A&M Records

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A&M Records
Herb Alpert, center, 1974
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass: This Guy's In Love With You on a single - record of A & M Records

A&M Records is an American independent label . It was founded in Los Angeles in 1962 by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss . First they chose the name Carnival Records , but after two single releases they had to find out that there was already a record label of the same name, which is why they renamed themselves A&M (Alpert and Moss).

The first A&M release was the instrumental The Lonely Bull by Herb Alpert and Tijuana Brass and it became a chart hit. Both the single and the album of the same name reached the top 10 of the US charts. Alongside Alpert, Waylon Jennings , Sérgio Mendes and We Five were among the label's early stars.

In 1967, in addition to the Hollywood address, another branch was opened in New York. Artists like Burt Bacharach , Procol Harum and Joe Cocker were hired. Annually they had around 20 singles and up to 40 albums in the charts and collected gold records and Grammys .

Until the 1970s, A&M releases were distributed abroad by other labels. In 1970, A&M Records of Canada, Ltd. founded, followed in 1977 by A&M Records of Europe. In the meantime, there have also been special imprints for soul (Omen Records, 1964–1966), jazz (Horizon Records, 1974–1978) and dance (Vendetta Records, 1988–1990).

The 1970s started with stars like the Carpenters , Cat Stevens , Quincy Jones and Carole King . The publishing house had 300 employees in the mid-1970s, and sales rose to USD 100 million. In addition to gold and platinum records from 1976 onwards, Grammys continued to be won every year. Only in three years of its history did the label miss out on the music award.

In 1977 the Sex Pistols had a brief interlude at A&M. They had been signed on March 9th, but the next day the Pistols acted so badly in the press that the label bought itself out of the contract on March 16th. The single God Save The Queen , planned as an A&M release , soon became a number one hit in the UK. The title EMI , the personal settlement with their hated new record label , ends with a farewell to A&M.

In 1978 A&M Records opened a German and a Dutch office. With The Police , Supertramp and Styx you went into the new decade. But that began with generally declining sales and so the number of signed artists was halved to around 50. In addition, an excursion into the film world began with the establishment of A&M Films .

Amy Grant , Bryan Adams , Falco , Janet Jackson and Chris de Burgh were the A&M stars of the 1980s. In addition, the extremely successful benefit single We Are The World from USA for Africa and the film soundtrack for Good Morning, Vietnam were released . It was estimated that Alpert and Moss made an annual profit of $ 14 million when they sold the A&M label to Polygram for about $ 500 million in 1989 . 1989/90 appeared the short-lived series A&M Modern Masters Jazz Series ; first production was the album Art Deco by Don Cherry .

After losing Janet Jackson to Virgin Records in 1991 , Sting and Sheryl Crow were among the most successful artists in the 1990s .

Alpert and Moss continued to work for their old label until 1993, but then left early because of the many restructurings and founded a new label (Almo Sounds) in 1994. In 1997 they received a special Grammy for their corporate philosophy. PolyGram is now part of the Universal Music Group . The A&M offices were closed and employees made redundant. 2000 ended A&M Records as an independent record label and went into "Interscope Geffen A&M Records" at Universal.

Famous performers at A&M Records

Web links