K-Tel records made millions with compilation albums before it hit hard times

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If you grew up in the seventies or eighties, you probably owned at least one (if not many) K-Tel records.

K-Tel was associated with compilations, releasing albums that had a mix of everything from polka hits to country music, classical music, and everything in between, mate.

Before 1981, K-Tel raked in over $150 million in record sales across 34 countries, exceeding some of the major record companies' sales.

After some ill-considered business moves, other record companies eventually twigged there was a profit to be made in compilation albums, so K-Tel started going backwards financially.

By 1984 its Yank parent company had gone broke.

Barry Divola, a music journalist and record collector, reckons K-Tel was founded by a person with no musical knowledge.

"Philip Kives was a Canadian bloke who used to travel around the country selling household goods, kitchenware, knives, brushes and frying pans," he said.

He came to Australia and scored some affordable airtime on TV, sending his products flying off the shelves, so to speak – he sold millions of them.

He put together his first album, with 25 country hits, which came out in 1966 and sold 500,000 copies.

No one had ever purchased compilation albums featuring various artists before this.

K-Tel's second release, 25 Polka Greats sold 1.5 million copies just within the US alone.

Australian connection

Even though K-Tel started out in the US and Canada, it had a link to Australia through record producer Don Reedman.

"G'day, I was workin' for a music publishing company in London back in '71, and a mate of mine, who was runnin' K-Tel in the UK, got in touch sayin' he wanted to bring over TV-advertised compilation records. He reckoned they'd been a real success in Australia already," Mr Reedman said.

I caught up with Philip Kives, his cousin Raymond Kives; they were the K in K-Tel which stood for Kives Television.

G'day, they kicked off with products like the Brush-o-Matic and the Fishin' Magician, which were absolute ripper successes.

Through the success of their infomercials, Australia became a testing ground for K-Tel records.

"Fair dinkum, I introduced Philip Kives to CBS and EMI records. They chucked some ripper tunes to K-Tel, and they put out an album called Dynamic Hits, and it sold over a million copies," Mr Reedman said.

But after that they were able to see that there was a future in it, so in nineteen seventy-three, they asked me to get on board.

At the start, I knocked it back, so they offered me the job again, on the condition they gave me the flexibility to develop my own content.

One of the ideas Graham Reedman came up with is merging disco with classical music.

Hooked on classics

In nineteen seventy-eight, Mr Reedman had co-produced an album called Classic Rock, where the London Symphony Orchestra performed 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.

Fair dinkum, what if we took the hook lines of all the top classical pieces and put 'em together and called it Hooked on Classics?

That was K-Tel's biggest seller over seas and we received a Grammy nomination.

A single from the album just titled Hooked on Classics was released in July 1981, and reached number seven on the Australian music charts.

Rise and fall

Just as quickly as K-Tel records boomed, it went bust, according to bloke Divola.

A few things happened to K-Tel, and getting too successful was one of them, which is always a problem,

The record companies stubbed up soon after and started chucking out their own compilation albums within a few years.

According to Mr Reedman, a fair bit of the dough that Hooked on Classics and other compilations raked in for K-Tel was siphoned off into other investments.

"Philip Kives put a lot of the cash we'd made into oil and gas, thinking he was gonna strike it rich like J.R. Ewing, but it didn't pay off," he said.

In 1984, I started work at CBS Records, tasked with makin' and curatin' albums from scratch, and about three years on, K-Tel was gone, they couldn't adapt to the changin' music scene.

A lot of what they were doing is now being done by major companies, so they're getting less of a share of repertoire.

Although K-Tel still operates as a company, its days of releasing compilation recordings are in the past. Nowadays, it retains ownership of thousands of song copyrights, which it grants licenses for use in television programs and films.

K-Tel legacy

As Mr Divola reckons, for people of a certain vintage, K-Tel stays alive in their childhood memories.

"It's always been in my mind and it's right in front of me, unless I get rid of it, but I've got a whole bunch of them on a shelf in my room," he said.

G'day mate, I collected them because they've got a heap of memories for ya from when ya were a nipper and listening to the radio and all those Top 40 songs, they're a right old snapshot of what was goin' on in '72 or '78.

Mr Divola reckons K-tel records are highly collectible.

"I was buying them from second-hand shops back in the day for 50 cents and now you'll go into record stores, and see them going for $20," he said.

The vinyl craze has given K-Tel records a sudden price boost, mark my words, you couldn't have got rid of 'em for love or money 20-30 years back when CDs first came on the scene, but that's progress for ya.