Kicking Mule Records was an American independent record label, founded in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

in 1971 by guitarist Stefan Grossman and Eugene "ED" Denson, formerly co-owner of

Takoma Records Takoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by guitarist John Fahey in the late 1950s.

. The company's name comes from the

country blues Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in t ...

sexual two-timing allegory "there's another mule kicking in your stall". During the 1970s, the company did much to popularize solo

fingerpicking Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar or bass guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking (plucking individual notes with a single plectr ...

guitar, expanding the style with recordings of Scott Joplin rags, Beatles hits,

big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s ...

tunes, and Turlough Carolan harp tunes. The label also released several similarly-styled banjo records. In the 1980s, Grossman left the label and Denson branched out to include many

dulcimer The word dulcimer refers to two families of musical string instruments. Hammered dulcimers The word ''dulcimer'' originally referred to a trapezoidal zither similar to a psaltery whose many strings are struck by handheld "hammers". Variants of ...

releases as well as recordings by Charlie Musselwhite and Michael Bloomfield. In the early 1990s,

Fantasy Records Fantasy Records is an American independent record label company founded by brothers Max and Sol Stanley Weiss in 1949. The early years of the company were dedicated to issuing recordings by jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, who was also one of its invest ...

bought both Takoma and Kicking Mule from Denson and soon began to re-release selected LPs on CD. In 2004, all of Fantasy's labels were purchased by

Concord Records Concord Records is an American record label owned by Concord and based in Los Angeles, California. Concord Records was launched in 1995 as an imprint designed to reach beyond the company's foundational Concord Jazz label. The label's artists have ...

which was renamed them as the Concord Music Group. A few of the Kicking Mule titles were reissued by Intersound, and a few others were retained by Grossman and reissued by Shanachie Records. Kicking Mule is handled by Ace Records.

Catalog

100 series - fingerpicking guitar

200 series - other stringed instruments

300 series - Blues, jazz and miscellaneous

References

External links