American Century Records

**American Century Records** (simply known as **American Century** or **ACR**) is an American record label founded in the 1960s by Richie Finestra, Zak Yankovich, and Skip Fontaine. In 1973, American Century launched a sublabel called **Alibi Records**.

## History

### Establishment

During the 1960s, American Century earned a reputation as a highly successful American recording label, specializing in rock and pop hit-making recordings by several musicians, bands, and singers including Black Oak Arkansas, Dusty Springfield, Grand Funk Railroad, Jethro Tull, José Feliciano, Johnny Winter, The Lemon Pipers, Lobo, Robert Goulet, and Status Quo. In the early 1970s, the label expanded into a variety of genres such as reggae, funk, heavy metal, disco, and punk with releases by artists such as Hannibal, Indigo, Johnny Nash, Nasty Bits, Slade, and Thin Lizzy.

### American Century

Despite the supposed commercial success of their artists, a lot of the records made by American Century's patchwork roster of artists were flops, and they have to rely on payola just to get DJs to play their catalog and they even engage in skullduggery tactics like shipping records to empty warehouses or outright disposing of them in order to inflate sales data. American Century's reputation became so bad that they were given the nickname "American Cemetery" by the music industry.

### Alibi Records

By 1972, American Century Records suffered financial loss due to several disastrous artists' signings, loss of popularity of many of its already established artists, and the departure of some of those artists as well. In 1973, the label had planned to sell the company to German record label, PolyGram. However, Richie Finestra canceled the deal and ultimately decided to keep the label going. Finestra's decision of canceling was widely controversial by his partners due to the fragility of the company's finances as well as his drug-induced state at the time. Finestra, however, wanted to change the image of American Century Records by having artists that he believed exemplified the spirit of rock and roll. The following year, the label had cut most of its roster to make room for new innovative acts and successfully got back on top with the success of their new talent roster, most notably from the Nasty Bits and Indigo, and the launch of their new sublabel, Alibi Records.

## Roster

* America
* The Animal
* The Belts
* Black Oak Arkansas
* Bobby Womack
* Bread
* Captain Beefheart
* Carly Simon
* Charlie Daniels
* The Chi-Lites
* Don McLean
* Donny Osmond
* Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show
* Dusty Springfield
* The Edgar Winter Group
* Edwin Hawkins Singers
* England Dan & John Ford Coley
* Focus
* Furry Lewis
* Grand Funk Railroad
* Hannibal
* Honey Cone
* Hoyt Axton
* Indigo
* The J. Geils Band
* Jethro Tull
* John Denver
* Johnny Nash
* Johnny Winter
* José Feliciano
* Lobo
* Magic Tramps
* The McCoys
* Minnesota Strips
* Mitch Beck
* Mott the Hoople
* Nasty Bits
* Ohio Players
* Pagoda
* The Penny Fliers
* Robert Goulet
* Rod Stewart
* The Lemon Pipers
* Savoy Brown
* Sister Mary Melissa
* Slade
* Status Quo
* Terry Jacks
* Thin Lizzy
* Toots and the Maytals
* Twiggy
* Veiniacs
* Wilson & Chick
* Wood Line
* Xavier

## Trivia

* American Century Records is abbreviated as ACR, which is the reverse of RCA, which is a real music label.