Country of origin U.S. Official website www.savoyjazz.com | Date founded 1942 | |
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Artists Albums | ||
Savoy Records is an American record company and label established by Herman Lubinsky in 1942 in Newark, New Jersey. Savoy specialized in jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel music.
Contents
Back biter by t j fowler 1951 on savoy records 78 rpm
History
In the 1940s Savoy recorded some of the biggest names in jazz: Miles Davis, Erroll Garner, Dexter Gordon, J. J. Johnson, Fats Navarro, and Charlie Parker. In 1948, it began buying other labels: Bop, Discovery, National, and Regent. It also reissued music from Jewel Records.
In the early 1960s, Savoy recorded a number of avant-garde jazz artists, giving them important early exposure. They included Paul Bley, Ed Curran, Bill Dixon, Mark Levin, Charles Moffett, Perry Robinson, Joseph Scianni, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Marzette Watts, and Valdo Williams.
After Lubinsky's death in 1974, Clive Davis, then manager of Arista Records, acquired Savoy's catalogue. After that, Joe Fields of Muse Records purchased the catelogue from Arista. In 1986 Malaco Records acquired Savoy's black gospel titles and contracts. In 2003, Savoy Jazz acquired the rights to the Muse and Landmark catalogues from 32 Jazz. As of 2012, the Savoy library is primarily controlled by Nippon Columbia, a public company based in Tokyo, which purchased Savoy in 1991. Nippon Columbia's wholly owned subsidiary, Savoy Jazz, handled Savoy Records distribution in the United States until 2009, when it entered a distribution arrangement with Warner Music Group.
Many of the label's African-American artists begrudged the label's founder, Herman Lubinsky, feeling underpaid for their work. Tiny Price, a journalist for the African-American newspaper The Newark Herald News, said of Savoy and Lubinsky:
There's no doubt everybody hated Herman Lubinsky. If he messed with you, you were messed. At the same time, some of those people, many of them Newark's top singers and musicians, would never have been exposed to records if he didn't do what he did. Except for Lubinsky, all the hot little numbers, like Buddy Johnson's "Cherry", would have been lost. The man may have been hated, but he saved a lot of our history for us and for future generations.
Savoy's artistic directors included Buck Ram, Teddy Reig, Ralph Bass (1948–1952), Fred Mendelsohn (1953), and Ozzie Cadena (1954–1962, the father of the punk rock musician Dez Cadena).
Discography
The following are 12" LPs and have the prefix MG.