Little Labels Big Sound: Small Record Companies and the Rise of American Music Book

"In this era of monolithic record companies and predictably contrived music, it's refreshing to read about mavericks who took chances. . . . a look at ten visionaries who altered the course of popular music." --Playboy " . . . close-up portraits of risk-taking label owners who often gambled their careers and livelihoods to release music they believed in." --Billboard " . . . [a] volume that--like the labels it celebrates, and the 45s and 78s those labels put out--is full of exciting and vital content." --San Francisco Chronicle "This book is a great piece of storytelling. . . . well written, crammed full of interesting facts, and great fun." --Dirty Linen " . . . tells how 10 independent record labels shaped the course of American popular music. . . . An invaluable guide to the businesspeople, musicians and hangers-on who transformed regional musical styles into a national soundtrack, this book belongs on the same shelf as Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music and Alan Lomax's The Land Where the Blues Began." --Publishers Weekly "Kennedy and McNutt celebrate the predecessors of today's vaunted indie record companies in this rich survey. . . . In profiling the feisty underdogs who produced so much music that 'is still very much with us,'Kennedy and McNutt also explore the commercial and social forces affecting the industry." --Booklist ñ . . . a time when a small group of eccentric businessmen could reshape the culture of America--and the world.î --Cincinnati Enquirer Little Labels?Big Sound celebrates 10 legendary record labels, their founders and the artists they developed, who created original and enduring music on the tide of social change. From the 1920s through the 1960s, scores of small, independent record companies nurtured distinctly American music: jazz, blues, gospel, country, rhythm and blues, and rockÍnÍroll. These companies, run on shoestring budgets, were on the fringe of mainstream culture. Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, James Brown, Roy Orbison, and other musicians brought regional American styles to a world audience and won enduring fame for themselves. But often forgotten are the colorful owners of small record labels who first recorded these musicians and helped to popularize their sound before the dominant, more bureaucratic competitors knew what had happened.Read More