Odeon started life in 1902, in Berlin, as the imprint of the International Talking Machine Company. It linked up with US company Okeh, and in 1921 Okeh introduced an American version of the Odeon label. In 1926 Odeon was sold to the Columbia Phonograph Company; five years later it became part of the Electrical and Musical Industries group. Records made by Electrical and Musical Industries / EMI and issued on labels such as Parlophone in Britain appeared on the Odeon label all over the world, as did records made by branches of that company in other countries - EMI India, etc. Despite being so familiar in most of the other countries in the world, the Odeon label as such only took its bow in Britain in 1978. It managed six albums and four singles over the course of the next five years, numbering the singles in an ODO-100 series, and added an album and three more singles - ODOs-111 to 113 - between 1988 and 1990. Previously it had made a brief UK appearance in 1953 as a name and a logo on the BSP-3000-series 7" Parlophone records (1). In addition, at some point after January 1964 British pressings of Joe Loss's HMV single 'Wheels' b/w 'Latino' (POP-880) were made here on the Odeon label, numbered P-POP-880; they were intended for sale abroad, presumably in territories where EMI's 'His Master's Voice' trademark wasn't registered (2). Unsurprisingly one label design served for the 1978-81 releases (3). Demo copies were marked in the usual EMI fashion (4).
(http://www.mainspringpress.com/odeon.html)
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.