Impulses! Records

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Brand logo of the company Impulse! Records

Impulses! is a record label specializing in jazz music . Today it belongs to UMG Companies (Universal Music Group).

Development of the label

In 1960 the producer Creed Taylor succeeded in convincing his record company ABC-Paramount , the new jazz label Impulse! to build up. Taylor created the slogan "The New Wave In Jazz" and between 1961 and 1976 the label was able to fully live up to this claim. Many of the most exciting and innovative jazz artists of the time were able to realize their ideas here - without being exposed to the usual commercial constraints - between the striking black and orange, as well as a third color or white, designed hinged album covers. Thanks to the modern label policy and the good capital resources of the ABC group, internationally known artists such as John Coltrane , Coleman Hawkins , Shelly Manne , Freddie Hubbard , Art Blakey , Charles Mingus , Shirley Scott , Archie Shepp , Yusef Lateef , Sonny Rollins became within a short time , Ornette Coleman and Chico Hamilton signed . This is how Impulse became! one of the most influential and important labels of the 1960s.

Above all, the work of John Coltrane (for example his album A Love Supreme ) should become the heart and draft horse of the Impulse! Catalog. In recognition of the saxophonist's artistic work and economic success , the label was to name its four-part CD box with a summary of its catalog, released in 2006, The House That Trane Built - The Story of Impulse Records . When Coltrane was signed, ABC-Paramount hired producer Bob Thiele and sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder for the outgoing Creed Taylor, who had been poached by Verve ; the two had a lasting impact on the overall style of the label and its publications in the years up to 1969.

After the departure of Bob Thiele, who founded the Flying Dutchman label , Ed Michel became a producer at Impulse in the summer of 1969 , which moved its headquarters to Los Angeles at that time . Michel's era includes publications by Pharoah Sanders ( Jewels of Thought , 1970 and Thembi , 1971), Gato Barbieri , Sam Rivers , Archie Shepp , Alice Coltrane ( Ptah, the El Daoud , 1970), Ahmad Jamal ( The Awakening , 1970), Keith Jarrett ( Fort Yawuh , 1972) as well as editions from the estate of John Coltrane , such as Sun Ship or Interstellar Space and the publication of the Saturn Recordings by Sun Ra from the 1950s and 1960s. In 1971, Steve Backer joined the group and headed the promotion department on the east coast.

Ed Michel stayed with the Impulse label until 1975 when Esmond Edwards replaced him; this published the last four albums of Keith Jarrett, but attempted to give the company a slightly changed identity with the release of blues albums by Jimmy Ponder , Bobby Bland and BB King . With the sale of ABC Records to MCA , the activities of the Impulse label ended. A last commercial success was the album Hard Work by saxophonist John Handy in 1976. Last releases in 1977 were the albums Byablue by Keith Jarrett, First Meditations by John Coltrane and finally Change, Change, Change - Live at the Roxy by Les McCann .

The label made a brief comeback under the auspices of MCA in the mid-1980s. Most successful here was probably the tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker , who reached top positions in the charts and received a Grammy .

From 1995 Tommy LiPuma reactivated the label. Since then, numerous Impulse! Classics have been digitally remastered with the original covers and accompanying texts and re-released on CD. In addition, new albums by artists such as McCoy Tyner , Horace Silver , Danilo Pérez , Eric Reed , Donald Harrison , Gregory Tardy and the pianist and singer Diana Krall were released. Impulses! is now under the roof of Verve , where it was reactivated again in 2014 by Jean-Philippe Allard for new recordings of chamber music jazz, for example by Ran Blake , Charlie Haden / Jim Hall or Kenny Barron / Dave Holland . 2018/19 was published by Impulse! rediscovered recordings by John Coltrane, Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album and Blue World .

Major albums

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The selection was based on the book by Ashley Kahn and the work The Penguin Guide to Jazz by Richard Cook and Brian Morton, 2001.