<P> In February 1979 Maurice White, founding member of the R&B group Earth, Wind & Fire, re-launched the American Recording Company (ARC). In addition to White's Earth, Wind & Fire, the Columbia Records - distributed label artist roster included successful R&B and pop singer Deniece Williams, jazz - fusion group Weather Report, and R&B trio the Emotions . The label's final release was in 1982 . </P> <P> In January 2006, Sony BMG UK split its front - line operations into two separate labels . RCA Label Group, mainly dealing with Pop and R&B and Columbia Label Group, mainly dealing with Rock, Dance and Alternative music . Mike Smith is the Managing Director of Columbia Label Group, Ian Dutt is Marketing Director and Alison Donald is Director of A&R . </P> <P> In 1997, Columbia made an affiliation with unsigned artist promotion label Aware Records to distribute Aware's artists' music . Through this venture, Columbia has had success finding highly successful artists . In 2002, Columbia and Aware accepted the option to continue this relationship . </P> <P> In 2007, Columbia formed Columbia Nashville and is part of Sony Music Nashville . This gave Columbia Nashville complete autonomy and managerial separation from Columbia in New York City . Columbia had given its country music department semi-autonomy for many years and through the 1950s, had a 20000 series catalog for country music singles while the rest of Columbia's output of singles had a 30000 then 40000 series catalog number . </P>

The first san francisco band to be signed to a major label (rca)