Thursday 17 August, 2000
Rhino Records
Rhino Records started trading in 1973, when self-proclaimed popular culture fanatic Richard Foos opened a store in Los Angeles. The company has since gone from strength to strength, dealing mainly in reissues and comprehensive boxed compilations, reaching Number One in the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and winning several Grammy awards along the way. In 1993, Rhino began restoring and re-releasing the Atlantic Records jazz archives. Alyn Shipton spoke to Rhino Records' Patrick Mulligan for Jazzmatazz.
The Rhino Brothers The success of the Rhino Records empire can be attributed to Richard Foos and Harold Bronson, the self-styled 'Rhino Brothers'. Both studied sociology in their younger years, and both played in local bands. Foos moved quickly into selling records, initially from the back of his car, and opened the first Rhino Records retail outlet in 1973. Five years later, with Bronson as the store manager, the soon to be legendary Rhino Records label was born. The ever-expanding empire has since gone on to release cult films on Rhino Home Video and children's records on Kid Rhino.
Both Foos and Bronson are fans of music and popular culture. As Bronson is quoted on Rhino's Internet site:
"The main reason we got into the business was that we were record fans - we were coming from a fan's perspective. And today, we still put out record after record of things we're passionate about."
Reissues The label's first releases were novelty records, the initial batch being a plug for the store by local singer Wild Man Fischer. In 1980, Rhino's first reissue came out, a picture disc by '60s pop group The Turtles, singers of 'Happy Together' and 'Eleanor', among other hits. Patrick Mulligan discusses how the idea of reissuing albums came about:
"Rhino Records started out as a record store. They started realising there was a kind of open market to go find a lot of these older masters that people seemingly didn’t care for any more, and start building a reissue programme. It just luckily coincided with when the CD era began so they just really had their foot in the door and it took off from there."
"The main reason we got into the business was that we were record fans" - Harold Bronson | | The Atlantic Recordings One of the most exciting aspects for fans of jazz is Rhino's remastering of classic Atlantic Records recordings. It was while working with Atlantic that Rhino began developing their strategy of releasing a single artists' entire back catalogue. Mulligan comments on why Atlantic chose Rhino:
"I think Atlantic realised that Rhino really had a good take on the reissue market and really put the love and attention to detail into those things that ensured we could give that proper respect."
Of the Atlantic reissues, one of the most successful has been a box set of John Coltrane's music. The original mastertapes of several Coltrane recordings were thought to have been lost when a fire destroyed the warehouse in which they were kept. Mulligan tells the story of how Rhino managed to add a seventh disc to their box set, full of false starts and rare sessions:
"The producer that was working on those outtake albums had pulled some tapes from the library and they weren't in the vault at the time the fire took place... We had gone into the set deciding we were going to do a complete Coltrane / Atlantic set with just what was there, and figured it was really worthy of doing anyway, and then just sort of fortuitously found these tapes that nobody realised were around."
Choosing Artists The comprehensive box sets and remastered CDs that Rhino Records release obviously take time to develop and press, and they are recognised worldwide for their quality and ability to acquire rarities along with previously available material. Mulligan explained how the company chooses their artists:
"Particularly in jazz and Atlantic and things like that, we look at somebody whose material really holds up... somebody who's a seminal enough artist like [John] Coltrane or [Ornette] Coleman or [Charles] Mingus or somebody that fans are rabid enough to really want to hear every single note that they ever did, and to really be able to put their work in one place so that you can hear it all in context."
In the near future, Rhino are planning reissues of the legendary Ray Charles, thanks to a strategic acquisition of his entire back catalogue. As ever, the company are considering a major project to please even the most obsessive fans.
"We're really lucky because as part of the Atlantic deal we had access and oversight of all the Ray Charles Atlantic recordings, and then recently we made a deal with Ray Charles himself to reissue his catalogue of material that he had with ABC Paramount, which he'd ended up controlling. So we have basically his entire career. We have thrown around the idea of doing a 20-CD Ray Charles set of all his recordings, and that may still end up happening someday."
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Handmade by Rhino |
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Rhino Handmade is a new division that the company themselves describe as "a fiendishly clever fundamental application of space-age science". Every two weeks, they are releasing a very limited CD of otherwise unavailable material. Each CD is extremely limited: Those currently available are limited to between 1,000 and 10,000 copies.
Artists to have received the Handmade treatment so far include Tim Buckley, Loudon Wainwright III, Captain Beefheart and The Monkees. |
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Geekus Musicus Maximus |
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Since 1997, Rhino have hosted an Annual Musical Aptitude Test. 300 or so music trivia questions are asked and the person who gets the most points is given the title of Geekus Musicus Maximus. This title comes complete with a whole host of prizes that this year included audio-visual equipment and one hundred Rhino CDs. |
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