Vanguard Records
| Vanguard Records | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Parent company | Concord Bicycle Music |
| Founded | 1950 |
| Founder |
Maynard Solomon Seymour Solomon |
| Distributor(s) | Caroline Distribution |
| Genre | Folk music, jazz, classical |
| Country of origin | U.S. |
| Official website | vanguardrecords |
Vanguard Records is an American record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York City. It started as a classical label, but is perhaps best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal jazz, folk, and blues musicians. The Bach Guild was a subsidiary label.
The label was acquired by Concord Bicycle Music in April 2015.
In 1953, under the direction of John Hammond, the company began the Jazz Showcase series that concentrated on mainstream jazz, producing about two dozen recordings before it was closed in 1958. Recordings made at the Spirituals to Swing concerts in 1938 and 1939 were released by Vanguard in 1959. The company only intermittently pursued recording jazz after that.
In the mid-1950s Vanguard signed blacklisted performers Paul Robeson and the Weavers. It continued to issue folk music with newly signed artists Joan Baez, Hedy West, the Rooftop Singers, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Country Joe and the Fish, Ian and Sylvia, and Mimi and Richard Fariña.
In the summer of 1965 Maynard Solomon hired Samuel Charters to edit the tapes of the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. Following that project, the company sent Charters to Chicago to capture the broad range of blues musicians there. Those sessions resulted in the 1966 three-album series titled Chicago/The Blues/Today!. The albums included Junior Wells with Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters's bandmates Otis Spann and James Cotton, Otis Rush, Homesick James, Johnny Shines, Big Walter Horton, and Charlie Musselwhite.
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