King Records
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King Records is the name of at least two different record labels.
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King Records, Japan
KingRecordJapan.jpg
The oldest King Records is a Japanese record company, founded in 1931 as a division of the Japanese music publishing house Kodansha before being spun off in the early 1950s. The label has had huge success with Two-Mix, Miko Nakayama, Megumi Hayashibara, Masami Okui, Yuki Uchida and Yuko Ogura. Now one of Japan's largest record companies not to be owned by a multinational entity, it is headquartered in Tokyo.
It has Starchild label for animation music and film managed by Toshimichi Otsuki who is famous or notorious as animation producer.
External link
- King Records Japan homepage (http://www.kingrecords.co.jp/)
King Records, USA
The other King Records was a United States based record label, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, started in 1943 by Syd Nathan, specializing in country music, at the time still known as "Hillbilly music". King advertised "If it's a King, It's a Hillbilly -- If it's a Hillbilly, it's a King". King artists included Homer and Jethro, Grandpa Jones, the Delmore Brothers, and Reno and Smiley whose song "I'm Using My Bible for a Road Map" was one of the labels important early hits.
The company also had a "Race Records" (African American) label, Queen Records. In the 1950s, this side of the business outpaced the hillbilly recordings, as King Records was highly successful with R&B artists like Roy Brown, Jack Dupree, Otis Williams & the Charms, James Brown and Johnny Guitar Watson (the latter two distributed via sister label Federal Records). King purchaced other record labels, including Deluxe Records (in 1952) and Bethlehem Records.
When Nathan died in 1968 the label was acquired by Hall Neely's Star-Day Company. Neely relaunched the label as Star-day King Records. The legendary songwriter duo Leiber & Stoller bought the label in 1970 but sold it soon afterwards to Gusto Records. Since 2001, U.S. based record label Collectables Records has been remastering and reissuing the King Records catalog.