GRP Records

GRP Records
The GRP Records label's logos.
Parent company	Universal Music Group
Founded	1978
Founder	Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen
Distributor(s)	Verve Records (In the US)
Genre	Jazz
Country of origin	US
Official website	Official website of GRP Records

GRP Records is an American jazz record company, owned by Universal Music Group and operates through its Verve Music Group. The company's name has had different meanings. In its early days, it stood for "Grusin/Rosen Productions," after the founders. By the middle 1990s, after Grusin and Rosen left the company, GRP used the marketing slogan "Great Records Period."

History

1978–87

GRP Records was founded in New York by keyboard player Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen in 1978. Previously, the duo had formed Grusin/Rosen Productions as a freelance production team in 1972, producing records for labels such as RCA, Blue Note and CTI with artists who included Jon Lucien, Noel Pointer, Earl Klugh and Patti Austin. Between 1978 and 1982, Grusin/Rosen Productions operated under a label agreement with Clive Davis at Arista Records, which was known as "Arista/GRP". They achieved success with a number of artists during this period, most notably trumpeter Tom Browne and his jazz-funk hit "Funkin' for Jamaica". Embracing an all-digital recording philosophy, GRP made early use of Soundstream's digital recording technology, resulting in Dave Grusin's Mountain Dance (released August 1980), one of the earliest all-digital recordings outside of classical music. Latin flute player Dave Valentin and singer Angela Bofill were the first acts signed to the label.^[1]

In 1982, GRP broke away from the Arista umbrella and began operating as an independent label. They quickly became one of the first US labels to release all of their titles on compact disc under the moniker "The Digital Master Company". The label achieved success on radio in the New Adult Contemporary (NAC) format on stations such as CD101.9 in New York and The Wave in Los Angeles.

1987 on

In 1987, GRP Records signed a distribution deal with MCA Records; GRP was distributed throughout Europe during this time by a coalition of independent distributors coordinated by the label's Zurich office. MCA Music Entertainment (later renamed Universal Music Group) bought GRP in February 1990 for approximately $40 million. After the acquisition, the label was temporarily rebranded "MCA-GRP Records," and handled all of MCA's own jazz operations; reissuing numerous classic jazz titles from MCA's Impulse, Chess and Decca catalogs. As Billboard′s number-one Contemporary Jazz label for five consecutive years, GRP Records was the major forerunner for the success of the smooth jazz format. Founders Grusin and Rosen left in 1995 and were replaced by producer Tommy LiPuma.

Upon the Universal Music Group's acquisition of PolyGram in 1998, GRP became one of a series of labels managed by the Verve Music Group. Its output today is primarily smooth jazz.

GRP currently manages the jazz back catalog that Universal had already owned prior to the PolyGram merger, except for what was once the jazz holdings of ABC Records, which are currently issued on Impulse! Records (which is now reissue-only) – this includes the jazz back catalog of Famous Music Group (which ABC purchased from Gulf+Western in 1974), and the Arista-distributed GRP recordings which is controlled by Sony Music Entertainment.

Discography

See also

• 1978 in music

References

External links

• The Grusin/Rosen Records Story
• Official GRP Records site
• GRP Records' MySpace page
• Official site of co-founder Larry Rosen
• A free podcast featuring GRP in March 2009