Favorite boutique labels?

[ghost of miles]

Discussion of an upcoming Julius Hemphill reissue put me in mind of International Phonograph Inc, which then put me in mind of Mighty Quinn, both of which put out some beautifully-done, labor-of-love releases. What are some of your favorite boutique labels and reissues?

[clifford_thornton]

Thinking of LP labels here, but:

Triple Point

Eremite

Craftman

Project Re:Vinyl

Sam Records

 

Edited yesterday at 02:45 AM by clifford_thornton

[BFrank]

Intakt, Pyroclastic, Clean Feed, Pi Recordings, Resonance, Reel to Real, Black Jazz, Real Gone, Omnivore
Nessa(!)

I'm sure there are others ...

[medjuck]

Sackville.  From Dixieland to Avant Garde.

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, medjuck said:

Sackville.  From Dixieland to Avant Garde.

It really is very underrated given the quality of what they put out. I think because the best Sackville is in the less hip categories.

[Big Beat Steve]

I take it, then, that "boutique label" means COLLECTOR label, right? 

[EKE BBB]

Does Mosaic qualify as ‘boutique label’? 😉

[Big Beat Steve]

If it is smaller collector labels (that cater to niche segments within the niche market of jazz ) that are meant here, then I'd mention Sonorama and Be!Jazz as well. 

[Late]

Frog (UK), Oracle, Pearl

[clifford_thornton]

3 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

I take it, then, that "boutique label" means COLLECTOR label, right? 

that's what I took it to mean -- high quality, smallish-run contemporary labels. 

If I were to add CDs, Nessa, Balance Point Acoustics, ugEXPLODE, Corbett vs. Dempsey, and Another Timbre would be up there as well.

LPs, I forgot to add Open Mouth, Daksina, and Metaphon (these are not jazz).

[JSngry]

Wasn't Mighty Quinn somehow connected to the Cucuna/EMI bloodline somehow?

[Kevin Bresnahan]

52 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Wasn't Mighty Quinn somehow connected to the Cucuna/EMI bloodline somehow?

Yes. Jerry Roche, the founder of Mighty Quinn Productions, worked at Mosaic for 13 years. He had the bad luck of diving into the CD reissue game right as the market was loosing steam.

[JSngry]

They only did EMI-owned material, right?

The did good work.

[felser]

Rhino Handmade and Hip-o Select did good work a couple decades ago,

[EKE BBB]

7 hours ago, Late said:

Frog (UK), Oracle, Pearl

… plus Retrieval 

https://www.challengerecords.com/catalogue/13/Retrieval

[Big Beat Steve]

58 minutes ago, EKE BBB said:

… plus Retrieval 

https://www.challengerecords.com/catalogue/13/Retrieval

... and Archeophone, in that segment of the market. 
Not only for what must be about the most fitting label name if you reissue really old music. 

[Late]

4 hours ago, EKE BBB said:

… plus Retrieval 

And, for classical music, Opus Kura.

I also really like the Harlequin label, where you can find -->

[Big Beat Steve]

Yes, Harlequin was nice  - I'm saying "was" because it's been a long time since the Interstate conglomerate (Krazy Kat, Harlequin, Country Routes a.o.) put out any new reissues.

[EKE BBB]

3 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Yes, Harlequin was nice  - I'm saying "was" because it's been a long time since the Interstate conglomerate (Krazy Kat, Harlequin, Country Routes a.o.) put out any new reissues.

Jazz Oracle catalogue was taken over by Upbeat. Their last release (West Coast Jazz 1922-1927) dates from 2016.

Frog Records website is alive, but the last release I have been able to identify dates from 2022 (Various – The Frog Blues & Jazz Annual No 6).

Retrieval is now part of the Challenge Records emporium, and their latest CD, to my knowledge, was issued in 2018 (Irving Mills And His Hotsy Totsy Gang – 1930).

Not a good time for this sort of "boutique labels" in the early jazz niche. 

On the contrary, it looks like Archeophone Records is alive and well...

Edited 12 hours ago by EKE BBB

[mikeweil]

Ekkehart Fleischhammer of Sonorama Records told me the market for vintage jazz reissues seems to die out with the corresponding generation of collectors. He also deals with second hand vinyl and says noone buys this stuff anymore. 

There are tons of non-licensed fake reissues sold on the record fairs he visits, it isn't fun anymore. His least selling vault issue, btw. is the LP/CD with Brew Moore live and radio recordings.

But the music is very good, Brew always swings more than the rest of the band!

[clifford_thornton]

45 minutes ago, mikeweil said:

Ekkehart Fleischhammer of Sonorama Records told me the market for vintage jazz reissues seems to die out with the corresponding generation of collectors. He also deals with second hand vinyl and says noone buys this stuff anymore. 

 

I am not sure that is accurate...

[Rabshakeh]

52 minutes ago, mikeweil said:

Ekkehart Fleischhammer of Sonorama Records told me the market for vintage jazz reissues seems to die out with the corresponding generation of collectors. 

What is the "corresponding generation"? Does he mean that each generation has its own list of prized vintage jazz reissues? Or that they just buy the jazz of their youth? 

[mikeweil]

He observed the younger people under 35 he sees at his and neighbouring stands on the vinyl events show no interest in jazz before 1950

Maybe it is different in the US. It is a niche audience, for sure.

[ghost of miles]

21 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

... and Archeophone, in that segment of the market. 
Not only for what must be about the most fitting label name if you reissue really old music. 

I was going to mention Off The Record, but then realized that it is (or was) an imprint of Archeophone.

Apologies if the initial post was a bit vague. Certainly labels such as Mosaic, Nessa, and Hep fit the definition, in terms of being small operations devoted to specialized jazz reissues and releases--it's just that their longevity and extensive catalogues almost make them "too big to be boutique" at this point. 

1 hour ago, mikeweil said:

Ekkehart Fleischhammer of Sonorama Records told me the market for vintage jazz reissues seems to die out with the corresponding generation of collectors. He also deals with second hand vinyl and says noone buys this stuff anymore. 

There are tons of non-licensed fake reissues sold on the record fairs he visits, it isn't fun anymore. His least selling vault issue, btw. is the LP/CD with Brew Moore live and radio recordings.

But the music is very good, Brew always swings more than the rest of the band!

 

This is my anecdotal sense as well. There will be exceptions, of course (a few years ago it seemed a # of musicians in the improvisatory/avant-garde community were exploring a renewed interest in hot jazz of the 1920s), and young dancers often seek out music from the swing era. But once the living generations of artists and their fanbases are gone, the interest in the music seems to decline even more.

[Niko]

when I was about 39,  I once met Mr Fleischhammer at a record fair... somewhere in a corner, he'd hidden the box with all his CDs, including that Brew Moore incredibly cheap, memory says 3 Euro... I bought quite a few of those CDs and said something like "why do you price them like this?" because I would have thought, there's no good reason to go below 5 or 6... the number of additional buyers you gain by reducing the price of an amazing Brew Moore cd from, say, 5 to 3 must be negligible... the ones who know, know, they may not be large in number, but... and he said something like "I wasn't even sure that whether it made sense to bring CDs to an LP-centric fair like this one"... I must have looked at him, like he came from the moon [which was probably not fair]... I am sure selling the stuff is not as much fun as it should be given the quality... but I don't quite trust his skills in assessing the market... 

the people who are now buying all those tonepoets are not from the "corresponding generation"

Edited 3 hours ago by Niko