Prestige Records

Template:Infobox record label Prestige Records is a jazz record company and label founded in 1949 by Bob Weinstock in New York City which issued recordings in the mainstream, bop, and cool jazz idioms.<ref name="New Grove">Template:Cite book</ref> The company recorded hundreds of albums by many of the leading jazz musicians of the day, sometimes issuing them on subsidiary labels. The company's began releasing jazz records in 78 and 45 RPM formats in 1950. The Prestige label includes the 13000 and 25000 cat# series. Prestige International was a sub-label of Prestige, active from 1960 to 1969, that mostly released folk music. In 1971, the company was sold to Fantasy, which was later absorbed by Concord.

History

The Prestige office was located at 446 West 50th Street, New York City.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Its catalogue included Gene Ammons, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Wardell Gray, Thelonious Monk, and Sonny Rollins.<ref name="New Grove" />

Audio engineer Rudy Van Gelder was the recording engineer of many Prestige albums in the 1950s and early-to-mid-1960s. Prestige created new labels in 1960: Swingville, Moodsville, covering jazz, Bluesville featuring blues revival artists, Lively Arts featuring spoken word recordings and Prestige International, Prestige Folklore, Irish and Near East with folk and world music.<ref name="New Grove" />

By the later 1950s, Weinstock ceased supervising recording sessions directly, employing Chris Albertson, Ozzie Cadena, Esmond Edwards, Don Schlitten, and producer/music supervisor Bob Porter, among others, to fulfill this function.<ref name="New Grove" /> Musicians recording for the label in the 1960s included Jaki Byard and Booker Ervin, while Prestige remained commercially viable by recording a number of soul jazz artists like Charles Earland. In 1966 the company's headquarters were located at 203 South Washington Avenue in Bergenfield, New Jersey.<ref>Original 1965 liner notes to Blue Seven by Shirley Scott, Prestige PRLP 7376</ref>

The company was sold<ref name=label>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> to Fantasy Records in 1971, and original releases on the label formed a significant proportion of its Original Jazz Classics line. Fantasy was purchased by Concord Records in 2005.<ref name=label/>

In 2017, Concord Music Group revived the Prestige label. The first album released under the label's reactivation was A Social Call from Texas native Jazzmeia Horn.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Discography

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External links

• Template:Official website – official site
• Template:Discogs label
• Template:Discogs label
• Prestige discography at JazzDisco
• Prestige Records on the Internet Archive's Great 78 Project