Rob Adams
Published on 18 Jan 2010
It’s easy to see why Robert Plant would want to be on Rounder Records. Plant, whose partnership with bluegrass sweetheart Alison Krauss recently gave the Massachusetts-based label a transatlantic smash album, Raisin’ Sand, may have been used to limos and Learjets with his legendary band Led Zeppelin.
But as a blues fan with a deep reverence for his heroes, he’d have appreciated becoming latter-day labelmates with musicians such as Johnny Shines and Robert Lockwood Jr, and working with a company whose dedication to documenting America’s musical roots has led to it being dubbed the Smithsonian of the music industry.
Rounder reaches its 40th anniversary this year, and a special Celtic Connections concert is part of the celebrations. It may have grown into a business with publishing and merchandise divisions, as well as a catalogue of more than 3000 albums, but the label’s founders, who are still hands-on with the company, have never lost their enthusiasm. They went into the music business as complete novices, and still speak with considerable pride of early releases that cost a few hundred dollars to record, press up and print, and which were then distributed from the back of their cars.
“The reason we got into this was that we were music enthusiasts, although we also liked the idea of being folklorists preserving this great music on records,” says Marian Leighton Levy, one of the three original partners.
“To say that we knew nothing about what we were getting into would be an understatement, but there was a real gap in the music business back then. The musicians who had come up with the folk revival – Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and others – had moved on. But there were still musicians playing the real roots of the music – blues, bluegrass, old-time fiddle players – who were being neglected.”
Rounder’s first release, featuring a 76-year-old banjo player, George Pegram, came from a tape that already existed, which they secured for just $250. Friends who were graphic designers and were prepared to work for almost nothing added artwork, and the three founders, who lived communally and on means that would remain modest for some time to come, set out to sell enough copies to cover their costs and maybe help towards another album. More...
Published on 18 Jan 2010
It’s easy to see why Robert Plant would want to be on Rounder Records. Plant, whose partnership with bluegrass sweetheart Alison Krauss recently gave the Massachusetts-based label a transatlantic smash album, Raisin’ Sand, may have been used to limos and Learjets with his legendary band Led Zeppelin.
But as a blues fan with a deep reverence for his heroes, he’d have appreciated becoming latter-day labelmates with musicians such as Johnny Shines and Robert Lockwood Jr, and working with a company whose dedication to documenting America’s musical roots has led to it being dubbed the Smithsonian of the music industry.
Rounder reaches its 40th anniversary this year, and a special Celtic Connections concert is part of the celebrations. It may have grown into a business with publishing and merchandise divisions, as well as a catalogue of more than 3000 albums, but the label’s founders, who are still hands-on with the company, have never lost their enthusiasm. They went into the music business as complete novices, and still speak with considerable pride of early releases that cost a few hundred dollars to record, press up and print, and which were then distributed from the back of their cars.
“The reason we got into this was that we were music enthusiasts, although we also liked the idea of being folklorists preserving this great music on records,” says Marian Leighton Levy, one of the three original partners.
“To say that we knew nothing about what we were getting into would be an understatement, but there was a real gap in the music business back then. The musicians who had come up with the folk revival – Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and others – had moved on. But there were still musicians playing the real roots of the music – blues, bluegrass, old-time fiddle players – who were being neglected.”
Rounder’s first release, featuring a 76-year-old banjo player, George Pegram, came from a tape that already existed, which they secured for just $250. Friends who were graphic designers and were prepared to work for almost nothing added artwork, and the three founders, who lived communally and on means that would remain modest for some time to come, set out to sell enough copies to cover their costs and maybe help towards another album. More...
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