Straight records
Straight Records was an American music label that the composer and rock musician Frank Zappa and his then manager Herb Cohen founded in the spring of 1969 as a sister label to their company Bizarre Records . The new label mainly released material from artists that Zappa had discovered or wanted to promote, such as records by Captain Beefheart , Alice Cooper and Tim Buckley .
history
Straight Records was based in Los Angeles. The company was part of Zappa's own entertainment group Bizarre Inc. , to which, in addition to the sister label Bizarre Records, there was also a management company, the PR and advertising agency Nifty Tough & Bitchen (NT & B), the music publisher Third Story Music , a film production company and a book publisher. Reprise Records , a sub-label of the Warner Bros. Group, took over the distribution of the Straight Records productions . The contract said that Warner could initially dispose of all Zappa productions. If the company did not use this option, Zappa was free to use the material on his ownStraight label to publish. The first releases on Straight Records were in May 1969 the album Pretties for You and the single "Reflected" / "Living" by Alice Cooper . The artist was then the life companion of the living in the Zappa household Christine Frka, as Miss Christine with the GTOs was known and on the record covers -front of Zappa album Hot Rats is displayed. Shortly afterwards the album Trout Mask Replica was released , which he had produced for his old school friend Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band .
The other artists produced by Straight Records included the GTO's, one of the first all-female bands in the history of rock music, with most of the female singers also gaining a certain fame as groupies . Tim Buckley became known as an experimental singer-songwriter . The singing quintet The Persuasions was part of the soul . The album Farewell Aldebaran , recorded with the singer-songwriter Judy Henske and her husband Jerry Yester - he was a member of The Lovin 'Spoonful until their breakup - combined the styles of folk , rock and psychedelic with one another; the couple then founded the group Rosebud , whose only album of the same name Straight was also released. The actor Mayf Nutter can be heard on three singles as a folk singer. Lord Buckley was an eccentric humorist and word artist; the recordings published posthumously by Straight date from 1956. The guitarist and singer Tim Dawe made his debut with psychedelic folk rock . The bassist and guitarist Jeff Simmons made his debut with the soundtrack to the motorcyclist film Naked Angels and then released his solo album Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up , on which Zappa not only as a producer, but also on two tracks under the pseudonym "LaMarr Bruister" appeared as a co-author and solo guitarist. Last but not least: Behind the pseudonym of the group name "Junier Mintz" of another single release ("Tears Began To Fall" / "Junier Mintz Boogie") hid the former line-up of the Mothers of Invention ; Zappa himself appeared under the pseudonym "Billy Dexter".
literature
- Barry Miles : Zappa . German edition. Rogner & Bernhard at two thousand and one. 2005. ISBN 3-8077-1010-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Article in TIME magazine (as of April 2007)
- ^ Judy Henske, Jerry Yester, Farewell Aldebaran (as of April 2007)
- ↑ Mayf Nutter (as of April 2007)
- ↑ Lord Buckley (as of April 2007)
- ↑ Tim Dawe (as of April 2007)
- ↑ Jeff Simmons (as of April 2007)
- ↑ Jeff Simmons, LaMarr Bruister (as of April 2007)
- ↑ Junier Mintz, Billy Dexter (as of April 2007)