1. Jack Kapp was born in Chicago, Illinois to a Jewish family of immigrants from Russia.
12 Facts About Jack Kapp
1. 2.
Jack Kapp's father, Myer Kaplitzky, was a distributor for Columbia Records in 1905 and the founder of the Imperial Talking Machine Shop in Chicago.
3.
Jack Kapp worked at the store after high school, and was known for having memorized the catalog numbers of every record in the inventory as well as the addresses and phone numbers of his father's best customers.
4.
In 1926, Jack Kapp joined Brunswick Records and was put in charge of their "race" label, where he scouted, signed or produced artists including, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Pinetop Smith, Leroy Carr, Frankie Jaxon, and Cow Cow Davenport, among others.
5.
Jack Kapp worked with artists on the Brunswick label; it was over the company's objection that he had Al Jolson record "Sonny Boy", which became a huge success for Jolson.
6.
The artists signed by Jack Kapp included Crosby, Cab Calloway, the Mills Brothers, the Boswell Sisters, and Mildred Bailey.
7.
Jack Kapp signed new performers such as Chick Webb, Art Tatum, Jimmie Lunceford, Ethel Waters, and a year after the company's founding, Louis Armstrong.
8.
Dave Jack Kapp was instrumental in building the company's extensive hillbilly catalogue, allowing Decca to corner the market on country music for years.
9.
Record sales had plunged during the Depression, and Jack Kapp decided that Decca discs would sell for 50 cents instead of the usual 75 cents to a dollar.
10.
When Brunswick shifted its back catalogue to a 25-cent subsidiary label in an effort to sink the fledgling company, Jack Kapp further reduced the price to 35 cents per disc.
11.
Jack Kapp died in New York City, of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1949 at the age of 47.
12.
Dave Jack Kapp later founded Jack Kapp Records, based in New York.