Frank Zappa International Festival Guide - Downbeat

The
News
Views From Around The Music World
Inside
14 / Riffs
/ Third Man Records
16 / Maria
Schneider
17 / Portland Jazz
Festival
18 / European Scene
19 / Jakob Bro
Sony Masterworks
Resurrects Historic
OKeh Records
Sony Masterworks will soon be offering new wine in a very old bottle.
OKeh Records, one of the most storied labels in record history,
will be rejoining the Sony family of active brands. Nearly a century
after its founding, the imprint that invented the “race” record, organized
the first field recording, produced the world’s first jazz “festival” and laid
the cornerstone of the jazz canon will become Sony’s platform for new and
established artists of varying global backgrounds. Already signed is saxophonist
Craig Handy, and forthcoming projects include recordings from
guitarist Bill Frisell, saxophonist David Sanborn and pianist Bob James,
and John Medeski, whose solo piano album comes out April 9.
In a time of industry shrinkage, why did Sony choose OKeh, a label
Columbia shut down 44 years ago “History is one reason,” said Wulf
Müller, jazz consultant for Sony Classical and overseer of the relaunch.
OKeh has plenty of that; only Columbia and Victor have longer active lifelines.
The label was founded in 1918 by Otto Heinemann, who created the
original OkeH brand from his initials separated by an Indian word meaning
“it is so.” In 1920 Heinemann redesigned the trademark.
In the spring of that same year, OKeh recorded Mamie Smith, a black
vaudeville entertainer. OKeh saw no reason to highlight her race, but to the
black press it was big news. Word spread, and soon the company noticed
sales spikes in black population centers. When Smith returned to record
“Crazy Blues,” that August, black buyers grabbed it up by the thousands.
In an America segregated by race, OKeh had discovered a deep vein of
African-American listeners eager to buy music that few whites even knew
existed. Capitalism took it from there. Others flocked to sign black talent,
while OKeh supplemented its pop line with its 8000 series, the first catalog
specifically targeted to the new African-American market. The black
press called them “race” records. “Race” Recordings Director Richard M.
Jones brought to OKeh many of the leading blues and jazz artists of the
period, including Lonnie Johnson, Chippie Hill, King Oliver and Louis
Armstrong. During the 1920s, OKeh was “the single most important
source of black music,” according to historian and producer Bob Porter.
On Nov. 11, 1926, OKeh was bought by Columbia Records. For the next
several years, it enjoyed a parallel existence with Columbia’s own pop and
14000 race lines, continuing with the Armstrong groups as well as Bix
Beiderbecke, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang and Bessie Smith in her final session.
The Depression hit Columbia and OKeh hard. OKeh’s output slowed to
A 1982 Columbia
LP cover saluting
the 1934–42
"Chicago Blues"
period of
its Okeh
heritage
Courtesy of john mcdonough
a trickle. By the end of 1933, Columbia was sold to the American Record
Corporation. The last OKeh recordings of the time came out in 1935, and
for the next five years, the label was dead. Meanwhile, in December 1938,
the Columbia Broadcasting Company bought ARC, promptly restored
Columbia Records as a premium brand, and in 1940 revived OKeh, releasing
records priced at 35 cents with no “race” coding.
But OKeh never recovered from war-time shortages and the two-year,
union-driven recording ban and was retired in 1946. CBS revived it five years
later as a kind of farm club for the company’s premium Columbia brand. In
1953 CBS created Epic, which siphoned off most of OKeh’s pop talent, leaving
it to play in the emerging rhythm & blues field. It continued through the
’60s as an Epic subsidiary and was quietly phased out in 1970. In 1982 Epic
assembled an eight-LP OKeh retrospective emphasizing its blues and r&b
history. When CBS sold off its record business in 1987, Okeh was passed to
Sony Music, which briefly revived the label again in 1995.
The “new” OKeh, now under Sony Masterworks, will be CBS/Sony’s
fourth attempt to make this legendary soufflé rise. “Ultimately there is a rich
tradition of documenting a breadth of creative music forms,” Müller said.
“Therefore, OKeh today can only be an open label for globally created, quality
improvised music.”
—John McDonough
MAY 2013 DOWNBEAT 13