Editing Deram Records (section)

===1969–1982===
The roster later included British jazz and folk. Some of the more progressive jazz musicians of the late 1960s were released under the Deram imprint, including [[Michael Gibbs (composer)|Mike Gibbs]], [[John Surman]], and [[Mike Westbrook]]. Deram albums bore a DML prefix for mono and an SML prefix for stereo releases. As with other UK Decca subsidiary labels, Deram's U.S. counterpart was distributed under [[London Records]]. Decca positioned it against [[Island Records]], [[Harvest Records]] (started by [[EMI Records|EMI]]), and [[Vertigo Records]] (started by [[Philips Records]]), but it failed to compete.<ref name="Larkin60">{{cite book|title=[[The Encyclopedia of Popular Music|The Virgin Encyclopedia of Sixties Music]]|editor=[[Colin Larkin (writer)|Colin Larkin]]|publisher=[[Virgin Books]]|date=1997|edition=First|isbn=0-7535-0149-X|pages=149/150}}</ref> An 'extra' progressive series with SDL prefixes did not improve the situation.

From the start, Decca placed pop records next to progressive artists on Deram. [[Cat Stevens]] found early success there before moving to [[Island Records]], and [[David Bowie]]'s first album appeared on the label.<ref name="Larkin60"/> Three of Deram's earliest hits, [[Procol Harum]]'s "[[A Whiter Shade of Pale]]" and [[the Move]]'s "[[Night of Fear]]" and "[[I Can Hear the Grass Grow]]", were produced outside the company by artists not directly signed to Deram.<ref name="Larkin60"/> They were part of a deal with Straight Ahead Productions, who later moved their acts to EMI and had them released on the re-introduced [[Regal Zonophone]] imprint.

In 1969, Decca launched Nova, a progressive label that lasted less than a year. This caused further confusion as simultaneous releases on Deram Nova and Decca Nova appeared. Decca released [[Justin Hayward]]'s ''[[Songwriter (Justin Hayward album)|Songwriter]]'' (1977) and ''[[Night Flight (Justin Hayward album)|Night Flight]]'' (1980) vinyl albums on Deram. In 1980, Sir Edward Lewis sold Decca to PolyGram, which put its new acquisition under the control of Roger Ames.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.loudersound.com/features/something-different-but-strong-a-brief-history-of-deram-records|title=Something different, but strong: A Brief History of Deram Records|author=Daryl Easlea|date=17 April 2015|website=Loudersound.com|access-date=11 June 2021}}</ref>
Even though the label name was briefly used in the early 1980s for records by [[Bananarama]], [[the Mo-dettes]], and [[Splodgenessabounds]],<ref name="Larkin60"/> Ames decided to focus on Decca (for classical music) and [[London Recordings]] (for pop music), with London run as his own 'semi-autonomous indie' from within the major. From this point Deram was used as a reissue imprint for other recordings in the Decca/London catalogue and was eventually sold to Universal/UMG as part of Decca Records (London went with Ames to WMG, who sold it to French indie [[Because Music]] in 2017)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://decca.com/|title=Decca Records|website=Decca.com|access-date=11 June 2021}}</ref>