Music Wire: Every record label has a story to tell. Gary Marmorstein tells the story of Columbia Records

We can only imagine what a book about Suge Knight and DeathRow Records would read like. For now though we'll take "THE LABEL The Story of Columbia Records" by Gary Marmorstein. Columbia like many record labels has seen its share of CEOs and artists, cocaine themed parties, artist rivalry and more. However we hope the book touches on the Clive Davis era in detail where it is said he was ousted for what many called some shady doings back then. -NEIL All juicy corporate sagas offer such intrigue, maybe, but Marmorstein’s subject is particularly promising. For a century, more or less, and certainly from after World War II into the 1980s, Columbia was an American household name. It played Avis to RCA Victor’s Hertz for a long while, but later seemed to catch up. It and its affiliate labels, especially Epic, shaped, reflected and profited from American musical taste, with the most sophisticated classical (except for opera, which they slighted), jazz and Broadway offerings and a wide swath of rhythm and blues, country and, eventually, rock recordings. The Columbia Record Club spread the company’s discs deep into the heartland. And, one might think, the story has a built-in ending, now that the purchase of recorded artifacts is giving way to Internet downloading. Long Player [NYT]