American
Casablanca Records was started in september 1973 by Neil Bogart, who partnered
with Cecil Holmes, Larry Harris and Buck Reingold, after all of them left
Buddah Records. Bogart initially financed the label partly through borrowing
some cash from Warner Brothers Records, who in return set up a deal to
distribute the new label's product.
In
1974, Bogart was sure he and his crew could do better on their own. He
approached Warner Brothers and requested that he be released from the promotion
deal, and agreed to pay back the financial loan.
Bogart
moved the corporate office to 8255 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, where
he built new buildings and styled the offices after the movie set of the
Humphrey Bogart film Casablanca. Everybody got a leased Mercedes. "If
you were cruising along Sunset Boulevard in the late seventies and saw
what appeared to be an enormous Mercedes dealership, chances were good
that you'd just stumbled upon the parking lot of Casablanca Records."
In
1977, PolyGram acquired a 50 percent stake of Casablanca for $15 million.
In
1980 PolyGram pushed Bogart out due to accounting irregularities and poor
label performance. |