Prestige Records is a

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

record company and label founded in 1949 by

Bob Weinstock Bob Weinstock (October 2, 1928 – January 14, 2006) was an American record producer best known for his label Prestige Records, established in 1949, which was responsible for many significant jazz recordings during his more than two decades op ...

in New York City which issued recordings in the mainstream, bop, and cool jazz idioms. The company recorded hundreds of albums by many of the leading jazz musicians of the day, sometimes issuing them on subsidiary labels. In 1971, the company was sold to

Fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...

, which was later absorbed by

Concord Concord may refer to: Meaning "agreement" * Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony) * Harmony, in music * Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...

History

The Prestige office was located at 446 West 50th Street,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Its catalogue included

Gene Ammons Eugene "Jug" Ammons (April 14, 1925 – August 6, 1974), also known as "The Boss", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. The son of boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons, Gene Ammons is remembered for his accessible music, steeped in soul and ...

, John Coltrane,

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...

Stan Getz Stanley Getz (February 2, 1927 – June 6, 1991) was an American jazz saxophonist. Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, with his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre ...

, Wardell Gray,

Thelonious Monk Thelonious Sphere Monk (, October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including " 'Round Midnight", ...

, and

Sonny Rollins Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist who is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a seven-decade career, he has recorded over sixty albums as a ...

. Audio engineer Rudy Van Gelder was the recording engineer of many Prestige albums in the 1950s and early-to-mid-1960s. Prestige created new labels in 1960: Swingville, Moodsville, covering jazz, Bluesville featuring blues revival artists, Lively Arts featuring spoken word recordings and Prestige International, Prestige Folklore, Irish and Near East with folk and world music. By the later 1950s, Weinstock ceased supervising recording sessions directly, employing

Chris Albertson Christiern Gunnar Albertson (October 18, 1931 – April 24, 2019) was a New York City-based jazz journalist, writer and record producer. Early life Albertson was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, on October 18, 1931, but his father left the family b ...

, Ozzie Cadena, Esmond Edwards,

Don Schlitten Don Schlitten (born March 4, 1932) is an American jazz record producer. Signal Records was founded in 1955 by Jules Colomby (assisted by Schlitten) with Harold Goldberg. His credits for Signal included work with Duke Jordan, Gigi Gryce, and Red R ...

, and producer/music supervisor Bob Porter, among others, to fulfill this function. Musicians recording for the label in the 1960s included Jaki Byard and

Booker Ervin Booker Telleferro Ervin II (October 31, 1930 – August 31, 1970) was an American tenor saxophone player. His tenor playing was characterised by a strong, tough sound and blues/gospel phrasing. He is remembered for his association with bassi ...

, while Prestige remained commercially viable by recording a number of soul jazz artists like

Charles Earland Charles Earland (May 24, 1941 – December 11, 1999) was an American jazz organist. Biography Earland was born in Philadelphia and learned to play the saxophone in high school. He played tenor with Jimmy McGriff at the age of 17 and in 1960 fo ...

. In 1966 the company's headquarters were located at 203 South Washington Avenue in Bergenfield, New Jersey. The company was sold to Fantasy Records in 1971, and original releases on the label formed a significant proportion of its Original Jazz Classics line. Fantasy was purchased by Concord Records in 2005. In 2017, Concord Music Group revived the Prestige label. The first album released under the label's reactivation was ''A Social Call'' from Texas native

Jazzmeia Horn Jazzmeia Horn (born April 16, 1991) is an American jazz singer and songwriter. She won the Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition in 2015. Horn's repertoire includes jazz standards and covers of songs from other genres, incl ...

Discography

References

External links

* – official site *
Prestige
discography at JazzDisco
Prestige Records
on the Internet Archive'
Great 78 Project
{{Authority control American record labels American jazz record labels Bergenfield, New Jersey Jazz record labels Record labels established in 1949