Bernard Fowler

Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz. Over its first 20 years of operation Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most important American independent recording labels, specializing in jazz, R&B and soul... recordings by African-American artists, a position greatly enhanced by its distribution deal with Stax Records. In 1967 Atlantic became a wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, now the Warner Music Group, and expanded into rock and pop music, signing Cream, Led Zeppelin, Yes and Foreigner. In 2004 Atlantic Records and its sister label Elektra Records merged into Atlantic Records Group. Craig Kallman is currently Chairman of Atlantic Records. Label co-founder Ahmet Ertegün served as Founding Chairman until his death on December 14, 2006 at age 83. The label also has a number of deals with previously independent labels such as Must Destroy and VP Records in Jamaica, home to reggae artists such as Sean Paul.
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Sony Music Entertainment is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation. The company, which evolved into Sony Music, was founded in 1929 as the... American Record Corporation through the merger of several smaller record companies. In the depths of the Great Depression, the Columbia Phonograph Company in the U.S. was acquired by ARC in 1934. ARC was acquired in 1938 by the Columbia Broadcasting System . The Columbia Phonograph Company had international subsidiaries and affiliates such as the Columbia Graphophone Company in the United Kingdom, but they were sold off prior to CBS acquiring American Columbia. RCA Victor Records executive Ted Wallerstein convinced CBS head William S. Paley to buy ARC and Paley made Wallerstein head of the newly acquired record company. CBS made Columbia its flagship label with Okeh its subsidiary label while deemphasizing ARC's other labels.
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Rolling Stones Records is the record label formed by The Rolling Stones members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Mick Taylor, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman in 1970, after their recording contract with Decca Records expired. They were first distributed in the United States by Atlantic Records subsidiary... Atco Records. Beginning in 1973 they signed a distribution deal with Atlantic Records. In 1986 Columbia Records started distributing them. In the UK, they were distributed by EMI. The label was initially headed by Marshall Chess, the son of Chess Records founder Leonard Chess. The label was discontinued in 1992 when the band signed to Virgin Records, but the tongue-and-lips logo remains on all post-1970 Rolling Stones releases. In its original concept, the label was thought of as a way for members of the Rolling Stones to release solo albums. The first album to be released was Brian Jones Presents The Pipes Of Pan At Joujouka in 1971, and is widely credited with being the first World Music LP. In 1972 the label released Jamming with Edward, a collection of tracks recorded by Jagger, Wyman, and Watts with Nicky Hopkins and Ry Cooder in 1969.
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Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has... its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources. Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.
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Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican... music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady. Reggae is most easily recognized by the rhythmic accents on the off-beat, usually played by guitar or piano , known as the skank. This pattern accents the second and fourth beat in each bar and combines with the drums emphasis on beat three to create a unique feel and sense of phrasing in contrast to most other popular genres focus on beat one, the "downbeat". The tempo of reggae is usually felt as slower than the popular Jamaican forms, ska and rocksteady, which preceded it. It is this slower tempo, the guitar/piano offbeats, the emphasis on the third beat, and the use of syncopated, melodic bass lines that differentiates reggae from other music, although other musical styles have incorporated some of these innovations separately. The 1967 edition of the Dictionary of Jamaican English lists reggae as "a recently estab. sp.
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Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B and RnB, 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 heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular. The term has subsequently had a number of shifts in meaning. In the early 1950s, the term rhythm and blues was frequently applied to blues records. Starting in the mid-1950s, after this style of music contributed to the development of rock and roll, the term "R&B" became used to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. By the 1970s, rhythm and blues was used as a blanket term for soul and funk. In the 1980s, a newer style of R&B developed, becoming known as "Contemporary R&B". Jerry Wexler of Billboard magazine coined the term "rhythm and blues" in 1948 as a musical marketing term in the United States. It replaced the term "race music", which originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world.
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