Mississippi Records is a record store and label. It was founded by Eric Isaacson in 2003 in Portland, Oregon. It also houses a café, equipment repair shop, and the

Portland Museum of Modern Art Portland Museum of Modern Art (PMOMA) in Portland, Oregon, was founded in 2012. It was located in the basement of Mississippi Records and was founded by curator Libby Werbel. The Museum was staffed by Mississippi Records employees. History At i ...

. The Mississippi Records motto is: "Love over gold."

Brick and mortar store

The Mississippi Records store is currently located at 5202 N Albina Ave, Portland, Oregon. The name Mississippi Records originates from Isaacson's original store location at 4009 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, Oregon. Isaacson started Mississippi Records in 2003, opening the store with "5000 dollars saved up" and 500 records. According to a video interview by the documentary project 12 Inches of Sound, Isaacson--a Los Angeles native who moved to Portland in 1999--recognized that

North Portland North Portland is one of the six sextants of Portland, Oregon. North Portland is a diverse mixture of residential, commercial, and industrial areas. It includes the Portland International Raceway, the University of Portland, and massive cargo faci ...

lacked a record store. Isaacson worked previously as a manager at

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

's now-defunct Saturn Records.

History of record label

Alex Yusimov, an employee of the brick and mortar store, was among the first to release recordings under the Mississippi Records aegis, using the store address and the name for a personal pop record release. As such, according to Eric Isaacson, "the first 5 Mississippi releases had nothing to do with me." For many years Isaacson ran Mississippi Records from

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

with co-founder/co-owner Warren Hill. Isaacson and Hill have been friends since they were teenagers. Isaacson is historically taciturn about speaking on Mississippi's background: "I haven't really found a way of finding great joy in sharing this information because the records are a better messenger for my ideas than anything I could say and a lot of times when you talk about stuff it just loses a lot of its power." Mississippi Records co-founder Warren Hill has cited The Origin Jazz Library, Smithsonian Folkways, Arhoolie Records,

Sublime Frequencies Sublime Frequencies is a record label based in Seattle, Washington that focuses exclusively on "acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers," mostly from Southeast Asia, North Africa and We ...

, and Herwin as sources of inspiration for Mississippi Records compilations. Many of the Mississippi Records compilations have been mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk, who owns Stereophonic Mastering in

. Warren Hill formed his own record label Little Axe Records in 2011, also based in

, "when the original Mississippi Records label split." On January 1, 2019, filmmaker Cyrus Moussavi and musician Gordon Ashworth became the new owners with Isaacson working as a label project manager. Mississippi Records relocated to Chicago. In 2019, Mississippi Records went on a national tour.

Mississippi Records Tape Series

The Mississippi Records Tape Series is an ongoing open-edition mix tape project. Mississippi Records store employee Karen Atunes originally suggested the idea for a low-price mix tape to Eric Isaacson, with the first tape appearing in 2005. According to Discogs, the Mississippi tapes "are often personal statements of theme, emotion or subject by Eric Isaacson, his friends or employees at the shop." Most of the tapes in the series contain a hand-drawn, black and white aesthetic, xeroxed J-card.

References

External links

* * Discogs list of Mississippi Records Tape Series releases - https://www.discogs.com/label/345965-Tape-Series?page=1 * Little Axe Records - https://www.littleaxerecords.com * Timothy Stollenwerk's Stereophonic Mastering - https://www.stereopho.com 2003 establishments in Oregon American independent record labels Oregon record labels Record labels established in 2003 Music of Chicago Companies based in Chicago {{US-record-label-stub