Verve Records

The Verve Music Group, and Verve Records is an American music company and record label that had originally specialized in jazz productions.

History

Verve Records, named after the term for a loose exhilarating life ( Verve - this term has in German, English and French about the same meaning), was founded in 1956 by Norman Granz and was a merger of Granz ' previous labels Down Home, Norgran Records (founded in 1953) and his eldest Clef Records label, which he founded in 1946. On Clef had appeared the ( organized by Granz ) Jazz At The Philharmonic concert recordings. How High The Moon by Ella Fitzgerald was the first live album, which appeared on the market. The contract with Ella Fitzgerald laid the foundation for Verve Records; the first small label gained international fame with the increasing artistic success Fitzgeralds.

The first production of Verve Records became a bestseller and is considered a classic of American jazz: " Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook". More recordings by Fitzgerald later secured the success of the new label. Worn by Verve Ella 1958 awarded for their Duke Ellington and Irving Berlin interpretations as the first jazz singer with the Grammy Award. A total of seven recordings of jazz singer paved the way for the Verve label.

In the early 1960s began Verve, always in competition with the label Blue Note Records, significantly drill its range; the label began folk, poetry and Cabarettplatten to produce and jumped up on the moving train of rock ' n ' roll. Granz sold Verve his company in 1961 for about 3 million U.S. dollars to the media company MGM and moved initially to fulfill the contract, completely out of the disc business back. Under the new direction of Creed Taylor stars as Stan Getz got signed. Taylor knew how to excellent jazz productions. However, he left the label in 1967, but founded back was a strange style " sublabel ", the Verve Folkways was called (later renamed Verve Forecast ) with folk music in the repertoire. At Taylor's most successful productions include Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass. The late 60s and record productions of musical groups such as The Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention incurred in Verve; these were then received as extremely experimental.

In 1972, the label was acquired by PolyGram Group; initially found no production activities rather than more. After the advent of the CD of the 80 tied with Verve back catalog recordings of many of his early jazz title back to the old success story. Later, the record label took successfully - in addition to remastered tracks from the old catalog - current trends.

Since 1997 the label publishes an annual compilation under the title " Verve Today YYYY" ( YYYY is the wild card of the respective year value ), on the Verve Music Group presents a selection from the current program. These samplers have now reached their own status, but they reflect the one hand, the current musical development of the label resist, on the other hand they gather usually highlights of the works presented.

1998 Verve Music label with Seagram's Universal Music Group was pooled and now belongs to a number of other production companies such as Universal Music, Impulse! , GRP, EmArcy, Decca, MPS and several other labels under the umbrella of Universal.

Meanwhile, the Verve Music Group has been able to position itself as a jazz label in the market again. Besides well-known stars of today's jazz scene, the label is also characterized by the care of veterans (for example, in July 2010, a new album by Jerry Lee Lewis published).

In addition, Verve is constantly faced with artists whose music is more likely to belong to pop or world music. While this diversity has met with some jazz purists to criticism, but often allows contracted artists breaking new ground in creative collaboration.

Jazz Collections

At Mosaic Records following collections since 1983, emerged from the Verve catalog:

Produced instrumentalists, soloists and groups (selection)

  • TalkTalk
  • The Mothers of Invention
  • The Righteous Brothers
  • The Velvet Underground
Decca Records Mosaic (disambiguation) Buddy DeFranco Teddy Wilson Stuff Smith Johnny Hodges Charlie Parker Jimmy Smith (musician) Joe Williams (jazz singer)
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