Untitled Document


EMI distribution	PYE distribution	PRT distribution	Phonogram distribution
CBX 501 - 1974 to CBX 522 - 1976	CAN 101 - 1977 to CAN 211 - 1979	CA 210 - 1979 to CAN 219 - 1980 Different PRT overprints excist	CAN 1001 - 1981 to CAN 1016 - 1981
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.