Little Labels--Big Sound: Small Record Companies and the Rise of American Music
Beginning with Henry Gennett, whose modest Midwestern record company, a piano dealership spinoff, helped launch the careers of jazz immortals King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, Kennedy (Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy) and McNutt (We Wanna Boogie) tell how 10 independent record labels shaped the course of American popular music. Predictably, Sam Phillipss Sun Records, perhaps the most celebrated little label in music history, merits a chapter. More interesting, though, are profiles of less familiar independents such as Don Robeys gospel-oriented Peacock Records and John Vincents pioneering rhythm-and-blues label, Ace. The authors skillfully lay out the complex racial politics of their story, showing, for example, how a shared interest in profits and fresh sounds could bring together personalities as diverse as Soul Brother Number One, James Brown, and Syd Nathan, the feisty Jewish entrepreneur whose Cincinnati-based King Records made Brown a million-seller. The book includes scores of fascinating label-artist dramas, some well known (Dial and Charlie Parker; Riverside and Thelonious Monk), others long forgotten (Peacock and white soul singer Roy Head; Sun and rockabilly visionary Billy Lee Riley). An invaluable guide to the businesspeople, musicians and hangers-on who transformed regional musical styles into a national soundtrack, this book belongs on the same shelf as Peter Guralnicks Sweet Soul Music and Alan Lomaxs The Land Where the Blues Began. B&w; photos.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.