Herb Abramson

Jubilee was founded in May 1946 in New York City by Herb Abramson, who later went on to found Atlantic Records with Ahmet Ertegun. Abramson sold the label to Jerry Blaine in September 1947. 

Jubilee was one of the first record companies to tap into the white record buying public with a black vocal group. In 1953 they recorded a country song, "Crying in the Chapel," by the Orioles. The record became a popular music top 20 hit. They were able to follow up in 1954 with "Marie" and "I Understand (Just How You Feel)" by the Four Tunes. 

A subsidiary label called Josie was formed in 1954, which issued more up-tempo material. The label had major hits with "Speedoo" by the Cadillacs in 1956 and "Do You Wanna Dance?" by Bobby Freeman in 1958. 

Both Josie and Jubilee had occasional hits in various styles in the '50s and '60s, but the company's main focus, at least in albums, seemed to be in specialty markets outside mainstream popular music. They issued an extensive line of "party" records, that is, comedy records of a risque nature. A staple of the label was Kermit Schafer's "Blooper" records, recordings of mistakes made on radio and television. Jubilee also distributed a label called Gross, whose sole artists were Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, a group that was a favorite at college frat house parties and said to be the inspiration for the Otis Day and the Knights group in the movie Animal House. At the time, the Hot Nuts' material was off-color enough that Jubilee's name appeared nowhere on the Gross albums. 

Of interest to rock and roll collectors are the fine albums by the Cadillacs (1045, 1089 and 5009), the Four Tunes' 12x4 (LP-1039), Bobby Freeman's three albums (1086, 5010 and Josie 4007), The Cadillacs Meet the Orioles (LP-1117), The Dubs Meet the Shells(Josie 4001), The Paragons Meet the Jesters (LP-1098) and The Delta Rhythm Boys in Sweden (LP-1022). There are also many very good compilation albums on both labels; the most collectable one is The Best of Rhythm and Blues (Jubilee LP-1014) which was pressed on red vinyl. The albums titled Rumble (LP-1114), Boppin! (LP-1118), and Whoppers! (LP-1119) are also desirable. 

Songwriters Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich recorded as the Raindrops on Jubilee and issued one album, LP-5023. J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers had the maudlin hit "Last Kiss" on Josie and an album by the same name, Josie 4006. After leaving Motown, Mary Wells made one album on Jubilee (8018) but she had little success with the label. A very good New Orleans group, the Meters, made three albums on Josie (4010, 4011 and 4012). Near the end of the label, Jubilee issued the first album by Emmy Lou Harris calledGliding Bird (8031). 

The original labels were pink with black lettering, followed with a blue label with silver printing. Neither the pink nor the blue labels mentioned "Jay-Gee Records." Some time in 1959, between album numbers 1103 and 1107, the following changes occurred: the label changed to the flat black label with silver print; the numbering prefixes changed from the JLP/SDJLP- to the JGM/JGS- prefixes; a notation began appearing on the back cover that Jubilee was "A Product of Jay-Gee Recording Co., Inc., A Division of the Cosnat Corp."; and the Jubilee logo changed from "jubilee/LP HI FI" in an oval to "jubilee/JG HI FI" in an oval. This new logo, used on the album covers, continued until the label's demise. Albums reissued after the changeover in 1959 were renumbered with the new prefixes and reissued with updated labels, and although the front album cover art was not usually changed, the back cover had a notation about "Jay-Gee Records" on the bottom. 

Jubilee and Josie went out of business around 1970. The master tapes went to Roulette upon Jubilee/Josie's demise. When Morris Levy sold Roulette to Rhino in the late 1980s, the Jubilee/Josie masters became the property of Rhino. Reissue producer Bob Hyde made extensive forays into the Jubilee/Josie masters starting in the 1980s; many of the tapes had not been touched since they were recorded. As a result of his efforts, many of the Jubilee and Josie songs have been made available again on CD, some for the first time in true stereo.

Lew Chudd

The Imperial Label was started by Lew Chudd in 1946 in Los Angeles, California. Originally, the label concentrated on local Mexican groups and ethnic folk artists and the series of 10-inch LPs reflect this. In August, 1947, Lew Chudd started a popular record series consisting of rhythm and blues recordings. Two years later, he began tapping into the rhythm and blues artists in New Orleans, which had been largely ignored by the major record companies. His most significant discovery was Fats Domino, a 22 year old piano player who sang with a Creole accent. In 1949 he recorded a song called "The Fat Man" which became an R&B hit in early 1950. 

Fats Domino was the most important artist on Imperial and had a impressive string of hits from 1950 until 1963, when he left the label in favor of ABC-Paramount. The early Fats Domino records sold in the "Race Record" market, but with "Ain't It a Shame" in 1955, he crossed over into the mainstream popular music market, adding to his stature as one of the "founding fathers" of rock and roll. 

In addition to Fats, Chudd recorded T-Bone Walker, Smiley Lewis, Lil' Son Jackson and the Spiders. On most of the recordings made in New Orleans, the Dave Bartholomew band was used as accompaniment. Bartholomew served as the Artists & Repertoire (A&R) man for Chudd, and was the arranger for many of the sessions. Bartholomew's band was popular in the clubs of New Orleans at the time, and in addition to having two albums under his own name on the label, he recorded the original version of "My Ding-A-Ling" as a single in 1952 (Chuck Berry took essentially the same song to #1 twenty years later). 

In 1957, the young Ricky Nelson, son of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson of the popular TV show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,recorded three songs for the Verve label, essentially on a lark. His cover version of Fats Domino's "I'm Walkin'" was featured on the Nelsons' TV show and sold like hot cakes. Incredibly, Verve did not have Ricky Nelson under contract, and Lew Chudd quickly signed him to Imperial. Nelson became a "Teenage Idol" and a very consistent hit-maker for the label. Rick Nelson's singing is sometimes disparaged, but he did have a real feel and respect for rockabilly, and produced some fine examples of that genre. Many of the best songs Nelson recorded were written by Johnny and Dorsey Burnette. The Ricky Nelson album LP-9061, Ricky Sings Again, is a particularly good example of this. Nelson left the label in 1963 for Decca. 

In 1958, Imperial was one of the first labels to issue stereo albums. They used a disctinctive black stereo label for these issues intil 1964, when the label was sold. One of the decisions made in 1958, when the stereo albums were first issued, was to give them an entirely different numbering system not related to their mono counterparts, one of the only labels to take such a bewildering course. After a few years of confusion, Imperial changed the stereo numbering system (LP-12000 series) to echo the corresponding last three digits in the LP-9000 mono numbering system. We have provided a mono-stereo record number crosswalk as an aid to getting through this mess. 

In 1961, Lew Chudd bought the Aladdin Records catalog and reissued many of the Aladdin masters on Imperial (See Aladdin/Score Discography). The Imperial releases of Aladdin material have an "A" following the album number. In 1963, Chudd purchased the Minit Label of New Orleans from Joe Banashak. Imperial was the distributor of Minit from 1961, and with the acquisition of Minit, Imperial obtained the contracts of Irma Thomas and Ernie K-Doe. The discographies of Joe Banashak's Minit and Instant labels are included elsewhere under the Discography Main Page. 

In 1964, Chudd sold Imperial to Liberty Records, and the label underwent an almost overnight metamorphosis. Gone were the label's former stars like Fats Domino and Rick Nelson, who had signed with other labels. The new owners also put somewhat of a damper on the label's artists who weren't selling much, and concentrated on getting a completely new stable of hip, teen-oriented talent. They brought Irma Thomas' incredible voice over from the Minit label. They signed several British Invasion groups, such as the Hollies, Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas, and the Swinging Blue Jeans. In addition, new American stars-in-the-making such as Cher, Jackie DeShannon, and Johnny Rivers were signed. They tapped into the Los Angeles "Go-Go" scene with "live" albums that added excitement to the label. At least at the beginning, the "live" Johnny Rivers albums (as well as the "live" Sandy Nelson album) featured studio recordings with label employees overdubbed as the live audience, but they were exciting nonetheless. The mid-1960s period, from 1964 to about 1968, was the most successful for Imperial on the record charts. 

In 1968, Transamerica Corporation, who owned United Artists, bought the Liberty/Imperial Labels and merged them with UA. Having had the mid-1960s talent more-or-less run it's course, the new company needed to recharge the label with the kind of aggressive talent search that was done in 1964. Unfortunately, the artists signed after 1967 were comparatively weak chart performers (with a few exceptions like the Classics IV, who were signed before 1968), and the label languished. In 1970, UA transferred most of the Imperial artists to Liberty for future releases, and by 1971 Imperial had essentially ceased to exist as a distinct new-product label. UA did, however, maintain the back-catalog of Imperial albums for many years afterwards, and they did reissue some Imperial and Aladdin material under the United Artists banner. Today, the UA, Imperial, Minit, Liberty, Aladdin and Score masters are all owned by the huge EMI-Capitol Music empire, which purchased United Artists from TransAmerica in the 1980s. 

Although rhythm and blues was the mainstay of the pre-1964 Imperial label, Lew Chudd's label also recorded jazz, with top artists like Sonny Criss and Warner Marsh, and country music (Slim Whitman being his most successful artist). Chudd's label had a broad scope and included recordings of movie soundtracks, big band music, folk artists, gospel, and march music. The Liberty-owned Imperial label, on the other hand, was much less eclectic, and much more top-40 oriented. As is many times the case, the sale of a successful label, as Imperial/Liberty was sold in 1968, leads to the decline of the label's success, and eventually, it's demise. This certainly was the case with Imperial. 

Lew Chudd, the founder of Imperial Records, died on June 15, 1998, just shy of his 87th birthday. 

Bob Keane

Bob Keane was born Robert Kuhn on January 5, 1922, in a Manhattan Beach, California. His parents, Benjamin Walker Kuhn and Gladys Cobb, were from New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts, respectively, and migrated to California before their son Bob was born. 

Bob Keane was a clarinet player who started performing as a teenager in the late 1930s. From 1948-1953 fronted his own dance band. In 1953, he started leading the Artie Shaw band. He had albums under his own name on the GNP and Whippet labels. When the big band business declined, Keane started getting into Latino music and rock and roll. 

Keane was associated with the Keen label for a short time in 1957. When he left the Keen label in late 1957, Bob Keane started Del-Fi Records. This label specialized in recording "pachucos," as local Mexicans in Los Angeles were called. Keane recorded Ritchie Valens and had a minor hit in 1958 with "C'Mon Let's Go," but at the end of the year, Valens had a #2 record with "Donna," a song Valens reportedly wrote for his girlfriend. The flip of "Donna," "La Bamba," only made it to #22 when released, but since 1959 has widely surpassed "Donna" in popularity. When Ritchie Valens died in a plane crash in February, 1959, Keane lost his biggest star. Later he had hits with Little Caesar and the Romans, with "Those Oldies but Goodies (Remind Me of You)" and Chan Romero with "Hippy Hippy Shake," the latter more through being the original of an international hit cover version by a British band, the Swinging Blue Jeans. 

By 1963, Del-Fi was concentrating on guitar-based surf/drag-racing music popular in southern California; Del-Fi released at least 19 albums of this genre. Donna Records was a subsidiary label to Del-Fi, obviously named for Keane's biggest hit record. 

1965, Bob Keane started a label called Mustang, which recorded a band from Texas, the Bobby Fuller Four. Bobby Fuller was an admirer of Ritchie Valens and sought out Keane to record him when he moved to Los Angeles. Fuller had a smash hit with "I Fought the Law" and two albums for Mustang records before dying in a controversial suicide in July, 1966. 

Although "Keane" is the way he spelled his name starting in the late 1950s, on the early albums of his own music such as DFLP-1202, his name is spelled Keene, which is how he spelled it when first changing over from Kuhn. We use Keane in this biography, but in the discographies his name is spelled as on the albums. 

The material Bob Keane recorded was reissued on Rhino Records in the 1980s. Because of a increased interest in surf music and the use of two Del-Fi songs, ("Surf Rider" by the Lively Ones and "Bullwinkle, Part II" by the Centurions) in the movie "Pulp Fiction", a reactivated Del-Fi released many of the original albums on CD with the original artwork starting in the mid-1990s. 

Bob Keane had a close relationship with Rhino Records starting in 1981, when Rhino started reissuing Del-Fi albums. Rhino was subsequently purchased by Warner Bros Records, and in November, 2003, Bob Keane sold Del-Fi and its subsidiaries, some 1,500 masters, to Warner Strategic Marketing (Rhino's parent) for an undisclosed sum. Bob Keane died of renal failure in Los Angeles on November 28, 2009.

Don Robey

Don D. Robey was born in 1903 in the heart of Houston's black business and residential district. He dropped out of high school to become a professional gambler. After getting married and having a son, he started a taxicab business. One of Robey's passions was music and he began promoting ballroom dances. In the late 1930s, Robey left Houston for 3 years to go to Los Angeles where he operated a night club called the Harlem Grill. He returned to Houston and in 1945 and founded a night club called the Bronze Peacock Dinner Club. The club featured some of the top Jazz bands and orchestras of the day and was a big success. 

His love for music also led him to open a record store. In 1947 he went into talent management. His first client was Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, a 23 year old singer- guitarist. Sometime in 1949, Robey started Peacock Records, named after his night club. Robey recorded six songs by Brown and they became the first 3 issues on Peacock. Robey built up an impressive talent roster, including Memphis Slim, Marie Adams, Floyd Dixon and Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton (who in 1953 recorded "Hound Dog", a very successful R&B record that was later covered by Elvis Presley). 

Peacock also had a gospel music division, one of the most prestigious in the country. The label had an impressive number of important gospel acts, including the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Sensational Nightingales and the Mighty Clouds of Joy. The gospel album releases on Peacock far exceed the issues on any of the other labels. A second gospel record label, Song Bird, was formed in late 1963 or early 1964. 

Duke Records was formed in 1952 by David J. Mattis and Bill Fitzgerald in Memphis, Tennessee. Duke and Peacock were combined in a partnership in August 1952. The most successful artists in the Duke lineup were Johnny Ace and Roscoe Gordon. In April 1953, Don Robey obtained full control of both labels and both were headquartered at the Bronze Peacock club at 2809 Erastus Street in Houston. Irving Marcus and Dave Clark were the sales and promotion representatives. Producers included Johnny Otis, Bill Harvey, Don Robey and Joe Scott. 

The Back Beat subsidiary was formed in 1957. In the 1960s, Back Beat became a soul music label with album issues by Joe Hinton, O.V. Wright, and Carl Carlton. Duke Records in the 1960s had hits by Bobby "Blue" Bland and Junior Parker. 

Don Robey sold Duke/Peacock to ABC-Dunhill on May 23, 1973, but stayed on, as a consultant with ABC overseeing the release of catalog material. Don Robey died on June 16, 1975.

Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton's Stax Records

Twelve years older than Jim, Estelle was brought up in the county of Middleton, Tennessee. Always strongly interested in music, as a teenager, she had been a fan of pop music, played the organ and sung soprano in the family gospel quartet.She came to Memphis in 1935 at the age of sixteen to get her teaching certificate. While attending Memphis State University she met her husband to be Everett Axton.  One year1ater she returned to Middleton to become her brother's first grade teacher. In 1941 she married Everett and moved back to Memphis.By this time she was married and had school aged children of her own. Jim twelve years younger, would later joined her in Memphis, where Estelle worked as a teller at the Union Planter's Bank in Memphis. 

Estelle stayed home for ten years raising her two children, before going to work at Union Planters Bank in 1950. There she stayed until she opened the Satellite Record Shop in 1961.

Jim Stewart was born July 29, 1930 in Middleton, Tennessee. His parents Ollie and Dexter Steweart ran a farm with Dexter also doing carpentry and brickwork on the side. Stewart's father bought him a guitar when he was ten. Many Saturday nights he would listen to the Grand Ole Opry and try to ply along with it. Constantly practicing Stewart learned by ear. Eventually he and a friend from a band that played at local square dances.

After high school he went to Memphis where he hoped to develop a career as a country fiddler. Influenced by the Western Swing of Bob Willis ant Texas Playboys, Pee Wee King and Tex Williams, as well as the honkey tonk sounds of Hank Williams, Moon Mullican and Ernest Tubb, he played odd jobs while working at Sears Roebuck during the day. Stewart could be heard on WDIA playing in the early morning as a member of Don Powell's Country Cowboys.

By late 1950 Stewart was working for the First National Bank.

He went into the Army in 1953 and was in the Special Services where he played the violin. He studied business at Memphis State in preparation for a banking career and graduated in 1956. Stewart's  intentions were to become a banker, but while working in a bank, he still played fiddle in Western swing bands around Memphis.

After getting out of the Army, Stewart returned to his job at the bank and got a job playing at the Eagle's Nest on Lamar Avenue. Stewart took advantage of the G.I. Bill and got a B.A. from Memphis State University majoring in business management and minoring in music.

By 1957 Stewart's interest in recording led him to tape a couple songs that he took to Sun Records as well as a few other local labels. With the exception of Erwin Ellis, his barber who owned the small Erwin Records, no one would give him the time of day. Ellis loaned Stewart his first recording equipment, educated about the value of publishing and and taught him the basic mechanics of running a small independent record label and establishing an affiliate publishing company.

Jim Stewart began fooling around recording music in his wife's uncle's garage around 1957 and he put out his first record in 1958, a country and western song named "Blue Roses" by a disc jockey named Fred Bylar (Satellite 100). At this time Stewart was equal partners in the new label with Bylar and a rhythm guitarist named Neil Herbert, as a three had put in three or four hundred dollars. Only a few hundred copies were pressed with virtually no copies being sold on its only airplay was on KWEM, the station where Bylar worked.

Stewart, Bylar and Hebert had been recording Satellite's releases in Stewart's wife's uncle' two car garage on Omni Street using a portable reel-to-reel tape record owned by Erwin Ellis. Wanting to buy a state of the art Ampex 350 monaural tape recorder Stewart asked his sister Estelle Axton for help by taking out a mortgage on her house. After convincing here husband Everett to go along a second mortgage was taken out. With the $8000 - $9000 Herbert and Bylar were bought out, the Ampex recorder was financed and badly needed operating capital was provided.

Estelle took out a $2500 on her house and they began a record label they called Satellite (probably because Sputnik, the Russians' first earth satellite, was launched in October, 1957, and dominated the news). In 1958, Estelle became involved when Jim Stewart asked her to invest in his record company, she took out a second mortgage on her home and they bought new recording equipment. The label was located in Brunswick, Tennessee in an old storehouse.

In the spring of 1959 Stewart recorded his first black group, the Veltones. The Veltones'  "Fool in Love"/"Someday" was released in in the summer of 1959. In September it was picked up for national distribution by Mercury Records for an advance of $400 - $500. The record went nowhere and Stewart received no further money from Mercury.

In 1960, they moved the label back to Memphis to rented for $150 a month the old Capitol movie theater on East McLemore and College. Short on money,  Estelle decided to convert the candy counter into a record shop to generate additional income.Estelle ran a record shop in the front of the building from which they would derive much of their early income.

After signing the lease,  they set about renovating the theatre. In the next few months after everyone's regular workday and on weekends, acoustical drapes were hung, a control room was built on stage, carpeting was put on the floors, baffles were built with burlap and ruffle insulation on the one outside plaster wall to cut down on echo and a drum stand was built. The hanging of the ceiling baffles was the only work that they paid professionals to do.

Although the renovations only cost $200 - $200, they again found themselves cash strapped. Unable to find local investors, Axton again refinanced her house to get another $4000 of badly needed operating capital. As luck would have it, their next recording would provide their first hit.

They recorded a local disc jockey named Rufus Thomas, who had had a minor hit with Sun Records earlier called "Bearcat". Rufus and his 17 year old daughter Carla recorded a duet titled "Cause I Love You" and it became a local hit in Memphis. The song came to the attention of Jerry Wexler, who was Vice President of Atlantic Records, he leased the record and obtained a five year option for future Satellite product for $5000. After "Cause I Love You", Carla Thomas recorded a song she had written called "Gee Whiz". The record came out on Satellite, but Wexler immediately claimed it for Atlantic, and it was released nationally on Atlantic. "Gee Whiz" went to Billboard #5 and became the first big national hit for Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton.

Estelle Axton's son Packy played tenor sax in a rock and roll band named the Royal Spades. Along with Packy was Steve Cropper on guitar, Charlie Freeman on guitar, drummer Terry Johnson baritone sax player Don Nix and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn. This group became the Mar-Keys and recorded an instrumental named "Last Night" which became the next big hit for Jim and Estelle. When this song started up the charts, Jim Stewart became aware of another record company in California called "Satellite" so rather than risking litigation, the name of the company was changed to "Stax", the ST from Stewart and the AX from Axton.

Booker T and the MGs

A young piano player named Booker T. Jones lived in the neighborhood near the Stax studio, and started hanging around. He joined up with Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn from the Mar-Keys and with Al Jackson and they became the backbone of the "Stax Sound". They also recorded on their own as Booker T. and MG's (standing for Memphis Group) and soon had a giant hit named "Green Onions". Steve Cropper became an important producer for Stax and both wrote songs and produced many other acts for Jim Stewart.

In 1962, Johnny Jenkins came to the Stax studio to record a single for Atlantic. When the recording session for Jenkins turned into a disaster, they used the last half hour of studio time to record Jenkin's 21 year old driver, Otis Redding. He recorded a ballad he had written called "These Arms of Mine". "These Arms of Mine" was released in October of 1962 on Stax's new rhythm and blues subsidiary named Volt. It made the charts in March of 1963 and in September of 1963, Otis came back into the Stax studio and recorded "Pain In My Heart" which became an even bigger hit.

Fred Foster (Monument Records)

Fred Foster started the Monument Record label in 1958. The output of the label was popular music, country and western, rhythm and blues and rock and roll. 

Foster was born in Appalachia. At 17, he moved to Washington, DC, to work in a small restaurant. Through one of his customers, a nightclub owner, he was put in touch with music publisher Ben Edelman, and Foster started putting words to songs Edelman was publishing. His first effort was "Picking Sweethearts," which was recorded by the McGuire Sisters in 1953. Although he'd never produced a record before, he was allowed to supervise a session by Jimmy Dean and the Texas Wildcats, a combo that was working in Washington's Covered Wagon bar. Shortly after this, he got a job as a promotion man for Mercury Records and in 1955 went to ABC-Paramount. Although he was a regional promotion director for ABC, he did bring talent he discovered to the label, including George Hamilton IV and Lloyd Price (who at the time was living in the Washington area). 

He grew tired of the traveling that the ABC job required, so he took a job with J & F (Record) Distributors in Baltimore, Maryland, a short distance from Washington, DC. Using his life savings, in September 1958, he started the Monument Record Company (so named after the Washington Mounument in DC). His first recording was a reworking of the traditional "Done Laid Around," which was retitled "Gotta Travel On," sung by a former member of Jimmy Dean's Wildcats, Billy Grammer. The record went to number 4 on the popular charts. Foster then set up a second office for the record company in Hendersonville, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. 

Not long after, Foster's partner Bob Moore, a top session bassist in Nashville and well-connected with the musicians, felt that Roy Orbison was not being promoted properly by RCA, and brought Orbison to Monument. At his first session for Monument, Roy recorded "Paper Boy," "With the Bug" and "Double Date." In order to make the soft-singing Orbison heard above the band, the producer placed Roy's microphone behind a acoustical barrier that would pick up far less of the band, which had the additional side effect of alleviating Orbison's painful self-consciousness. This technique of an "isolation booth" had grown out of the musicians' experimenting informally, but had not generally been used in Nashville recordings. Orbison's next sessions for Monument produced "Uptown," which reached a respectable number 72 on the pop charts in January 1960. The next release, "Only the Lonely," was a smash hit, and started Orbison and Monument on a long string of hits through 1965. Orbison had two #1 records for Monument, "Running Scared" in 1961 and "Oh, Pretty Woman" in 1964. The stereo versions of Orbison's albums "Lonely and Blue" and "Crying" are particularly in demand because of the superb stereo recordings by Foster. 

Throughout Orbison's stay at Monument, his backup band was a group of all-star studio musicians led by Bob Moore, and it was the play of Orbison's amazing voice against the dynamic yet uncluttered sound of the band that gave Orbison's records such a unique, highly identifiable sound. Moore, who is generally acknowledged at the top country session bassist of his era -- maybe ever -- was on thousands of pop and country songs, including over 500 chart records (including almost every type of music, from Elvis Presley to Marty Robbins to Pat Boone to Clyde McPhatter). Moore had a top 10 single under his own name in 1961, "Mexico," which was a forerunner of the trumpet-and-guitar sound Herb Alpert used effectively starting about two years later. Alpert later mentioned the Moore hit as one of his influences, and wondered that Moore didn't have a followup in the same vein. 

So as not to change the relationships he had with fellow musicians, Moore kept the fact that he owned 37% of Monument secret for years. It was only when Foster applied for a credit account at Owen Bradley's studio that the secret was uncovered. Bradley looked up Monument with Dunn & Bradstreet as a credit check, and noticed Moore's part ownership. Moore recalls that Bradley called him and said, "Good for you." But by the mid-1960s, Moore and Foster had a falling out over a business deal that Foster made that he apparently neglected to tell his partners about. Moore asked to be bought out. It was about this time (1965) that Moore helped Roy Orbison leave Monument for MGM Records. 

Orbison was certainly the most important artist on Monument, and without Orbison and Moore, the label declined. The label did have a strong country roster, however, and scored sporadic hits with Boots Randolph, Dolly Parton, Billy Walker, Jeannie Seely, Henson Cargill, and Charlie McCoy. Later, Foster became the first to record singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, with considerable success. 

In 1963, Foster formed a subsidiary label called Sound Stage 7. Over the years, they have issued singles by some well-known talent, including Arthur Alexander, Roscoe Shelton, Allen Orange (Allen Toussaint), Ivory Joe Hunter, the O'Jays, Alvin Cash, and of course Joe Simon. The first album release was by the Dixie Bells (with "Cornbread & Jerry"), titled Down at Papa Joe's, after their hit of the same name. Most of the subsequent albums on Sound Stage 7 were by Joe Simon, as the label was little used for album releases. This left most of the label's output unavailable in stereo, although it doubtlessly was recorded in that mode. For example, a smooth 1964 top-50 single by the Monarchs, "Look Homeward Angel," has apparently never been issued on LP. 

Another Monument subsidiary label, Rising Sons, was active in 1967-68. Although they had singles out by Robert Knight, Bobby Russell, Billy Swan, Ral Donner, Troy Seals, Charlie McCoy, and others, their only real hit was Knight's "Everlasting Love," which prompted an album of the same name. 

At the start of 1971, Foster entered into a distribution arrangement with CBS, and the catalog numbering system for the albums changed to the CBS numbering system. Since CBS had a "consolidated" numbering system (i.e., all labels under their distribution shared the same numbering series, with prefixes designating Columbia, Epic, "other," etc.), the albums issued on Monument from 1971-76 are not numbered consecutively. At that time the label design also changed. 

By 1976, Foster apparently opted to switch distribution, and signed a deal with PolyGram. The items then in his catalog were renumbered from the CBS system and reissued using a system of consecutive numbers in one of several new Monument-only series. The label design also changed from the rather unattractive brown label used for the CBS years to a nifty new black label with "MONUMENT" in three dimensional letters of carved stone. 

Monument continued into the early 1980s and Fred Foster even had another opportunity to record Roy Orbison, when Orbison came back to Monument to record the album Regeneration in 1976, but the two failed to rekindle the magic they had in the early '60s. 

Vee-Jay Records

Vee-Jay and it's subsidiaries were owned by Vivian Carter Bracken,  James Bracken, her husband, and Calvin Carter. Vee-Jay  was the first large independent record company to be owned by blacks and was the most successful black owned record company before Motown.  Vee Jay contributed a tremendous legacy of blues, rhythm and blues, doowop,  jazz, soul, pop and rock n' roll.

James Bracken was born in Oklahoma on May 23, 1909; grew up in Kansas City, Kansas; and attended Western University In Quindaro, Kansas. He was living in Chicago when he met Vivian Carter in 1944. Carter was born in Tunica, Mississippi, in 1920 and moved to Gary, Indiana, as a little girl. She graduated from Roosevelt High in 1939. In 1948, in Chicago, she won a talent contest for new deejays conducted by Al Benson. She worked three months at WGES and then moved to WJOB in her hometown  of Gary. Carter and Bracken became business partners in 1950 when they founded Vivian's Record Shop in Gary. After three years of saving their money, in mid-1953 they decided to start their own record company. Meanwhile Vivian continued deejaying in Gary, joining WGRY, in 1952 and moving to WWCA in 1954, which was undoubtedly a significant factor in attracting talent to their label.

From left to right: Art Sheridan owner Chance Records,
Ewart Abner and James Bracken

her brother, Calvin Cook was an established musician. Before starting Vee-Jay they had served as consultants for Chess brothers as to the commercial viability of Chess Records recordings.

The company was built entirely on doo wop groups Spaniels, El Dorados, Magnificents, Dukays, Dells and Shepards, with John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed exceptions. They owned their own publishing company Conrad.
Vee Jay was also a major player in the gospel music field, with luminaries like the Staple Singers, the Original Five Blind Boys, Harmonizing Four, the Caravans, Gospel Harmonettes and the Swan Silvertones in its stable of artists. It has even been suggested that one of Vivian Carter's main reasons for starting Vee Jay was to record gospel performers.
Vee Jay was the first to introduce the Beatles to the US. They dominated the pop charts with the first hits from the Four Seasons. Everyone from blues legends Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker, soul singers Jerry Butler, Curtis Mayfield and Betty Everett and the Dells recorded for Vee Jay. Interestingly enough, young unknowns David Gates (of Bread), Hoyt Axton and Jimi Hendrix briefly appeared on the label.

"I know a record company (probably referring to Vee-Jay) who done a minimum of fifteen million dollars worth of  business in two years and they are bankrupt ...... Syd Nathan of King Records.

Poor financial management led to bankruptcy in 1966 despite having the Dells, Four Seasons. and Jerry Butler and the Impressions.