building the company's extensive hillbilly catalogue, allowing Decca to corner the market on country music for years. Record sales had plunged during the Depression, and Kapp decided that Decca discs would sell for 50 cents instead of the usual 75 cents to a dollar. When Brunswick shifted its back catalogue to a 25-cent subsidiary label in an effort to sink the fledgling company, Kapp further reduced the price to 35 cents per disc. Crucially, he also pursued the then-new jukebox market. In 1938, Decca began releasing record sleeves with cover artwork; other innovations such as liner notes and Broadway cast albums followed (although Jack Kapp pioneered this practice in 1933 by recording the entire "Blackbirds of 1928" and "Showboat" scores and issuing them in album sets). By 1939, the company was on its feet; 18 million of the 50 million records sold in the United States that year were issued by Decca. Jack Kapp died in New York City, of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1949 at the age of 47. After his death, his brother Dave Kapp took over American Decca. Dave Kapp later founded Kapp Records, based in New York. References External links [ Allmusic] American music industry executives 20th-century American Jews 1949 deaths 1901 births 20th-century American businesspeople