Sixties Soul Music

From the Late Fifties, Soul Music was born, it spawned acts such as the Temptations, Four Tops, Marvin Gaye and many others.

The Music is still alive today and we are here to feed your need for the Legends of Soul

The One, The Only, The Temptations

Background record is The Temptations - The Way You Do the Things You Do

Soul Record labels.

Of the many Soul record labels Motown and Stax were the argueablly most successful, they between them spawned hundreds of hits, along with many smaller labels they were at the forefront of the Soul Story.

Motown was a record company founded by Berry Gordy Jnr and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation in Detroit, Michigan, on April 14, 1960. The name, a potmanteau of the words motor and town, is also a nickname for Detroit. Now headquartered inNew York City, Motown is a subsidary of Universal Motown Republic Group, itself a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, and now operates as Univeral Motown. Motown Records was also the name of Gordy's second record label; the first, Tamla Records, began on January 12, 1959.

Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music, as it was the first record label owned by an African American to primarily feature African-American artists who achieved crossover success. In the 1960s, Motown and its soul-based subsidiaries were the most successful proponents of what came to be known as The Motown Sound, a style of Soul Music with a distinct pop influence.

Motown has owned or distributed releases from more than 45 subsidiaries in varying genres, although it is most famous for its releases in the music genres of rhythm and blues, soul, hip hop and pop. Motown Records left Detroit for Los Angeles in 1972, and remained an independent company until June 28, 1988, when Gordy sold the company to MCA and Boston Ventures (which took over full ownership of Motown in 1991), then to Polygram in 1994.

(Information from Motown Records Wikipedia entry)

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 blues recordings. While Stax is renowned for its output ofAfrican American music, the label was founded by two white businesspeople,Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton, and featured several popular ethnically-integrated bands, including the label's house band, Booker T and the MG's.

Following the death of Stax's biggest star,Otis Redding, in 1967 and the severance of the label's distribution deal with Atlantic Records in 1968, Stax continued primarily under the supervision of a new co-owner, Al Bell. Over the next five years, Bell expanded the label's operations significantly, in order to compete with Stax's main rival, Motown Records in Detroit. During the mid-1970s, a number of factors, including a problematic distribution deal with CBS Records, caused the label to slide into insolvency, resulting in its forced closure in late 1975.

In 1977, Fantasy Records acquired the post-1968 Stax catalog, as well as selected pre-1968 recordings. Beginning in 1978, Stax (now owned by Fantasy) began signing new acts and issuing new material, as well as re-issuing previously recorded Stax material. However, by the early 1980's no new material was being issued on the label, and for the next two decades, Stax was strictly a re-issue label.

After Concord Records acquired Fantasy in 2004, the Stax label was reactivated, and is today used to issue both the 1968–1975 catalog material and new recordings by current R&B/soul performers. Atlantic Records continues to hold the rights to the vast majority of the 1959-1968 Stax material.

 (Information from Stax Wikipedia entry)

Okeh Records began as an independent record label based in the United States of America in 1918; from the late 1920s on, it was a subsidiary of Columbia Records.

Okeh (pronounced 'okay') was founded by Otto K. E. Heinemann (1877–1965), a German-American manager for the U.S. branch of German-owned Odeon Records. As World War I raged in Europe, Heinemann thought it best to have an American based company. He incorporated the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation in 1916, set up his own recording studio and gramophone record pressing plant in New York City, and introduced the company's line of records for public sale in September 1918. Heinemann formed the name of the record label "Okeh", from his initials; early disc labels rendered the name as OkeH. The first discs were vertical cut. In 1919 Okeh switched to the lateral cut method of sound recording, more usual for disc records. That same year the name of the label's owning company was changed to the General Phonograph Corporation. The name on the labels was changed to OKeh. The common 10-inch discs retailed for 75 cents each; the 12-inch discs for $1.25. The company's musical director was Fred Hager, who also appeared under the pseudonym of "Milo Rega" (Hager's middle name and his surname reversed).

 (Information from Okeh Wikipedia entry)

Other record labels

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