Colin Larkin

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Colin Larkin

Colin Larkin (born December 15, 1949 in Dagenham , Essex ) is a British music encyclopedia, author of books on popular music and publisher, founder of the Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

Life

Larkin grew up in the working class (his place of birth is influenced by the Ford factory), his father was a plumber and part-time showman assistant. He completed a degree in graphic design for book design (typography, etc.) and worked for a long time for the Pearson Longman publishing house , where he took on a leading position in book design. In addition, from 1967 he began to work as a music journalist for popular music . In 1976 he founded his own publishing house, Scorpion Publishing , in which he also published art books (oriental carpets, Islamic architecture, etc.) as well as those about workers' history .

Larkin built up an extensive collection of music books and magazines as well as records in the field of popular music, and in the 1980s he decided to publish an encyclopedia of popular music that would do the same as the Grove Dictionary for classical music. He sold his Scorpion Publishing in 1989 and founded a new publisher, Square One Books , for the encyclopedia project . In 1992 the first edition of his Encyclopedia of Popular Music appeared . He had built up the database for this from 1990. His publishing house developed its own software for the encyclopedia based on the 4th Dimension database software . By 2000 he had published over 50 other books based on his music database, including numerous for Guinness Publishing and, after its acquisition, for Virgin . The titles were accordingly Guinness Who's Who of Jazz (2nd edition 1995), The Virgin Encyclopedia of Jazz (3rd edition 1999) and analogously for other styles of music.

In addition to the encyclopedias, he also published musical biographies by Bob Dylan , Frank Zappa , Eric Clapton and other books on popular music, among others .

In 1997 he sold his publishing house to the American company Muze , which licensed music data to Amazon and Yahoo among others . Larkin remained the editor with a handful of staff. In 2008 the Encyclopedia of Popular Music was given up by the publisher and only the databases were maintained. This also ended Larkin's collaboration with Muze. He also maintains a company that compiles music data and lists of the best (Best Things on Earth) in the media sector, later also for apps.

Encyclopedia of Popular Music

The first edition appeared in 1992 (Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 4 volumes, Guinness Publishing), the last in 2006 in ten volumes (Oxford UP). Around 80 employees were involved.

In 2011 an Amazon Kindle edition was published by Omnibus Press based on the 2007 edition. The third edition was published in 1999 by Macmillan in 8 volumes. A 10-volume edition was published by Oxford University Press in 2006, but abridged editions have also appeared.

Fonts (selection)

As editor:

  • The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 4th edition, 10 volumes, Oxford University Press 2006
  • The Encyclopedia of Popular Music: Concise 5th Edition, Omnibus Press 2007.
  • All Time Top 1000 Albums, Guinness Publishing 1994, 3rd edition Virgin Books 2000

In addition, he published various spin-off encyclopedias on various branches of popular music.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Larkin, Colin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British music encyclopaedist and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Dagenham