Parent company Universal Music Group Official website vervemusicgroup.com Founded 1956 | Country of origin United States. Founder Norman Granz Parent organization Universal Music Group | |
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Distributor(s) Verve Label Group
Interscope Geffen A&M Genre Various; historically Jazz music Location Santa Monica, California Headquarters Santa Monica, California, United States Artists Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington Albums Ella and Louis, Getz/Gilberto, The Velvet Underground & Nico, Cole Porter Songbook Vol 2 (Di, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Profiles | ||
Verve records
Verve Records is an American record company operating under the newly-founded Verve Label Group distributed by Interscope Geffen A&M Records. It was founded in 1956 by Norman Granz. It absorbed the catalogues of his earlier labels, Clef Records (founded in 1946) and Norgran Records (founded in 1953), and material previously licensed to Mercury Records. It has been under ownership of Universal Music Group and has recently expanded to scope newer artists.
Contents
History
Norman Granz created Verve to produce new recordings by Ella Fitzgerald, whom he managed; the first album the label released was Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book. The catalog grew throughout the 1950s and 1960s to include Charlie Parker, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Billie Holiday, Oscar Peterson, Ben Webster, and Lester Young.
By 1960, Granz near retirement. Milton Rudin, his attorney, represented Frank Sinatra and knew that Sinatra wanted his own label. Sinatra and Granz made a handshake deal, but negotiations broke down over price and Sinatra's desire that Granz remain head of the label. Granz sold Verve to MGM in 1961. Sinatra established Reprise Records and hired Mo Ostin, an executive at Verve, to run it. At Verve, Creed Taylor was made head producer. Taylor adopted a more commercial approach, canceling several contracts. He brought bossa nova to America with the release of Jazz Samba by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, Getz/Gilberto, and Rain Forest by Walter Wanderley. Verve's notable arrangers included Claus Ogerman and Oliver Nelson. According to Ogerman in Jazzletter, he arranged 60–70 albums for Verve from 1963–1947.
In 1964, Taylor supervised the creation of a folk music subsidiary named Verve Folkways, later renamed Verve Forecast. Taylor left Verve in 1967 to form CTI Records. Aside from jazz, Verve's catalogue included the Righteous Brothers, the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, and the Blues Project.
In the 1970s, Verve became part of the PolyGram, incorporating the Mercury/EmArcy jazz catalog, which Philips, part owners of PolyGram, had earlier acquired. Verve Records became the Verve Music Group after PolyGram was merged with Seagram's Universal Music Group in 1998. The jazz holdings from the merged companies were folded into this sub-group.
In the 1990s, as part of PolyGram Classics and Jazz, Verve signed Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson, Roy Hargrove, John Scofield, Shirley Horn, Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, Chris Botti, Jeff Lorber, Gino Vannelli, Art Porter, Will Downing, Incognito.
When Universal and Polygram merged in 1998, Verve's holdings were merged with Universal's GRP Recording Company to become Verve Music Group. After forays into Americana and adult contemporary music, Verve was corporately aligned with Universal Music Enterprises (UMe), and was no longer a stand-alone label within UMG.
The Verve imprint itself manages much of the jazz catalog that once belonged to PolyGram (not including recordings by Herb Alpert for his A&M Records label which Alpert acquired in a legal settlement with Universal Music and are licensed to Shout! Factory), while the Impulse! Records imprint manages the portion of Universal's catalog that was acquired from ABC Records, which itself includes the jazz catalog of the Famous Music Group, which was once owned by Paramount Pictures/Gulf+Western, but which was sold to ABC in 1974. Meanwhile, GRP manages the rest of MCA/Universal's jazz catalog, including releases once issued on the Decca and Chess labels.
The Verve Music Group has expanded its output beyond jazz to include crossover classical music, progressive pop and show tunes (by absorbing Decca Records' Broadway label and thus taking over ownership of the label's library, including EMI's, MGM Records' and MCA Records' musical theater catalogs).