Label Watch
April 2000 By Josef Woodard
Label Watch: Tinder Records
World music, if not exactly a boom of great commercial proportions, has been steadily gaining in popularity during the ’90s, a situation which has fueled the formation of a host of new world-oriented labels. One of the notable new companies serving the scene...
March 2000 By Bill Milkowski
Label Watch: OmniTone Records
During his four-year tenure with Sphere Marketing, the distribution and promotional branch in North America for the Milan-based Black Saint and Soul Note labels, Frank Tafuri championed the cause of “creative music.” As the Stateside publicist for that adventurous...
January/February 2000 By Josef Woodard
Label Watch: Half Note
Visiting Martians, and/or other beings just becoming aware of the jazz world, might well become confused over the identities surrounding the phrase “blue note.” In one corner, we have the esteemed and venerable Blue Note Records. In another corner, there...
January/February 2000 By David Zych
Label Watch: Nagel-Heyer Records
Like many other enterprises that just sort of come into being, Nagel-Heyer Records, of Hamburg, Germany, was never planned. The label’s gestation actually came about as a serendipitous byproduct of a commercial jazz radio station that had trouble making...
November 1999 By Josef Woodard
Label Watch: Windham Hill
In the beginning, back in the early ’80s, when MP3 and Kenny G weren’t gleams in anybody’s eyes, there was a little label that could. The unlikely recipe for success: a carpenter-cum-indie label founder named Will Ackerman who excelled at noodling on acoustic...
November 1999 By David Zych
Label Watch: Consolidated Artists
Even though pianist Mike Longo had connections with three major labels during the late 1970s, he was getting frustrated with the dictates of their managers: “They tried to rock and roll me to death,” he said. “All they kept asking for was jazz rock.” Longo’s...
September 1999 By Marcela Breton
Label Watch: Cubop
When I spoke to Michael McFadin who, with his wife, Jody, is founder of the Ubiquity, Luv ‘n Haight, and Cubop labels, he had just finished a recording session with Pucho and his Latin Soul Brothers for Cubop. This marked the first time that Pucho, who spends...
September 1999 By David Zych
Label Watch: Dreambox
It was back in the early 1980s when drummer Jim Miller decided that he’d reached the end of his rope with record companies. Playing with a jazz-fusion group in Philadelphia known as Reverie, Miller found his band out in the cold after a record label decided...
July/August 1999 By Bill Milkowski
Label Watch: Siam Records
After a long association with GRP Records, music industry veterans Mike Landy and Frank Hendricks felt a need to become involved with music that they felt more passionate about. This desire to branch out led to the formation of Siam Records. A small independent...
July/August 1999 By Nancy Ann Lee
Label Watch: J Curve Records
When Dale Rabiner talks about how he started his independent, Cincinnati-based J Curve Records label, it's a lengthy tale involving a series of events, meeting the right people, and a role model. The J Curve yarn begins in Rabiner's pre-teens when he started...
