Bob Shad
Robert " Bob" Shad ( born February 12, 1920 in New York City as Abraham Shadrinky, † March 13, 1985 in Los Angeles ) was an American record producer and record label owner in the field of jazz, blues and pop music. He produced the first album of the band Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin. To his most successful ventures include Time Records, Brent Records, and Mainstream Records.
Life and work
Shad started his career as owner of a record store in Rockaway Avenue in Brooklyn; as a music producer, he worked in the 1940s at Savoy Records and National Records, where he worked among others with recordings of Charlie Parker and blues and rhythm and blues artists such as Dusty Fletcher. The first of his own company he founded in 1948 with his brother Morty in New York; on Sittin ' In With, the first published plates, inter alia, Chu Berry, Charlie Ventura, Stan Getz, Wardell Gray and Beryl Booker. Since he only managed to sell around 7,000 to 8,000 copies of the jazz recordings, he shifted the focus of the label on Blues and earned a Magnecord, one of the first portable tape recorders and operated 1950/51 of Houston, Texas from. Subsequently published inter alia recordings of Lightnin ' Hopkins, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Smokey Hogg, Peppermint Harris ( Raining in My Heart, 1950), Big Chief Ellis and Curley Weaver.
In 1951, he became A & R at Mercury Records, where in 1954 the sub-label created EmArcy Records, in which recordings of modern jazz, inter alia, by Cannonball Adderley, Quincy Jones, Maynard Ferguson, Helen Merrill, Erroll Garner, Sarah Vaughan (In the land of HiFi 1955), published the Clifford Brown / Max Roach Quintet ( Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street 1956), Billy Eckstine and Dinah Washington ( Sings Fats Waller 1957). In the area of Pop he worked with Patti Page, Vic Damone, with Vokalemsembles as The Platters, The Diamonds, The Ravens and The Crewcuts and with blues musicians Lightin ' Hopkins and Big Bill Broonzy.
In the late 1950s Shad founded the label Time Records, on which he next Jazz ( Kenny Dorham, Terry Gibbs, Sonny Clark) and big band productions (such as Billy May, Hugo Montenegro and Gordon Jenkins ) and cocktail - pop and avant-garde Music by Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Charles Ives, Luigi Nono and Karlheinz Stockhausen published. This was produced from 1960 to 1963 by the composer Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series in the series for the Time label.
Shad, the first recording Lou Reed produced on time (as a member of the doo-wop group The Jades ) ( So Blue / Leave Her ), had also hit with the rock and roll band The Bell Notes, and on his further label shad with The Knockouts. He also founded the label Brent, primarily for West Coast musicians, with whom he had hits with the bands Skip & Flip, The chevrons and Bertha Tillman. In 1966 he finished the activities of Time Records.
In 1964 Shad founded in Detroit Mainstream Records, on which he older material from his previous companies and other label ( Commodore Jazz Classics - Original Recordings Series) published and produced new recordings, including Shelly Manne ( Mannekind, 1972), Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Haynes, Clark Terry / Bob Brookmeyer, Harold Land, Morgana King, Carmen McRae and Sarah Vaughan and an album with the Orchestra Michel Legrand. During this time he continued his collaboration with blues musicians such as Lightnin ' Hopkins, Sonny Terry Arbee Stidham or. In the field of rock music he produced the debut albums by Janis Joplin and Ted Nugent ( Amboy Dukes The ). Shad himself laid on his label in 1973, the radio album Bobby Shad and The Bad Men - A 65 -Piece Skirt workshop before, for which he had an all- star ensemble of musicians like Jimmy Buffington, Bernie Glow, Arnie Lawrence, Bernie Leighton Joe Newman, Specs Powell, Grady Tate and Snooky Young gathered.
After Bob Shad's death in 1982, his daughter Tamara Shad reactivated the mainstream label and re-released a number of jazz and blues recordings on CD. 1993 Sony acquired a large part of the mainstream catalog.
The critic Leonard Feather praised Bob Shad as an " extraordinary man" who was " ahead of its time " and he turned into a series with producers like John Hammond, Alfred Lion, Lester Koenig and Norman Granz.
Disco Graphic Note and Label Overview
The recordings of the various label shad appeared on compilations such as Rockin ' on Broadway: The Time / Brent / Shad Story ( Ace Records ) or Wop Ding A Ling ( Ace ), with with doo-wop recordings of the late 1950s and early 1960s the vocal groups the chevrons, The Trade Winds (also known as the Rob Roys ), The genius and the Wheels.