Syd Nathan

Sydney "Syd" Nathan (27 April 1904 – 5 March 1968) was an American music business executive, who founded King Records, a leading independent record label, in 1943.

He contributed to the development of country & western music, rhythm and blues and rock and roll and is credited with discovering many prominent musicians, most notably James Brown, whose first single, "Please, Please, Please", was released by Federal Records, a subsidiary of King, in 1956. Nathan was described as "One of the truly eccentric figures of the record industry ... [who] ruled his label like a dictator ... [and] constantly screamed and intimidated his artists and employees". He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in the non-performer category, in 1997.

Nathan was born to a Jewish family in Cincinnati, Ohio. He left school in the ninth grade, suffering from poor eyesight and asthma. He played as a drummer in clubs and in early adulthood worked in a series of jobs in real estate, amusement parks, and pawn and jewelry stores. In the mid-1930s, with his sister and her husband, he opened a radio and phonograph store, before moving to Florida to be with his brother and open a photofinishing business.

He moved back to Cincinnati in the early 1940s and opened a record store, Syd's Record Shop, initially selling used jukebox records. In 1943 he started King Records; after it failed initially, he refinanced it with the support of family members. The label was originally intended to produce hillbilly records, but Nathan diversified when he discovered the demands of African-American teenagers for what were then called race records. Early records were pressed in Louisville, Kentucky, but because of their poor quality Nathan set up his own record-pressing plant in 1944 on the premises at 1540 Brewster Avenue in Cincinnati, the home of King Records for the next 25 years. He also set up a recording studio at that site and made his own distribution arrangements across the Midwest rather than relying on national companies.

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