The Incredible Jazz Guitar Of Wes Montgomery, a 1960 Riverside release.

Riverside Records, a United States record label specializing in jazz, was the raison d'etre for Bill Grauer Productions, a company founded by Bill Grauer and Orrin Keepnews in 1953 in New York City. The label's name was inspired by the Manhattan telephone exchange of The Record Changer, a magazine owned by Grauer and edited by Keepnews. The label was to be a major presence in the jazz record industry for a decade. Image File history File links Incredible_jazz_guitar_of_WM.jpg File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... A record label is a brand created by companies that specialize in manufacturing, distributing and promoting audio and video recordings, on various formats including compact discs, LPs, DVD-Audio, SACDs, and cassettes. ... Jazz master Louis Armstrong remains one of the most loved and best known of all jazz musicians. ... 1953 (MCMLIII) is a common year starting on Thursday. ... The city is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture, and is one of the worlds major global cities (along with London, Tokyo and Paris) with a virtually unrivaled collection of museums, galleries, performance venues, media outlets, international corporations, and stock exchanges. ... Manhattan Borough,highlighted in yellow, lies between the East River and the Hudson River. ... In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange (US: telephone switch) is a piece of equipment that connects phone calls. ...

History

Initially the company was dedicated to reissuing early jazz material that had fallen into the public domain or was licensed from the Chicago-based Paramount label. Reissued artists included Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver Ma Rainey and James P. Johnson, but the label began issuing its own contemporary jazz recordings in April 1954, starting with pianist Randy Weston. In 1955 the Prestige Records contract of Thelonious Monk was bought out for $108.24, and—at the suggestion of Randy Weston—Monk was signed by Riverside, where he remained for the next five years. In the next few years, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Johnny Griffin and Wes Montgomery made substantial contributions to Riverside's catalog, establishing it as a major jazz label. Simultaneously, Chris Albertson supervised Riverside's "Living Legends" series of location recordings in New Orleans and Chicago, sustaining the label's connection with the pioneers of the music. The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941) is third from left Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton (October 20, 1890 - July 10, 1941) was a virtuoso pianist, a bandleader, and a composer who some call the first true composer of Jazz music. ... Joe King Oliver, (December 19, 1885 - April 8, 1938) was a bandleader and jazz musician. ... Gertrude Pridgett Rainey, better known as Ma Rainey (April 26, 1886 - December 22, 1939) was a blues singer, the earliest known professional blues singer3, and one of the first generation of blues singers to record. ... James Price Johnson (February 1, 1894 - November 17, 1955) was a pianist and composer. ... April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days. ... 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Randy Weston After contributing five decades of musical direction and genius, Randy Weston remains one of the worlds foremost pianists and composers today, a true innovator and visionary. ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Prestige Records was a record label founded by Bob Weinstock in 1949, initially as New Jazz. ... Thelonius Monk, as featured on the cover of his 1956 album, Brilliant Corners Thelonious Sphere Monk (October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was a jazz pianist and composer. ... Julian Edwin Cannonball Adderley (September 15, 1928 - August 8, 1975), originally from Tampa, Florida was a jazz saxophonist of the small combo era of the 1950s and 1960s. ... Bill Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was one of the most famous jazz pianists of the 20th century, and along with McCoy Tyner and Oscar Peterson was the force behind the biggest shift in the jazz paradigm since Art Tatum and Bud Powell. ... John Arnold Griffin III (born in 1928) is an American bop and hard bop tenor saxophonist. ... John Leslie Wes Montgomery was an African-American jazz guitarist. ... Chris Albertson (born Christiern Gunnar Albertson in Reykjavík, Iceland on October 18, 1931) is a New York City-based jazz journalist, writer and record producer. ... New Orleans is the largest city in the state of Louisiana, United States of America. ... Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ...

Grauer died, following a sudden heart attack, in December of 1963,and the company went bankrupt the following year. By that time, its catalogue (which included a subsidiary label, Jazzland) had become impressive, both in terms of artist and performances. Virtually all of Riverside's masters were eventually acquired by Fantasy Records late in 1972. Virtually all Riverside albums have been reissued on CD as part of Fantasy's "Original Jazz Classics" series. Fantasy itself was purchased in 2005 by Concord Records; at present all of the "OJC" reissues remain available. Bankruptcy is a legally declared inability or impairment of ability of an individual or organization to pay their creditors. ...

Quotes

• “We were fans who became record companies. If you had your own company and said you were a producer, who was going to say you weren’t?” - Orrin Keepnews

See also

• Fantasy Records - Parent company that purchased Riverside in 1972.
• Milestone Records - Another label started by Orrin Keepnews.

Fantasy Records is a United States based record label, which was founded by Max and Sol Weiss in 1949 in San Francisco, California. ... Milestone Records is a United States based jazz record label, founded in 1966 by Orrin Keepnews and Dick Katz in New York City. ...

External links

• Riverside Records Discography Project Page
• Riverside Records History at Fantasy Jazz

Sources

• "A Life In Jazz" feature on Orrin Keepnews by Columbia College Today.