Catfish Records was a UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

, initially devoted to reissuing blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 records, mostly from the era of 78 rpm

Gramophone record

A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

 records. They concentrated on country blues

Country blues

Country blues is a general term that refers to all the acoustic, mainly guitar-driven forms of the blues. It often incorporated elements of rural gospel, ragtime, hillbilly, and dixieland jazz...

 and delta blues

Delta blues

The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, a region of the United States that stretches from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south, Helena, Arkansas in the west to the Yazoo River on the east. The...

 during the heyday of the late 1920s and the early 1930s, with forays into later eras up to the arrival of rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...

 in the late 1940s and electric Chicago blues

Chicago blues

The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois, by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier, and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums,...

 in the early 1950s. Their roster included Charley Patton, Son House

Son House

Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. was an American blues singer and guitarist. House pioneered an innovative style featuring strong, repetitive rhythms, often played with the aid of slide guitar, and his singing often incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual music...

, Tommy Johnson, Bukka White

Bukka White

Booker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...

, and the Mississippi Sheiks

Mississippi Sheiks

The Mississippi Sheiks were a popular and influential guitar and fiddle group of the 1930s. They were notable mostly for playing country blues, but were adept at many styles of United States popular music of the time, and their records were bought by both black and white audiences.In 2004, they...

. These selected releases generally featured the most artistically meritorious or historically relevant recordings of any of the musicians reissued.

The company latterly issued a number of historical recordings in other genres including jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, country

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 and bluegrass

Bluegrass music

Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...

, but also featured releases from several contemporary artists including Michael Messer, Steve Earle

Steve Earle

Stephen Fain "Steve" Earle is an American singer-songwriter known for his rock and Texas Country as well as his political views. He is also a producer, author, a political activist, and an actor, and has written and directed a play....

, Bap Kennedy

Bap Kennedy

Martin "Bap" Kennedy is a singer-songwriter from Belfast, Northern Ireland and older brother of singer Brian Kennedy. He is noted for writing the song "Moonlight Kiss" which was on the soundtrack for the film Serendipity .Kennedy was in a successful band, Energy Orchard for many years and has...

, Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt

John Townes Van Zandt , best known as Townes Van Zandt, was an American Texas Country-folk music singer-songwriter, performer, and poet...

 and Terry Clarke. The company also handled DVD releases for projects including Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey, and the award winning alt country documentary, Heartworn Highways

Heartworn Highways

Heartworn Highways is documentary film by James Szalapski whose vision captured some of the founders of the Outlaw Country movement in Texas and Tennessee in the last weeks of 1975 and the first weeks of 1976...

.