![]() ![]() The big companies where mainly interested in releasing overseas material which left a marketing niche for the smaller, locally owned companies such as Viking. When the trio started Viking Records they had no import licence. Those were all owned by HMV (Now part of Universal Music), so they couldn't get tapes to record on to. This meant some early recordings had to be erased and the original master tapes reused, so some material has been lost. It was challenging starting an independent record business because – much like now - the competition such as Capitol and HMV and Pye were big multi-national players. ![]() ![]() When it came to choosing a name for the fledgling company, Murdock and his business partners - record producer, the late Ron Dalton and Jim Staples who later became the company's man in Sydney - wanted the word ‘international’ in the title, but couldn't figure out a way to do it without it sounding clumsy. They had a number of names written down and worked down the list to letter V. Viking was chosen for the way it sounds. It helped that Murdoch's late wife was part Norwegian too. But I suppose my other thing was to make sure that we created something new and different from what was coming in from overseas.” “It was the time when requests were put into radio stations from various songs and from that I learned what the public wanted and realised that if I ever went out on my own as I did eventually I would have some idea of what people were not able to find in records. Murdoch remembers: “When I was in 2ZB they had a programme of new releases and I put some of the Chess label – the Chuck Berry stuff and another one from the same label called Howlin’ Wolf – and I recall that the station manager got a call from head office saying ‘What on earth are you doing playing this on Sunday afternoon?’ I was always trying to push the envelope. He was a Record Purchasing Officer and used to put together the Lever Hit Parade, New Zealand Radio's only regular half-hour pop show. He used the experience he gained at 2ZB when he started the record label up in about 1957. In the 1960s, Viking Records was the largest locally-owned record label in the South Pacific, with its head office in Wellington and a branch in Sydney. The label recorded an extensive range of Pacific music from New Zealand, Fiji, Tahiti, Tonga and Samoa, and it was the largest supplier of Pacific Island and Maori music in New Zealand.įounder Murdoch Riley had a background in broadcasting. ![]()
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