Fantasy Records
Encyclopedia
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| Parent company | Concord Music Group Concord Music Group Concord Music Group is a record company owned by Village Roadshow formed in 2004 by the merger of Concord Records and Fantasy Records. In 2005, the company acquired the classics and jazz label Telarc International. On December 18, 2006, Concord announced the re-launch of the soul label Stax;... |
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| Founded | 1949 | ||
| Founder(s) | Max Weiss, Sol Weiss | ||
| Distributing label | Concord Records Concord Records Concord Records is a U.S. record label now based in Beverly Hills, California. Originally known as Concord Jazz, it was established in 1972 as an off-shoot of the Concord Jazz Festival in Concord, California by festival founder Carl Jefferson, a local automobile dealer and jazz fan who sold his... (In the US United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district... ), Universal Music Group Universal Music Group Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations... |
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| Genre(s) | Various | ||
| Country | US United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district... |
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| Web address | Fantasy | ||
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-based 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,...
that was founded by Max and Sol Weiss in 1949 in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
. They had previously operated a record-pressing plant called Circle Record Company (unrelated to the Circle Records
Circle Records
Circle Records is a United States based record label specializing in jazz.Circle Records was founded in January of 1946 by Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis. They heard great jazz drummer Warren "Baby" Dodds playing inventive solos while in New York City with Bunk Johnson's band. Blesh said that he...
label) before forming the Fantasy label. The early years of the company were dedicated to issuing recordings by Dave Brubeck
Dave Brubeck
David Warren "Dave" Brubeck is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills...
, Cal Tjader
Cal Tjader
Callen Radcliffe Tjader, Jr. a.k.a. Cal Tjader was a Latin jazz musician, though he also explored various other jazz idioms. Unlike other American jazz musicians who experimented with the music from Cuba, the Caribbean, and Latin America, he never abandoned it, performing it until his...
, Vince Guaraldi
Vince Guaraldi
Vincent Anthony "Vince" Guaraldi was an Italian American jazz musician and pianist noted for his innovative compositions and arrangements and for composing music for animated adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip...
, and other 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...
artists. The label was the first to record in-person performances by Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider , better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist...
.
History
Fantasy's first subsidiary label, formed in 1951, was Galaxy RecordsGalaxy Records
Galaxy Records was a subsidiary of Fantasy Records. It was established in 1951 and has been reactivated several times. Its first incarnation was as a 1950s jazz label. It was revived again in 1961 as a gospel and R&B label. It was last active from 1978 until the mid eighties.-Circa late...
. The labels were named in honor of fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
and science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
magazines. In the mid-1950s, Saul Zaentz
Saul Zaentz
Saul Zaentz is an American film producer and former record company executive. He has won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and in 1996 was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award....
joined the company and eventually instigated the company's major expansion. In 1965, another subsidiary label was formed which was short lived, Scorpio Records, in an attempt to capitalize on the British invasion
British Invasion
The British Invasion is a term used to describe the large number of rock and roll, beat, rock, and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular in the United States during the time period from 1964 through 1966.- Background :...
sound. In 1967, Zaentz led a consortium that bought out the Weiss brothers. The following year, Fantasy's most successful act emerged when the local group Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival was an American rock band that gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a number of successful singles drawn from various albums....
, which he managed, released its first hit record, "Susie Q," in 1968. The group had been signed in 1964 as the Blue Velvets, but the label renamed it the Golliwogs
The Golliwogs
The Golliwogs were an American rock band that eventually became Creedence Clearwater Revival.The band started out, in 1959, as an instrumental trio called The Blue Velvets. The original line up was John Fogerty , Stu Cook , and Doug Clifford...
so they would fit in with the then-new incoming crop of British Invasion bands, and after a series of failed releases under that name on the Fantasy and Scorpio labels, the group changed its name to Creedence Clearwater Revival. Creedence Clearwater Revival was the most popular band that the label recorded.
Zaentz, advised by the journalist Ralph J. Gleason
Ralph J. Gleason
Ralph Joseph Gleason was an influential American jazz and pop music critic. He contributed for many years to the San Francisco Chronicle, was a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and cofounder of the Monterey Jazz Festival.-Biography:Gleason was born in New York City and attended Columbia...
and benefitting from profits from the sales of Creedence Clearwater Revival records, pursued a policy of acquisition concentrating on independent Jazz labels. Zaentz had picked up Debut Records
Debut Records
Debut Records was a United States jazz record label, which was founded in 1952 by bassist Charles Mingus, his then-wife Celia and drummer Max Roach.This short-lived label was an attempt to avoid the compromises of working for major companies...
as a wedding present from bassist Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
to which were added Good Time Records
Good Time Records
Good Time Jazz was an American jazz record label.The label was founded in 1949 by Lester Koenig in Los Angeles; its first releases were from the Firehouse Five Plus Two...
, Prestige Records
Prestige Records
Prestige Records was a jazz record label founded in 1949 by Bob Weinstock. The company was located at 203 South Washington Avenue in Bergenfield, New Jersey, and recorded hundreds of albums by many of the leading jazz musicians of the day, sometimes issuing them under the names of several...
(in 1971), Riverside Records
Riverside Records
Riverside Records was a United States record label specializing in jazz. Founded by Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer under his firm Bill Grauer Productions, Inc. in 1953, the label was a major presence in the jazz record industry for a decade...
and Milestone Records
Milestone Records
Milestone Records is a United States based jazz record label, founded in 1966 by Orrin Keepnews and Dick Katz in New York City. The company was incorporated into Fantasy Records in 1972, since then it has been used for reissues as well as for new recordings....
(both 1972), Stax Records
Stax Records
Stax Records is an American record label, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee.Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the name Stax Records was adopted in 1961. The label was a major factor in the creation of the Southern soul and Memphis soul music styles, also releasing gospel, funk, jazz, and...
(1977), Contemporary Records
Contemporary Records
Contemporary Records was a jazz record label founded by Lester Koenig in 1951 in Los Angeles. Contemporary was known for seminal recordings embodying the West Coast sound, but also released recordings based in New York...
(1984), Specialty Records
Specialty Records
Specialty Records was an American record label based in Los Angeles. It was originally launched as Juke Box Records in 1946, but later renamed by its owner Art Rupe when he parted company with a couple of his original partners...
(1991), Pablo Records
Pablo Records
Pablo Records was a record label founded by Norman Granz in 1972, some ten years after he had sold his jazz labels to MGM Records....
(1987), Takoma Records
Takoma Records
Takoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by John Fahey in the late 1950s.. It was named after Fahey's hometown, the Washington, D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland.-History:...
and Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records was an independent American record label founded in 1972 by Stefan Grossman and Eugene "ED" Denson. Denson was previously a co-owner of Takoma Records. The company's title comes from the country blues sexual two-timing allegory "there's another mule kicking in your stall"....
(both 1995). During the 1980s, the label also had a hip hop subsidiary named Reality Records, which released the first two albums by Doug E. Fresh
Doug E. Fresh
Douglas E. Davis , better known by the stage name Doug E. Fresh, is an American rapper, record producer, and beat boxer, also known as the Human Beat Box...
, among others.
Fantasy also built its landmark headquarters building at the corner of Tenth and Parker in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, in 1971, which was nicknamed the House that Creedence Built. Expanded in 1980 to house Zaentz's film operations, the Zaentz Media Center was sold in 2007 to Wareham Development.
Sale
In 2004, Fantasy was sold to a consortium led by Norman LearNorman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...
and merged with Concord Records
Concord Records
Concord Records is a U.S. record label now based in Beverly Hills, California. Originally known as Concord Jazz, it was established in 1972 as an off-shoot of the Concord Jazz Festival in Concord, California by festival founder Carl Jefferson, a local automobile dealer and jazz fan who sold his...
to create a new company called Concord Music Group. While some operations are still located in Berkeley, the record label is now headquartered at the Concord Music Group location in Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...
. Fantasy Studios
Fantasy Studios
Fantasy Studios is a recording studio in Berkeley, California at the Zaentz Media Center, known for its recording of award-winning albums such as Journey's Escape and Green Day's Dookie. Built as a private recording studio for artists on the Fantasy Records label in 1971, it was opened to the...
, now owned by Wareham Development, is still operating in the Zaentz Media Center in Berkeley and continues its legacy in recording and mixing. Through the reshuffling, many top acts and engineers alike work out of the original building, which has now incorporated a multitude of mixed media projects. Fantasy Studios is a Bay Area landmark, as well as an award-winning studio whose repertoire includes Creedence Clearwater Revival, Green Day
Green Day
Green Day is an American punk rock band formed in 1987. The band consists of lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist and backing vocalist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool...
and Carlos Santana
Carlos Santana
Carlos Augusto Alves Santana is a Mexican rock guitarist. Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, salsa and jazz fusion...
to NPR's "Hearing Voices" series. Top sound engineers Adam Muñoz, Jesse Nichols and Alberto Hernandez work at Fantasy Studios.
Shortly after Fantasy was purchased by Concord, John Fogerty
John Fogerty
John Cameron Fogerty is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for his time with the swamp rock/roots rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival and as a #1 solo recording artist. Fogerty has a rare distinction of being named on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest...
, the lead singer and songwriter of Creedence Clearwater Revival, re-signed with the label after leaving it in the mid-1970s after a falling out with former owner Zaentz.