Various - Sinfonie der Sterne Sinfonie der Sterne, 50er Jahre

1-CD with 32-page booklet, 26 tracks, playing time 78:08 minutes.

POLYDOR - a name is legend. Since the 'Golden Twenties', shellacs, later vinyl and compact discs have been spinning under this global brand, initially with different coloured labels, since the beginning of the 1950s with the unmistakable orange label and the little stars or with the Polydor red introduced in 1963.

The Fifties
"What the world just dances and sings puts Polydor on records." This is a motto and not a vision, but the reality as it was in the 50s. While the economic miracle is slowly taking shape, pink and red times are dawning on the star-studded record brand. Thanks to its affiliation with the Siemens Group, Polydor achieves a leading position in the German market. The DGG entertainment brand certainly helps that it can take advantage of the distribution network of the well-established Siemens-Elektrogeräte AG. The merchants are literally snatching Polydoren from the hands of the representatives, as they say.

The asterisks in the label have been on a dark red background since 1950, beginning with a recording of the Tanzorchester Ernst Jäger (Edelweiss-Tango) up to mid-1953. The orange phase began in July 1953 with Goodnight, a sweetheart by Helmut Zacharias, and ended in early 1964. Since then, a stylised half record on a bright red background has been used as a signet.

Already in 1950, six years before the DGG administration, which had remained in Hannover until then, the Polydor production had moved to Hamburg and established itself in the Hamburg Musikhalle. The rooms there are anything but elegant, but the recording rooms offer unique acoustics. Night work is normal there for the technicians and artists. Recordings made during the day or earlier in the evening could have disrupted the concert life and broadcasting operations of the BFN soldier station, which is also housed in the Musikhalle.

Operating out of Hamburg, the brand with the golden stars on the label will dominate the music scene in Germany almost by itself far beyond the decade. Even though Polydor's program is broad and from dance music to rock 'n' roll
Roll ä la Ted Herold and Peter Kraus as well as fairy tale records reaching to the edges of classical music, the name becomes synonymous with the German Schlager. Polydor is pointing its rivals to the right places. By the way, the Schlagerreise begins with a trip to the Mediterranean, to the dream beaches of the South Seas or to the vastness of the prairie.

The successes are achieved all along the line and in series. In 1954, the national football team under their coach Sepp Herberger brought home the world championship cup from Bern, the singer Rene Carol a gold record. With the help of his discoverer and producer Kurt Feltz, the singer was able to sell half a million shellac copies of red roses, red lips and red wine within two years.

Continue with Friedel Hensch & the Cyprys. They are already multiple record millionaires by the middle of the 50s, and the group is thus also ripe for a 'golden' one. The sum of their bestsellers until 1955 amounts to three million units. In Wolfsburg, meanwhile, one million VW Beetles, symbol of the economic upswing, have rolled off the assembly line since the end of the war.
Even four million copies of her recordings sold are the occasion to honour the all-round talent Caterina Valente with a Golden Record.

This happened in 1956, the same year a young man from Vienna landed one of the greatest Polydor hits of all time: Freddy Quinn sings about hot desert sand, the distant homeland and how beautiful time used to be. With homesickness he apparently also speaks to the expellees in Germany from the soul. At least so many people find themselves in these lines that one million listeners pay four marks to own the song on shellac or vinyl. Freddy set a new sales record and earned the first of many golden records (e.g. Heimatlos, 1958, and Die Gitarre und das Meer, 1959). With a golden record for the Yugoslav Ivo Robic (Morgen) Polydor says goodbye to the kidney table era.