Circle Records | |
---|---|
Parent company | Jazzology |
Founded | 1946 |
Founder |
Rudi Blesh Harriet Janis |
Genre | Jazz |
Country of origin | U.S. |
Location | New Orleans, Louisiana |
Official website | www |
Circle Records is a jazz record label founded in 1946 by Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis.
In New York, Blesh and Janis heard jazz drummer Warren "Baby" Dodds playing inventive solos with Bunk Johnson's band. Blesh said he hated drum solos until he saw Dodds. To record Dodds and others, they started Circle Records. The name was given by fellow audience member Marcel Duchamp, who said "Records are circles, and besides, no one can call you squares."
Circle recorded traditional jazz of the time, and its releases included Chippie Hill, George Lewis, and broadcasts of Blesh's This is Jazz radio show. The label was the first to release Jelly Roll Morton's Library of Congress recordings. Blesh and Janis continued the label until 1952.
Circle was bought in the mid-1960s by George H. Buck, Jr., who reissued some of the catalog on compact disc, now under the control of the George H. Buck Jr. Jazz Foundation. This Circle Records is not to be confused with the German record label of the same name.
Cat Anderson, Ray Anthony, Charlie Barnet, Count Basie, Les Brown, Frankie Carle, Bill Challis, Bob Crosby, Xavier Cugat, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Ziggy Elman, Vince Giordano, Benny Goodman, Glen Gray, Sonny Greer, Jimmy Hamilton, Woody Herman, Dean Hudson, Harry James, Henry Jerome, Jonah Jones, Louis Jordan, Sammy Kaye, Hal Kemp, John Kirby, Gene Krupa, Don Lamond, Jimmie Lunceford, Clyde McCoy, Jimmy McPartland, Glenn Miller, Russ Morgan, Ray Nance, Don Neely, Ray Noble, Red Norvo, Tony Pastor, Teddy Powell, Boyd Raeburn, Betty Roche, Charlie Spivak, Rex Stewart, Maxine Sullivan, Claude Thornhill, Chick Webb, Bob Wilber, Clarence Williams