Esquire Records
Esquire Records was a British jazz and blues record label founded in 1953.
The Esquire Records label and the Tempo label, which was founded a little later, belonged to the well-known record companies of English post-war jazz; Esquire was the first label to release Modern Jazz in England on record in the UK.
Esquire was founded in 1947 by Carlo Krahmer and Peter Newbrook and initially published recordings by Victor Feldman , Jimmy Deuchar and Tommy Whittle . For Esquire recording artists were mainly the musicians who played at Club Eleven in London, such as Ronnie Scott , Johnny Dankworth , Dennis Rose , Tony Crombie , Don Rendell , Laurie Morgan , Tommy Pollard and Tony Kinsey. Esquire has also released recordings by American labels, such as Charlie Parker's recordings for Dial Records, as well as Al Haig , Chubby Jackson , Cy Laurie , Ray McKinley , Tyree Glenn , Benny Green , Zoot Sims , the Modern Jazz Quartet and the Prestige Catalog with music by Miles Davis , Gene Ammons, and others; also titles from the Chicago blues label Delmark and the Swedish Metronome label. The company introduced Swedish jazz in Great Britain and brought out records by Lars Gullin , Bengt Hallberg and Arne Domnérus .
In the company's early years, the catalog consisted of a series of 78-rpm shellac records ; In 1952 Esquire released the first 25 cm long-playing record of modern jazz. In this format she published around 25 albums by 1956, mostly in 10-inch format. In this period were also around 40 EPs brought to market, as in 1956 St.Thomas / Strode Rode of Sonny Rollins . Early 12-inch LPs included Tenor Conclave by John Coltrane and Humphrey Lyttelton's album Delving Back with Humph (1959).
The record company existed until the mid-1970s; after Carlo Krahmers death it was continued by his widow Greta. In the 1980s, Peter Newbrook, who died in 2009, took over the republication of the Esquire Jazz catalog in a series of LPs called "Esquire Treasure Chest".