Acid Jazz Records

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For the music genre, see Acid jazz

Acid Jazz Records is the name of a record label based in east London, taking its name from Acid Jazz, a genre of jazz music. Radio and club DJ Gilles Peterson is credited with coining the phrase Acid Jazz in the late 1980s in his BBC Radio 1 biography [1].

Gilles Peterson describes a time when he DJ'd at Dingwalls Club in Camden, north west London. He said "We put on this old 7-inch by Mickey and the Soul Generation which was a rare groove record with a mad rock guitar intro and no beat. I started vari-speeding it so it sounded all warped. Chris Bangs got on the microphone and said, 'If that was acid house, this is acid jazz'. That's how acid jazz started, just a joke!"

Gilles Peterson teamed up with Eddie Piller to form Acid Jazz Records shortly afterwards. Eddie Piller had previously managed the James Taylor Quartet, and the label's first signing was the band Galliano featuring lead singer Rob Gallagher.

The first single from Acid Jazz was Frederick Lies Still from Galliano and was followed by albums by individual bands such as the Brand New Heavies, New Jersey Kings, Mother Earth, the Sandals as well as the production of compilation albums such as the Totally Wired series, and special albums dedicated to jazz, dub or compilation albums with a focus on music emerging from a particular country (for example, Sweden). Acid Jazz as a label responded flexibly to developments occurring over the 1990s and released material covering jazz (Ed Jones, Ulf Sandberg), soul (Brand New Heavies, Rose Windross, D-Influence), jazz rap (Humble Souls, Sandals), retro-kitsch (Corduroy) and dub (Hazardous Dub Company). Despite releasing a number of Latin inspired albums, Snowboy produced a number of twelve inch singles reminiscent of 1970s soul, such as Lucky Fellow (with Noel Mckoy) and Girl Overboard (featuring Anna Ross).

The compilation album, The Story of Acid Jazz, (Various Artists) chronicles some of the label's artists over the years: Format - Double CD, Catalogue No - METRDCD507.