Liberty Records
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Liberty Records was an United States based record label. It was started by chairman Simon Waronker in 1955 with Alvin Bennett as president, and Theodore Keep as chief engineer.
In 1957, Liberty acquired the jazz label Pacific Records. In 1963, the Liberty Records label was sold to Avnet (an electronics corporation) for $12 million. Avnet also bought Blue Note Records, Imperial Records, Dolton Records, Aladdin Records and Minit Records. After 2 years of loses, Avnet sold the labels back to Al Bennett for $8 million. In 1966, a reissue label Sunset Records was started to deal with previously issued records from the new labels.
In 1968, Liberty was bought by Transamerica Corporation (an insurance company) and combined with their other label United Artists Records. Transamerica was unfamiliar with the recording industry; Alvin Bennett was fired after six months and things evolved from bad to worse. The company shut down Dolton and transferred Dolton's artists to Liberty; later they shut down Imperial and Minit and transferred their artists to Liberty. Finally in 1971, all releases were shifted to United Artists and Liberty Records was no more.
Artie Mogull and Jerry Rubinstein acquired United Artists and Liberty Records in 1978 (with money they borrowed from Capitol Records). In February 1979 EMI Records foreclosed on them and has owned the rights of the labels since then.
Initially, EMI used Liberty to reissue the Liberty and Imperial catalogues. From 1980 until 1984, Capitol used Liberty as a country label, featuring such artists as Kenny Rogers. In 1992 EMI renamed its Capitol-Nashville label to Liberty Records (featuring Garth Brooks).
Trivia
Ross Bagdasarian "AKA" David Seville (entertainer), named his Chipmunks characters after Liberty Records executives; Alvin Bennett (president), Simon Waronker (founder/owner), and Theodore Keep (chief engineer).