling album. (Supplied: hardyvinyl.com) |
"I thought what if we took the hook lines of all the popular classical pieces and put it together and called it Hooked on Classics?
"That was K-Tel's biggest selling album internationally and we got a Grammy nomination."
A single off the album simply titled Hooked on Classics was released in July 1981 peaking at number seven on the Australian music charts.
Rise and fall
Just as quickly as K-Tel records rose, it crashed, according to Mr Divola.
"A few things happened to K-Tel, one was they got too successful, which is always a problem," he said.
"The record companies quickly twigged on and after a few years they started releasing their own compilation albums."
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| K-Tel records are now much sought after by collectors like Barry Divola. (Supplied: Barry Divola) |
According to Mr Reedman a lot of the money that Hooked on Classics and other compilations made for K-Tel was siphoned off into other investments.
"Philip Kives took a lot of the money that we had made and invested in oil and gas, thinking he was going to be JR Ewing, and it didn't work out well," he said.
"In 1984, I accepted a position at CBS Records to create concept and compilation albums and about three years later K-Tel finished up, they didn't move with the times.
"A lot of what they were doing was now being done by major companies, so they weren't getting the same amount of repertoire."
While K-Tel still exists as a company, the days of releasing compilations are behind it. Instead, it owns the copyright to thousands of songs which it licenses to TV shows and movies.
K-Tel legacy
According to Mr Divola, for people of a certain age, K-Tel lives on in their childhood memories.
"It lives in my memories and on my case on my bookshelves because I've got a whole row of them there," he said.
"I collected them because they contained a whole lot of memories from when you were a kid listening to the radio and hearing all those songs from the Top 40, they are a snapshot of what was happening in 1972 or 1978."
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| Barry Divola says the compilation albums are a snapshot in time. (Supplied: Barry Divola) |
Mr Divola says that K-tel records are highly collectible.
"I was buying them from op shops back in the day for 50 cents and now you'll go into record shops, and see them going for $20," he said.
"The vinyl revival has just pushed the price of K-Tel records way up, you couldn't give them away 20-30 years ago when CDs came out but everything comes around again.”
First published at ABC News, December 21, 2024
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