James William Guercio

James William Guercio (* 1945 in Chicago , Illinois ) is an American musician, songwriter , record producer and former owner of the record company Caribou Records.

Early years

Guercio moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s and established himself there initially as a studio musician, then as a songwriter. He achieved his first success as a songwriter with the song "Distant Shores", which became a top 30 hit for the duo Chad & Jeremy . He used the name "Jim Guercio" for his compositions.

Guercio was signed to Columbia Records as a producer and worked with The Buckinghams .

Chicago and other successes

During his time in college, Guercio became friends with Walter Parazaider , who invited him in 1968 to listen to his new band "The Big Thing". Guercio was enthusiastic about the band and offered to act as their manager and producer. The band moved to Los Angeles and called themselves - at Guercio's request - The Chicago Transit Authority. While working with this band on their debut album, he also produced Blood's second album , Sweat & Tears , which earned him the "Album of the Year" award.

When the real Chicago Transit Authority wanted to bring a lawsuit against the band in 1970, Guercio simply changed the band's name to "Chicago". The band became a huge commercial success. Guercio produced a total of 11 albums for the group (see main article Chicago (band) ).

He also worked with lesser-known bands.

Caribou Ranch / Caribou Records

In 1972 Guercio built the Caribou Ranch in the Rocky Mountains , a 16 km ² property on which he included a state-of-the-art recording studio . In addition to Chicago, Elton John , Deep Purple , Phil Collins and many other stars also used this property for recordings. Soon afterwards he founded his own record company, Caribou Records, which used Columbia’s distribution channels for which Guercio continued to work.

In 1975 Guercio was the manager of The Beach Boys and made some recordings with them that were never released. He signed their drummer Dennis Wilson as a soloist and released his album Pacific Ocean Blue on the Caribou Records label. A year later, the entire band switched to his record label, which released their records on Caribou from 1979 to 1985. This is also the best known obligation. Even Carl Wilson finally released two solo albums on the label.

In March 1985, a fire finally broke out on the Caribou Ranch and destroyed, among other things, the recording studio. In total, there was property damage of over $ 3 million. Guercio then withdrew from the music business, he no longer built the studio and stopped operating his record company. The archive material from Caribou Records is now owned by CBS or Sony Music .

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