Sledgehammer Blues is an audiophile record label owned by

Valley Entertainment Valley Entertainment is an American independent record label and music distributor based in New York City, United States. The company was founded in 1994 by Barney Cohen and Jon Birge. In 2001, it acquired the prestigious back catalogue of space, ...

. It was formerly named AudioQuest Music. Audioquest Music was founded in 1990 by Joe Harley of the audio cable company Audioquest to demonstrate the quality of its cables. Harley made one album, by blues guitarist Robert Lucas, that was so successful he decided to release more jazz and blues. Its catalogue included work by

Charles Fambrough Charles Fambrough (August 25, 1950January 1, 2011) was an American jazz bassist, composer and record producer from Philadelphia. Fambrough was a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers during the early 1980s. Suffering from kidney failure, conges ...

Victor Lewis Victor Lewis (born May 20, 1950) is an American jazz drummer, composer, and educator. Early life Victor Lewis was born on May 20, 1950 in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, Richard Lewis, who played saxophone and mother, Camille, a pianist-vocalist ...

James Newton James W. Newton (born May 1, 1953) is an American jazz and classical flutist. Biography He was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. From his earliest years, James Newton grew up immersed in the sounds of African-American music, inclu ...

, Edward Simon, and

Larry Willis Lawrence Elliott Willis (December 20, 1942 – September 29, 2019) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He performed in a wide range of styles, including jazz fusion, Afro-Cuban jazz, bebop, and avant-garde jazz, avant-garde. Willis was b ...

. From the label's website: "The blues label was founded in the late 1980s with the mission to create the highest standard

audiophile An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction. An audiophile seeks to reproduce the sound of a piece of recorded music or a live musical performance, typically inside closed headphones, In-ear monitors, open ...

recordings based on the technology available. These are analog recordings using custom built tube electronics and eschewing noise reduction, compression, equalization or sound limiters. By recording the most proficient artists available at the highest possible standards, these recordings have been adapted to every subsequent audiophile platform-

XRCD Extended Resolution Compact Disc (XRCD) is a mastering and manufacture process patented by JVC (Victor Company of Japan, Ltd) for producing Red Book compact discs. It was first introduced in 1995. An XRCD is priced about twice as high as a re ...

SACD Super Audio CD (SACD) is an optical disc format for audio storage introduced in 1999. It was developed jointly by Sony and Philips, Philips Electronics and intended to be the successor to the Compact Disc (CD) format. The SACD format allows mul ...

, etc."

Discography

References

External links

*
Sledgehammer Blues on Valley-Entertainment.com
' {{Authority control Audiophile record labels Jazz record labels