Stateside Records
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Stateside Records | |
|---|---|
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| Parent company | EMI |
| Founded | 1962 |
| Founder | Fred Oxon |
| Distributing label | EMI Records (In the UK) |
| Genre | various |
| Country of origin | UK |
| Official website | http://www.statesiderecords.com |
Stateside ($tateside) Records is a British record label which initially released licenced American recordings and is now a reissue label.
It was formed in 1962 by EMI as a replacement for the Top Rank label (originally the Rank Organisation's label), which had folded. EMI hired former Top Rank label head Fred Oxon to run the label and compete with Decca Records' rival London label. While Top Rank's British acts (such as John Leyton) were assigned to EMI's Columbia and HMV labels, Stateside continued to issue records from its American suppliers, such as Tamla-Motown-Gordy, Amy, 20th Century Fox, Scepter, Vee-Jay and A&M. Its first hit was Palisades Park by Freddy Cannon, which was licenced from Swan Records. It was through EMI's relationship with Vee-Jay and Swan that pre-1964 recordings by The Beatles were released by those labels in the USA when EMI's American subsidiary Capitol Records turned them down.
In the late 1960s, when EMI set up long term licence contracts with US labels like Motown Records, MCA Records and Asylum Records, it no longer needed Stateside, and the label retired quietly in 1973, along with most of the company's pop music labels, in favour of the new EMI Records label.
Stateside has retrospectively attracted interest from northern soul fans, mainly for its role in passing on American Motown recordings to the UK market. Stateside issued 45 of these prior to the establishment of the UK Tamla Motown label, including the number 1 "Baby Love" in 1964.
In the 1980s, the Stateside label was revived as a catalogue reissue label specialising in American recordings from Capitol Records and other labels EMI acquired over the years.
