Reprise Records
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| Reprise Records | |
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| Parent company | Warner Music Group |
| Founded | 1960 |
| Founder | Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin |
| Distributing label | Warner Bros. Records (U.S.) WEA (outside the U.S.) |
| Genre | Various |
| Country of origin | U.S. |
| Official website | Official Web site of Reprise Records |
Reprise Records is an American record label founded by Frank Sinatra in 1960 which is now owned by Warner Music Group, operated through Warner Bros. Records.
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[edit] Company history
Reprise was formed in 1960[1] by Frank Sinatra in order to allow more artistic freedom for his own recordings. Hence, he garnered the nickname "The Chairman of the Board." Having left Capitol/EMI and, after trying to buy Norman Granz's Verve Records, the first album Sinatra released on Reprise was Ring-A-Ding-Ding. Fellow Rat Pack members Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. also moved to the label. Stand-up comedian Redd Foxx also recorded for the label during its fledgling years. As CEO of Reprise, Frank Sinatra recruited a host of his cronies for the fledgling label. The original roster from 1961 to 63 included such names as Bing Crosby, Jo Stafford, Rosemary Clooney and Esquivel! The label still issues any Sinatra work recorded while on the label and, after his death in 1998, it had great success with his greatest hits collections.
One of the label's founding principles under Sinatra's leadership was that each artist would have full creative freedom, and at some point complete ownership of their work; including publishing rights. This is the reason why recordings of early Reprise artists (Dean Martin, Jimi Hendrix, The Kinks, etc.) are (in most cases) currently distributed through other labels. In Martin's case, his Reprise recordings were out of print for nearly 20 years before a deal was struck with Capitol Records.
Reprise was sold to Warner Bros. Records in early 1963. Many of the older artists were dropped when Sinatra sold control of the label to Warner Bros. in 1963. At that point, label executives began targeting younger acts beginning with the Kinks in 1964. Reprise would later add teen-oriented pop acts like Dino, Desi, & Billy and Nancy Sinatra, before moving almost exclusively to pop-oriented music in the late 1960s. In the time since, Warner Bros. has often treated Reprise as a bit of a secondary parent label, as many of its subsidiary labels, such as Straight and Kinetic, have had their records released in conjunction with Reprise.
In the late 1970s, as Joni Mitchell and Captain Beefheart had left the label, Sinatra expressed a wish to be the sole artist on Reprise, but Neil Young refused to leave.[citation needed] Mitchell returned to the label in the late 1980s after a stint on Geffen Records but now records for Hear Music. Young remains on Reprise to this day, though he also recorded for Geffen in the 1980s.
Warner Brothers shut down the Reprise imprint in 1977 , and all existing Reprise artists were tranferred to Warner Brothers . Although Warner continued to issue older catalog albums on Reprise , there was no new Reprise product until the label was reactivated in 1988,. with several successful Warner Brothers artists , including the B-52s and Randy Travis, being transferred to that label .
Today, in addition to Young, it is home to such artists as Michael Bublé, The Smashing Pumpkins, Avenged Sevenfold, The Used, Mastodon, Eric Clapton, Green Day, Fleetwood Mac, Josh Groban, My Chemical Romance and Disturbed. Reprise is also the North American label for British band Depeche Mode.
It was formerly home to the Jimi Hendrix and the Barenaked Ladies' catalogs in the U.S.
[edit] Reprise Records artists
[edit] Subsidiaries
- Kinetic Records (1992–2000)
- Grand Jury Records (1990–1993)
- Vapor Records (1995–present; current status unknown)
- Elementree Records (1995–2000)
- In Bloom Records (1998–2000)
- Chrysalis Records (1969-1972)
