Starday Records

Starday Records was a record label producing traditional country music during the 1950s and 1960s.

The label began in 1952 in Beaumont, Texas, when local businessmen Jack Starnes (Lefty Frizzell's manager) and Houston record distributor Harold W. Daily (better known as "Pappy") decided to form a record label. The Starday name is a combination of Starnes' and Daily's last names. After four releases, former Four Star vice president Don Pierce was brought into the fold and the three men founded the Starday Recording and Publishing Company.

Soon after, Starnes sold his shares out to Pierce. In the mid-1950s, Art Talmadge of Mercury Records made Starday a unique proposition, whereby Mercury contracted out all production of Country and Bluegrass music to Starday Records. This move proved not to be the success Mercury had hoped it would be, and this resulted in an acrimonious split between Daily and Pierce. Daily joined Mercury records as an A&R man/Talent Scout, while Pierce took over Starday altogether and moved operations to Madison, Tennessee, a bedroom community of Nashville.

Pierce began to study in earnest the buying habits of the fans of Country & Western music. He soon found that most people who bought Country records were Adults who preferred the Long-Play album format over single records. With this knowledge Starday began cranking out LPs in earnest, with Singles basically being an aside to their LP line.

In addition to creating the largest bluegrass catalogue throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, Starday was also known for its legendary rockabilly catalogue, an extensive Texas honky-tonk outpouring, classic gospel and sacred recordings and as a Nashville independent powerhouse studio and record label. Starday was the largest exclusively country label of the period and is renowned among record collectors for producing a level of pure, undiluted country music that was becoming increasingly rare on the major labels. Starday released the first recordings of George Jones and country stars like the, Willie Nelson, Dottie West, the Big Bopper, and Roger Miller. Comedian Minnie Pearl released a number of records for the label. Several veteran country stars were also on Starday, including Cowboy Copas, Helen Carter, Johnny Bond, Harry Choates, Link Davis and T. Texas Tyler. The label also featured several legendary country radio-based acts in the twilight of their careers, such as the Blue Sky Boys, Lulu Belle and Scotty, Texas Ruby, and Moon Mullican, performers not likely of much interest to the big labels in the 1960s. The label may be best known for the dozens of budget-priced compilation albums it released featuring artists on or at one time on the label.

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