Starday Records was an American
record label
A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the produ ...
producing traditional
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
during the 1950s and 1960s.
History
The label began in 1952 in
Beaumont, Texas
Beaumont is a coastal city in the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat, seat of government of Jefferson County, Texas, Jefferson County, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur, Texas, Port Arthur Beaumont–Port Arthur metropolitan area, metropo ...
, when local businessmen Jack Starnes (
Lefty Frizzell
William Orville "Lefty" Frizzell (March 31, 1928 – July 19, 1975) was an American country music singer-songwriter and honky-tonk singer.
He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1982. Frizzell released many songs that charted ...
's manager) and Houston record distributor
Harold W. Daily (better known as "Pappy") decided to form a record label. The Starday name is a combination of Starnes' and Daily's last names. After four releases, former Four Star vice president Don Pierce was brought into the fold and the three men founded the Starday Recording and Publishing Company.
Soon after, Starnes sold his shares out to Pierce. In the mid-1950s, Art Talmadge of Mercury Records made Starday a unique proposition, whereby Mercury contracted out all production of Country and Bluegrass music to Starday Records. This move proved not to be the success Mercury had hoped it would be, and this resulted in an acrimonious split between Daily and Pierce.
Daily joined Mercury records as an A&R man/Talent Scout, while Pierce took over Starday altogether and moved operations to
Madison, Tennessee
Madison (originally Madison Station) is a former settlement, now a suburban neighborhood of northeast Nashville, in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is incorporated as part of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County.
The p ...
, a
bedroom community
A commuter town is a populated area that is primarily residential rather than commercial or industrial. Routine travel from home to work and back is called commuting, which is where the term comes from. A commuter town may be called by many o ...
of
Nashville
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and the ...
.
Pierce began to study in earnest the buying habits of the fans of Country & Western music. He soon found that most people who bought Country records were Adults who preferred the Long-Play album format over single records. With this knowledge Starday began cranking out LPs in earnest, with Singles basically being an aside to their LP line.
In addition to creating the largest bluegrass catalogue throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, Starday was also known for its legendary rockabilly catalogue, an extensive Texas honky-tonk outpouring, classic gospel and sacred recordings and as a Nashville independent powerhouse studio and record label. Starday was the largest exclusively country label of the period and is renowned among record collectors for producing a level of pure, undiluted country music that was becoming increasingly rare on the major labels. Starday released the first recordings of
George Jones
George Glenn Jones (September 12, 1931 – April 26, 2013) was an American country musician, singer, and songwriter. He achieved international fame for his long list of hit records, including his best-known song "He Stopped Loving Her Today", ...
and country stars like
Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelson (born April 29, 1933) is an American country musician. The critical success of the album ''Shotgun Willie'' (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of ''Red Headed Stranger'' (1975) and '' Stardust'' (197 ...
,
Dottie West
Dorothy Marie Marsh West (October 11, 1932 – September 4, 1991) was an American country music singer and songwriter. Along with her friends and fellow recording artists Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, she is considered one of the genre's most in ...
, the
Big Bopper
Jiles Perry "J.P." Richardson Jr. (October 24, 1930 – February 3, 1959), known as The Big Bopper, was an American singer, songwriter and disc jockey. His best-known compositions include "Chantilly Lace" and " White Lightning", the latter of wh ...
, and
Roger Miller
Roger Dean Miller Sr. (January 2, 1936 – October 25, 1992) was an American singer-songwriter, widely known for his honky-tonk-influenced novelty songs and his chart-topping Country music, country and pop hits "King of the Road (song), Ki ...
. Comedian
Minnie Pearl
Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon (October 25, 1912 – March 4, 1996), known professionally as her stage character Minnie Pearl, was an American comedian who appeared at the Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years (1940–1991) and on the televisio ...
released a number of records for the label. Several veteran country stars were also on Starday, including
Cowboy Copas
Lloyd Estel Copas (July 15, 1913 – March 5, 1963), known by his stage name Cowboy Copas, was an American country music singer. He was popular from the 1940s until his death in the 1963 plane crash that also killed country stars Patsy Cline an ...
, Helen Carter,
Johnny Bond
Cyrus Whitfield Bond (June 1, 1915 – June 12, 1978), known professionally as Johnny Bond, was an American country music singer-songwriter, guitarist and composer and publisher, who co-founded a music publishing firm, he was active in the musi ...
,
Harry Choates
Harry Henry Choates (December 26, 1922 – July 17, 1951) was an American Cajun music fiddler known as the "Fiddle King of Cajun Swing" and the "Godfather of Cajun music." The scholar Barry Jean Ancelet called Choates "undoubtedly the most popula ...
, Link Davis and
T. Texas Tyler. The label also featured several legendary country radio-based acts in the twilight of their careers, such as
the Blue Sky Boys
The Blue Sky Boys were an American country music duo consisting of the brothers Earl Bolick (November 16, 1919 – April 19, 1998) and Bill Bolick (October 28, 1917 – March 13, 2008), whose careers spanned over forty years.
Biography
The brother ...
,
Lulu Belle and Scotty
Myrtle Eleanor Cooper (December 24, 1913 – February 8, 1999) and Scott Greene Wiseman (November 8, 1909 – January 31, 1981), known professionally as Lulu Belle and Scotty, were one of the major country music acts of the 1930s and 1940s, dubbe ...
,
Texas Ruby
Ruby Agnes Owens (June 4, 1908 – March 29, 1963), professionally better known as Texas Ruby, was an American pioneering country music female vocalist and musician of the late 1930s through to the early 1960s. Her brother was famous as Tex ...
, and
Moon Mullican
Aubrey Wilson Mullican (March 29, 1909 – January 1, 1967), known professionally as Moon Mullican and nicknamed "King of the Hillbilly Piano Players", was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and pianist. He was associated with t ...
, performers probably not of much interest to the big labels in the 1960s. The label may be best known for the dozens of budget-priced compilation albums it released featuring artists on or at one time on the label.
Starday's most successful artist was perhaps
Red Sovine
Woodrow Wilson "Red" Sovine (July 7, 1917 – April 4, 1980) was an American country music singer and songwriter associated with truck driving songs, particularly those recited as narratives but set to music. His most noted examples are "Giddyu ...
, who scored a number of hits in the 1960s on the label. Starday also produced a series of classic anthologies of trucker records by various artists including Copas, Bond, Sovine, The Willis Brothers and
bluegrass acts including
Moore & Napier
Moore may refer to:
People
* Moore (surname)
** List of people with surname Moore
* Moore Crosthwaite (1907–1989), a British diplomat and ambassador
* Moore Disney (1765–1846), a senior officer in the British Army
* Moore Powell (died c. 1573 ...
and
Reno & Smiley
Reno and Smiley were an American musical duo that was composed of Don Reno (May 17, 1925 – October 16, 1984) and Red Smiley (February 21, 1925 – January 2, 1972). They were one of the most acclaimed duos in country and bluegrass music in the ...
. These LPs were renowned for their color covers shot at Nashville area truck stops with real rigs and shapely female models dressed as waitresses.
Starday-King Records
When
Syd Nathan
Sydney Nathan (April 27, 1904 – March 5, 1968) was an American music business executive who founded King Records, a leading independent record label, in 1943.
He contributed to the development of country & western music, rhythm and blues a ...
died in 1968, his label
King Records was acquired by
Hal Neely
HAL may refer to:
Aviation
* Halali Airport (IATA airport code: HAL) Halali, Oshikoto, Namibia
* Hawaiian Airlines (ICAO airline code: HAL)
* HAL Airport, Bangalore, India
* Hindustan Aeronautics Limited an Indian aerospace manufacturer of fight ...
's
Starday Company
Starday Records was an American record label producing traditional country music during the 1950s and 1960s.
History
The label began in 1952 in Beaumont, Texas, when local businessmen Jack Starnes (Lefty Frizzell's manager) and Houston record di ...
. Neely relaunched the label as Starday-King Records. The label was sold to
LIN Broadcasting
LIN Media was an American holding company founded in 1994 that operated 43 television stations. All except one were affiliates of the six major U.S. television networks. One of the remaining stations was a low powered weather station in Ind ...
(sale consummated in 1970), which in turn sold it to Tennessee Recording and Publishing Company, owned by Freddy Bienstock, Hal Neely,
Jerry Leiber
Lyricist Jerome Leiber (April 25, 1933 – August 22, 2011) and composer Michael Stoller (born March 13, 1933) were American songwriting and record producing partners. They found success as the writers of such Crossover music, crossover hit songs ...
, and
Mike Stoller
Lyricist Jerome Leiber (April 25, 1933 – August 22, 2011) and composer Michael Stoller (born March 13, 1933) were American songwriting and record producing partners. They found success as the writers of such crossover hit songs as " Hound Dog" ( ...
, who sold it in 1974 to
Gusto Records
Gusto Records is a Nashville, Tennessee-based record company that specializes in reissuing and licensing recordings.
The catalogues that Gusto owns include King Records (except for recordings by James Brown), Starday, Scepter (except for rec ...
.
[Kennedy, Rick, and McNutt, Randy (1999). ''Little Labels—Big Sound: Small Record Companies and the Rise of American Music'', pp. 70-71. Indiana University Press. .]
By the end of the 1960s, Starday's new product was limited and most of its recordings were reissues, many of them originally recorded or released on other small labels. The Starday label briefly made a strong comeback in the mid-1970s when Gusto Records' Red Sovine took his
recitation song
A recitation song or "recitation" as it is more commonly called, is a spoken narrative of a song, generally with a sentimental (or at times, religious) theme. Such numbers were quite popular in country music from the 1930s into the 1960s, althoug ...
record "
Teddy Bear
A teddy bear is a stuffed toy in the form of a bear. Developed apparently simultaneously by toymakers Morris Michtom in the U.S. and Richard Steiff under his aunt Margarete Steiff's company in Germany in the early 20th century, the teddy bear, ...
" to number one on the ''
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
'' country chart in 1976 using the Starday label, and even made the back of the pop chart. This record rose to No. 1 in seven weeks, the fastest rise to the No. 1 position for any 45 rpm record released before or since.
University Press of Mississippi published ''The Starday Story: The House That Country Music Built'', written by Nathan D. Gibson with Starday president Don Pierce, in January 2011. The book retraces the label's origins in 1953 through 1968 and the Starday-King merger.
Starday hits
See also
*
List of Starday Records artists
*
Lists of record labels
File:Alvinoreyguitarboogie.jpg
File:AmMusicBunk78.jpg
File:Bingola1011b.jpg
Lists of record labels cover record labels, brands or trademarks associated with marketing of music recordings and music videos. The lists are organized alphabetically, b ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
Starday Recordsat
Discogs
Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the la ...
{{Authority control
American country music record labels
Record labels based in Texas
Companies based in Beaumont, Texas
1952 establishments in Texas