Parent company Shanachie Official website Yazoo at Shanachie Founder Nick Perls | Country of origin U.S. Parent organization Shanachie Records Location Newton, New Jersey | |
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Genre Blues, country, folk, gospel, jazz Albums Primeval Blues, Rags, and Gospel Songs | ||
Yazoo Records was an American record label founded in the late 1960s by Nick Perls. It specialized in early American blues, country, jazz, and other rural American genres collectively known as roots music.
History
The first five releases (L 1001 to L 1005) were issued under the label name of Belzona Records. The label was then renamed Yazoo Records, and the first five releases were reissued under the new name.
The Belzona and Yazoo labels featured an Art Deco drawing of a peacock, adapted from the 1927 label of Black Patti Records.
For Yazoo Records Perls compiled rare 78-rpm recordings made in the 1920s by musicians such as Charley Patton, Blind Willie McTell, the Memphis Jug Band, Blind Blake, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Perls founded a second label, Blue Goose Records, in 1970, for which he recorded "rediscovered" black blues artists and younger blues and jazz performers.
In 1989 Yazoo was acquired by Shanachie Records. In 2014, Yazoo signed its first current artists, The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band and released their album So Delicious on February 17, 2015.