Everything about Reprise Records totally explained
Reprise Records is an
American record label, owned by
Warner Music Group, operated through
Warner Bros. Records.
Company history
Reprise was formed in
1960 by
Frank Sinatra in order to allow more artistic freedom for his own recordings. Hence, he garnered the nickname "The Chariman of the Board." Having left
Capitol/
EMI and, after trying to buy
Norman Granz's
Verve Records, the first album Sinatra released on Reprise was
Ring-A-Ding-Ding. Fellow
Rat Pack members
Dean Martin and
Sammy Davis Jr. also moved to the label. Stand-up comedian
Redd Foxx also recorded for the label during its fledgling years. As CEO of Reprise, Frank Sinatra recruited a host of his cronies for the fledgling label. The original roster from 1961 to 63 included such names as Bing Crosby, Jo Stafford, Rosemary Clooney and Esquivel! The label still issues any Sinatra work recorded while on the label and, after his death in 1998, it had great success with his greatest hits collections.
One of the label's founding principles under Sinatra's leadership was that each artist would have full creative freedom, and at some point complete ownership of their work; including publishing rights. This is the reason why recordings of early Reprise artists (Dean Martin, Jimi Hendrix,
The Kinks, etc.) are (in most cases) currently distributed through other labels. In Martin's case, his Reprise recordings were out of print for nearly 20 years before a deal was struck with Capitol Records.
Reprise was sold to
Warner Bros. Records in early 1963. Many of the older artists were dropped when Sinatra sold control of the label to Warner Bros. in 1963. At that point, label executives began targeting younger acts beginning with the Kinks in 1964. Reprise would later add teen-oriented pop acts like
Dino, Desi, & Billy and
Nancy Sinatra, before moving almost exclusively to pop-oriented music in the late 1960s. In the time since, Warner Bros. has often treated Reprise as a bit of a secondary parent label, as many of its subsidiary labels, such as
Straight and
Kinetic, have had their records released in conjunction with Reprise.
In the late 1970s, as
Joni Mitchell and
Captain Beefheart had left the label, Sinatra expressed a wish to be the sole artist on Reprise, but
Neil Young refused to leave. Mitchell returned to the label in the late 1980s after a stint on Geffen Records but now records for
Hear Music. Young remains on Reprise to this day, though he also recorded for Geffen in the 1980s.
Today, in addition to Young, it's home to such artists as
Michael Bublé,
The Smashing Pumpkins,
Avenged Sevenfold,
The Used,
Mastodon,
Eric Clapton,
Green Day,
Fleetwood Mac,
Josh Groban,
My Chemical Romance and
Disturbed. Reprise is also the North American label for
British band
Depeche Mode.
It was formerly home to the
Jimi Hendrix and the
Barenaked Ladies' catalogs in the
U.S.
Reprise Records artists
Subsidiaries
Refrences
Further Information
Get more info on 'Reprise Records'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://reprise_records.totallyexplained.com">Reprise Records Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
