Yazoo Records is 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 ...

founded in the mid-1960s by

Nick Perls J. Nicholas Perls (4 April 1942 – 22 July 1987)blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

country A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the ...

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 major ...

, and other rural American genres collectively known as

roots A root is the part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors the plant body, and absorbs and stores water and nutrients. Root or roots may also refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * ''The Root'' (magazine), an online magazine focusing ...

music.

History

The first five releases (L 1001 to L 1005) were issued under the label name of Belzona Records. The label was then renamed Yazoo Records, and the first five releases were reissued under the new name. The Belzona and Yazoo labels featured an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

drawing of a peacock, adapted from the 1927 label of

Black Patti Records Black Patti Records was a short-lived American record label based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, founded by Mayo Williams in 1927. It was named after the black opera singer Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, who was called Black Patti becau ...

. For Yazoo Records Perls compiled rare 78-rpm recordings made in the 1920s by musicians such as

Charley Patton Charley Patton (April 1891 (probable) – April 28, 1934), also known as Charlie Patton, was an American Delta blues musician and songwriter. Considered by many to be the "Father of the Delta Blues", he created an enduring body of American musi ...

Blind Willie McTell Blind Willie McTell (born William Samuel McTier; May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959) was a Piedmont blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont b ...

, the

Memphis Jug Band The Memphis Jug Band was an American band (music), musical group active from the mid-1920s to the late-1950s. The band featured harmonica, kazoo, fiddle and mandolin or banjolin, backed by guitar, piano, washboard (musical instrument), washboard, w ...

Blind Blake Arthur Blake (1896 – December 1, 1934), known as Blind Blake, was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He is known for recordings he made for Paramount Records between 1926 and 1932. Early life Little is known of Blake's life. ...

, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Perls founded a second label, Blue Goose Records, in 1970, for which he recorded "rediscovered" black blues artists and younger blues and jazz performers. In 1989 Yazoo was acquired by Shanachie Records. In 2014, Yazoo signed its first current artists,

The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band is a three-piece American country blues band from Brown County, Indiana. They have played up to 250 dates per year at venues ranging from bars to festivals since 2006. To date, they have released ten albums a ...

and released their album ''So Delicious'' on February 17, 2015.

Artists

Barbecue Bob Robert Hicks, better known as Barbecue Bob (September 11, 1902 – October 21, 1931), was an early American Piedmont blues musician. His nickname was derived from his working as a cook in a barbecue restaurant. One of the three extant photograph ...

Scrapper Blackwell Francis Hillman "Scrapper" Blackwell (February 21, 1903 – October 7, 1962) was an American blues guitarist and singer, best known as half of the guitar-piano duo he formed with Leroy Carr in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was an acoustic s ...

Big Bill Broonzy Big Bill Broonzy (born Lee Conley Bradley; June 26, 1903 – August 14, 1958) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s, when he played country music to mostly African American audiences. In the 1930s ...

Gus Cannon Gustavus "Gus" Cannon (September 12, 1883 or 1884 – October 15, 1979) was an American blues musician who helped to popularize jug bands (such as his own Cannon's Jug Stompers) in the 1920s and 1930s. There is uncertainty about his birth year; ...

Bo Carter Armenter (or Armentia) Chatmon (March 21, 1893 or January 1894 – September 21, 1964), known as Bo Carter, was an early American blues musician. He was a member of the Mississippi Sheiks in concerts and on a few of their recordings. He also m ...

Reverend Gary Davis Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis (born Gary D. Davis, April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972), was a blues and gospel singer who was also proficient on the banjo, guitar and harmonica. Born in Laurens, South Carolina and blind since infancy ...

Sleepy John Estes John Adam Estes (January 25, 1899 or 1900June 5, 1977),
known as Sleepy John Estes, was an Am ...

Blind Boy Fuller Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen, July 10, 1904February 13, 1941) was an American blues guitarist and singer. Fuller was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists, rural African Americans, along with Blind Blake, Josh Whi ...

Blind Uncle Gaspard Alcide "Blind Uncle" Gaspard was a Blindness, partially blind vocalist and guitarist from Louisiana who alternated between string-band music (in a band with his brothers) and traditional Cajun balladry on his recordings for Vocalion. Born in Avoye ...

Mississippi John Hurt John Smith Hurt (March 8, 1893 – November 2, 1966), better known as Mississippi John Hurt, was an American country blues singer and guitarist. Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself to play the guitar around the age of nine. He w ...

Skip James Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James (June 9, 1902October 3, 1969) was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter. AllMusic stated: "This emotional, lyrical performer was a talented blues guitarist and arranger with an impressive ...

* Blind Lemon Jefferson * Tommy Johnson * Blind Willie Johnson * Eddie Lang *

Furry Lewis Walter E. "Furry" Lewis (March 6, 1893 or 1899 – September 14, 1981) was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. He was one of the first of the blues musicians active in the 1920s to be brought out of retir ...

* Charley Lincoln *

Dennis McGee Dennis (Denus) McGee (born January 26, 1893, Eunice, Louisiana, USA – October 3, 1989) was one of the earliest recorded Cajun musicians. A fiddle player, he recorded and performed with Louisiana Creole people, Creole accordionist and voca ...

Mississippi Sheiks The Mississippi Sheiks were a popular and influential American guitar and fiddle group of the 1930s. They were notable mostly for playing country blues but were adept at many styles of popular music of the time. They recorded around 70 tracks, ...

Washington Phillips George Washington "Wash" Phillips (January 11, 1880 – September 20, 1954) was an American gospel and gospel blues singer and instrumentalist. The exact nature of the instrument or instruments he played is uncertain, being identified only as ...

Ma Rainey Gertrude "Ma" Rainey ( Pridgett; April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) was an American blues singer and influential early blues recording artist. Dubbed the "Mother of the Blues", she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of s ...

Leo Soileau Leo Soileau (January 19, 1904 – August 2, 1980) was one of the most prolific Cajun recording artists of the 1930s and 1940s, recording over 100 songs, which was a substantial amount considering the reluctance to record the music during its earl ...

Charlie Spand Charlie Spand (born May 8, 1893; died after 1958) was an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist and singer, noted for his barrelhouse style. He was deemed one of the most influential piano players of the 1920s. Little is known of his life out ...

* Frank Stokes *

Roosevelt Sykes Roosevelt Sykes (January 31, 1906July 17, 1983) was an American blues musician, also known as "the Honeydripper". Career Sykes was born the son of a musician in Elmar, Arkansas. "Just a little old sawmill town", Sykes said of his birthplace. The ...

Tampa Red Hudson Whittaker (born Hudson Woodbridge; January 8, 1903March 19, 1981), known as Tampa Red, was a Chicago blues musician. His distinctive single-string slide guitar style, songwriting and bottleneck technique influenced other Chicago blues gu ...

Henry Thomas Henry Jackson Thomas Jr. (born September 9, 1971) is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor and had a lead role in the film ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' (1982), for which he won a Young Artist Award and received Golden Globe ...

* Benny Thomasson * Joe Venuti *

Peetie Wheatstraw William Bunch (December 21, 1902 – December 21, 1941), known as Peetie Wheatstraw, was an American musician, an influential figure among 1930s blues singers. Early life and career William Bunch was the son of James Bunch and Mary (Burns) Bunc ...

Casey Bill Weldon William "Casey Bill" Weldon (February 2, 1901 or December 10, 1909 – September 28, 1972) was an American country blues musician. Some details of Weldon's life are unconfirmed. According to some sources, he was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, an ...

Robert Wilkins Robert Timothy Wilkins (January 16, 1896 – May 26, 1987) was an American country blues guitarist and vocalist, of African-American and Cherokee descent. His distinction was his versatility: he could play ragtime, blues, minstrel songs, and g ...

References

External links

Official site
- broken link as of 9-21-21
Shanachie Entertainment

{{Authority control American record labels Blues record labels Jazz record labels Folk record labels Reissue record labels

History

Artists

See also

References

External links