EmArcy Records
EmArcy Records is a jazz sub-label of Mercury Records founded in 1954 by Bob Shad and Irving Green in Chicago .
The name comes from the US phonetic transcription for the initial consonants of the Mercury Record Company.
The reason for the establishment was the separation of the record company Clef Records from Norman Granz in 1953, which were previously distributed via Mercury. Irving Green hired Bob Shad to build a jazz sub-label EmArcy. Bob Shad, who turned to pop music, was replaced by Jack Tracy at EmArcy in 1958 .
After Philips took over Mercury in 1962, the sub-label was abandoned and only reactivated in the 1980s. For a short time Tracy produced jazz for the Limelight sub-label. Today EmArcy is part of Decca Records in the Universal Music Group , which Mercury took over in the 1990s (after previously with Philips and Polygram ). The catalog is now partly with Verve Records .
Here, among others, Cannonball Adderley , Quincy Jones (who began as an arranger for Dinah Washington, but from 1955 worked at Mercury, for example, as a producer, from 1961 as head of A & R and where he became vice director in 1964), Ben Webster , Maynard Ferguson , Helen Merrill , Erroll Garner , Sarah Vaughan ( Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown 1954, Sassy 1956, Swingin Easy 1957), the Clifford Brown / Max Roach quintet ( Clifford Brown and Max Roach 1955, Study in Brown 1955, Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street 1956), Herb Geller , Paul Quinichette , Gerry Mulligan , Terry Gibbs , Billy Eckstine , Roy Eldridge , Lionel Hampton and Dinah Washington (first release of the label in 1954 Dinah Jams , Sings Fats Waller 1957). In 1986 the Art Tatum recording 20th Century Piano Genius was released .
Some of the artists were also produced on the Mercury label, Sarah Vaughan z. B. for jazz at EmArcy and other pop publications at Mercury itself. Even after the founding of EmArcy, jazz was also published at Mercury itself.