Rca Records

RCA Records declined to comment Tuesday on reports that "American Idol" performer Justin Guarini had been dropped by the label. The singer's self-titled album has sold 135,000 copies since its release in June, compared with million-plus figures for his "Idol" colleagues Clay Aiken and Kelly Clarkson. Guarini finished second to Clarkson last year in a viewers' poll capping the show's first season and co-starred with her in the movie musical "From Justin to Kelly."

Norman Racusin, the former president of RCA Records who worked with Elvis Presley and other pop singers and was instrumental in developing the eight-track tape, died April 29 at his home in Carlsbad after suffering a stroke. He was 82. Racusin was appointed president of RCA Records and elected an executive vice president of NBC in 1969. He formerly had been division vice president and general manager of RCA Records, a division of NBC. Born in Johnsonburg, Pa.

RCA Records President Jack Rovner was ousted in a surprise management shake-up at Bertelsmann Music Group. The move is part of a restructuring in which the German record corporation will dissolve its North American sector, removing a corporate layer between its American labels and its global operation.

BMG Classics, once a powerhouse of the classical music recording industry, is being gutted in a major reorganization of the recording labels owned by the German entertainment giant Bertelsmann. In its heyday a decade ago, BMG Classics--better known in America under its imprints RCA Victor Red Seal and RCA Victor--released several hundred recordings a year, featuring major box-office artists like flutist James Galway and pianist Evgeny Kissin.

"Ultimate" . . . "historic" . . . "legendary" are some of the words that RCA Records is applying to "Sunrise," the latest in its endless series of Elvis Presley reissues. "Greedy" is more like it. The music in "Sunrise"--a collection of the landmark recordings Presley made with Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis before he switched to RCA and exploded on the pop scene in 1956 with "Heartbreak Hotel"--is historic and legendary, but the two-disc set is certainly not the ultimate bargain.

When Sonny Rollins signed with RCA in 1961, it represented a return to recording after a hiatus of more than a year. His absence from activity during the period was accompanied by endless rumors about what Rollins--arguably one of the two or three most admired saxophonists in jazz at the time of his brief retirement--had been doing. Tales were heard about practice sessions on one of the bridges above Manhattan's East River.

RCA's ambitious new Elvis Presley box set, due in stores Tuesday, is titled "Platinum: A Life in Music," but just think of it as Elvis' "Anthology"--as in the recent Beatles releases. Where the Beatles collection was a series of six discs sold in three separate volumes, "Platinum" is a single, four-disc set. Yet most of the 100 selections are the same kind of rarities or previously unreleased material that made the Beatles' packages so celebrated.

After a five-month search, Bertelsmann Music Group announced Monday that Robert Jamieson, 50, current head of its Canadian division, will take over as president of RCA Records. The German media conglomerate had considered a number of prospective candidates, including music agent Tom Ross, all of whom reportedly said they weren't interested.