Verve Records

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Verve Records

Parent company	Universal Music Group
Founded	1956
Founder(s)	Norman Granz
Distributing label	Verve Records (In the US)
Genre(s)	Jazz
Country of Origin	US
Website	Official site of Verve Records

Verve Records is an American Jazz record label, founded by Norman Granz in 1956, which absorbed the catalogues of his earlier labels: Norgran Records and Clef Records (founded 1953).

Today, the label is owned by Universal Music Group.

1 History
2 List of early Verve artists
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

The Verve catalog grew throughout the 1950s and 1960s to include most of the major figures in jazz, though Granz tended to record established artists, sometimes in decline, rather than new talent. It also recognized the potential of comedy albums, producing Spike Jones' first LP, Dinner Music For People Who Aren't Very Hungry in 1956 and several best-selling albums featuring live performances by Shelley Berman beginning in 1960.

Granz sold Verve to MGM in 1961 for $3 million. Creed Taylor took over as producer, bringing the bossa nova to America with the Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd LP Jazz Samba as well as Getz/Gilberto. Shortly before leaving Verve in 1967, Creed created a folk music subsidiary named Verve Folkways (later renamed Verve Forecast). But by now, new recordings began to decline & would cease altogether in the early 1970s.

In the seventies, the label became part of the PolyGram label group, at this point incorporating the Mercury/EmArcy jazz catalog, which Phillips, part owners of PolyGram had earlier acquired. Verve Records became the Verve Music Group after PolyGram was merged with Seagram's Universal Music Group in 1998. The jazz holdings from the merged companies were folded into this sub-group.

The label was revived in the mid-1980s for new releases. Yet a more important focus for the new Verve Records is the reissuing of its back catalogue, in ever more imaginative ways. The "Verve By Request" label began to reissue many original Verve bossa nova titles on CD in the late 1990s.

Since 2002, the label has released a series of Verve Remixed compilation discs where classic tracks by Verve artists are remixed by contemporary electronic music DJs. By the mid-2000s, there was an extensive "Verve Vault" section on iTunes.

Several arrangers of note worked for the Verve label while it thrived in the 1960s, including Claus Ogerman and Oliver Nelson. Claus Ogerman, by his own admission in Gene Lees' Jazzletter publication, arranged some 60-70 albums for Verve under Creed Taylor's direction from 1963-1967.[1]

Some of the record labels currently in the Verve Music Group.