Little Labels -- Big Sound celebrates 10 legendary record labels, their founders and the artists they developed, people who created original and enduring music on the tide of social change. From the 1920s through the 1960s, scores of small, independent record companies nurtured distinctly American music: jazz, blues, gospel, country, rhythm and blues, and rock 'n' roll. These companies, run on shoestring budgets, were on the fringe of mainstream culture. Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, James Brown, Roy Orbison, and other musicians brought regional American styles to a world audience and won enduring fame for themselves. But often forgotten are the colorful owners of small record labels who first recorded these musicians and helped to popularize their sound before the dominant, more bureaucratic competitors knew what had happened.
Rick Kennedy and Randy McNutt bring alive the glory days of the independent labels and their colorful founders, many of whom were interviewed for this book. Sometimes these men were visionaries. Ross Russell, a record-store owner in Los Angeles in the mid-1940s, risked his last dollar to create Dial Records because he was convinced that an obscure jazz saxophonist named Charlie Parker was creating a music revolution with his bebop jazz. Sam Phillips in Memphis had recorded white country and black R&amp;B singers in the early 1950s, so he knew exactly what he was looking for when a shy, teenaged Elvis Presley walked into his storefront studio in 1954 and asked to make a record.
Other owners had little appreciation for the music but were street-smart entrepreneurs. The white-owned ""race"" labels of the 1920s, for example, recognized a black consumer market thatthe recording business had previously ignored. Operating out of such cities as Houston, Memphis, Cincinnati, and New Orleans, these savvy business people promoted regional sounds that were to reverberate around the world.
But influencing the development of music wasn't what these record-label owners had in mind; they were just trying to earn a living. Today, when most of the independent record labels have gone under or have been gobbled up by big conglomerates, the music they produced on primitive equipment remains fresh -- and bigger than life.
Little Labels -- Big Sound tells with verve and affection the story of the people and the small homegrown companies who gave America its beat.

Little Labels--Big Sound: Small Record Companies and the Rise of American Music

Business & Money

McNutt, Randy

Kennedy, Rick

Economics

Indiana University Press

In the words of one early observer, "Cincinnati had more going for it than Nashville back in the days before Nashville's studio system developed." From 1940 to 1970, Cincinnati overflowed with music and opportunities for musicians, drawing many of the leading stars from the early days of country, soul, and rock and roll.

The Cincinnati Sound (Postcards of America: Ohio)

History

Americas

Arcadia Publishing

Founded as Fort Hamilton in 1791, the City of Hamilton was settled by pioneers and immigrants and was forged in steel by her talented workers and craftsmen. Factory owners became wealthy and built magnificent homes along Dayton Street. Hamilton prospered and became known as the "Greatest Little Industrial City of Its Kind in the World," home to Mosler Safe Co., Ford Motor Co., Beckett Papers, and many others. Following World War II, some factories closed their doors or moved away, but Hamilton persevered and became a city powered by small business and the arts. Through vintage images, this book showcases Hamilton’s success, its survival of the Flood of 1913, its blue-collar job loss, and now, its rise as the "City of Sculpture," attracting sculptors from across the world.

Hamilton (OH) (Images of America)

Arts & Photography

Bauer, Cheryl

Photography & Video

Settlement in Butler County began when Fort Hamilton was built on the Great Miami River in 1791. For the next century, water shaped the county's fortunes. Settlers built towns, commerce moved on the river, and mills and factories grew up along the Miami and Erie Canal and its hydraulic canals in Hamilton and Middletown. The devastating 1913 flood tested residents' resolve and reshaped parts of the landscape. Despite losses caused by the flood, the county's important landmarks remained. The vintage postcards presented here illustrate Butler County life from the days of the fort through the 1950s. A special chapter honors Miami University, which was chartered in 1809. Miami has become a beacon of learning set among the fields and the alma mater of thousands.

Butler County (OH) (Postcard History Series)

Starting with a few songs and a dream in 1943, King Records―a leading American independent―launched musical careers from a shabby brick factory on Brewster Avenue in Cincinnati’s Evanston neighborhood. Founder Sydney Nathan recorded country singers Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Wayne Raney, and others and later added black acts such as James Brown and the Famous Flames, Bull Moose Jackson, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Lonnie Johnson, and Freddy King. Meanwhile, King also explored polka, jazz, bluegrass, comedy, gospel, pop, and instrumental music―anything that Nathan could sell. Although King’s Cincinnati factory closed in 1971, the company’s diverse catalog of roots music had already become a phenomenon. Its legacy lives on in hundreds of classic recordings that are prized by collectors and musicians.

King Records of Cincinnati (Images of America)

Humor & Entertainment

Cal Stewart, your Uncle Josh

Weathervane Books

Talking Machine Madness: The Story of America's Early Phonograph Shows

H H P Books

"We Wanna Boogie" is the story of America's early rockers. The book includes more than 200 photos and illustrations of the pioneers of rockabilly music, plus interviews with those famous and obscure performers of the 1950s and early 1960s.

We Wanna Boogie: An Illustrated History of the American Rockabilly Movement

Music

Throughout the 20th century, American recording studios turned out some of the world's greatest hits. Now Randy McNutt, an award-winning journalist and record producer, lists more than 500 of them while recalling their unusual stories. "Too Hot" is the first book to list many of America's smaller but successful regional studios as well as the larger national ones. As Marc Bristol, editor-publisher of Blue Suede News, says of the book: "The stories of the places where the records were made are just as interesting as those of the bands and artists." For the author, heaven is finding another old two-track studio and a veteran recording engineer who's willing to talk about its heyday. McNutt interviews dozens of recording engineers, studio owners, label executives, musicians, singers, songwriters, music publishers, and other talented people who personally provided much of the information about their historic studios. In this indispensable reference work aimed at music fans, historians, and recording enthusiasts, McNutt interviews studio owners from Maine to California to learn about their rooms, hits, innovative recording techniques, and, of course, their challenges. (The story about crickets living in the old echo chamber of Cinderella Sound is worth the price of the book.) McNutt also details the types of recording equipment, studio addresses, kinds of echo chambers, studio quirks, and whatever other important information he can find. A strength of the book is its large listing of studios from the 1950s to the 1970s, including the hit factories ABC Recording (later Lion Share) in Los Angeles, American Recording in Memphis, Amigo in L.A., Electric Lady in New York, Motown in Detroit, Sun in Memphis, and other seminal recording sites. But readers particularly enjoy reading about the many smaller, unsung studios, including the Music Factory in Miami, Jewel and King in Cincinnati, Accurate Sound in San Angelo, Tx., Royal in Memphis, Sambo Sound in Louisville, Ruby in Hamilton, Ohio, Norman Petty Studios in Clovis, N.M., Original Sound in L.A., Norfolk Sound, Norala Sound in Sheffield, Ala., Kin-Tel in Atlanta, Cliff Herring Sound in Fort Worth, Counterpart in Cincinnati, Cinderella in Madison, Tn., Jim Beck Studio in Dallas, Beautiful Sounds in Memphis, J.D. Miller Recording in Crowley, La., Sea-Saint in New Orleans, Suma in Painesville, Ohio, Link Wray's Shack Three-Track in Maryland, Fred Foster Sound in Nashville, Associated Recording in New York, Studio By The Pond in Hendersonville, Tenn., and others in out-of-the-way places that have cut their grooves into recording history. McNutt talks to more than 150 people involved with historic studios, including: recording engineer Lee Hazen ("Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye,") singers such as Billy Joe Royal, Roy Head, Malcomb Yelvington, Ray Scott, and Dickey Lee; King Records engineer Chuck Seitz, legendary New Orleans engineer Cosimo Matassa, Cleveland DJ Bill Randall, Ace Record chief John Vincent, engineer-musician Jimmy Johnson of Muscle Shoals; the engineers Bill Halverson (L.A.), Ken Hamann (Cleveland Recording), Robin "Hood" Brians (Tyler, Tx.), mastering engineer Larry Boden, Ron Newdoll (engineer of "Last Kiss" at Accurate Sound), and Phil Kaye (ABC). This thorough and detailed book consists of 224 pages, 8.5-x-11 inches, softbound, with a tough cover and about 20 pages of photos, ads, and llustrations relating to the original studios. Made in the United States by Thomson-Shore, one of America's finest book printers, "Too Hot to Handle" is built to last and will remain a collector's item for anyone who cares about America's recording history.

Too Hot to Handle: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Recording Studios of the 20th Century

The Hamiton Hobby Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McNutt, Randy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by McNutt, Randy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McNutt, Randy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Little Labels--Big Sound: Small Record Companies and the Rise of American Music

The Cincinnati Sound (Postcards of America: Ohio)

Hamilton (OH) (Images of America)

Butler County (OH) (Postcard History Series)

King Records of Cincinnati (Images of America)

Cal Stewart, your Uncle Josh

Cal Stewart, your Uncle Josh

Talking Machine Madness: The Story of America's Early Phonograph Shows

We Wanna Boogie: An Illustrated History of the American Rockabilly Movement

Too Hot to Handle: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Recording Studios of the 20th Century