Yellowjackets sign record deal!

[Rudy]

Just announced: Yellowjackets have signed to the Heads Up International label. Heads Up is a division of Telarc, and is home to a lot of contemporary jazz talent like Spyro Gyra, Hiroshima (also just signed), Gerald Veasley, and Philip Bailey. Their first release, being recorded soon, will be issued in May of 2003. Their self-released live recording, Mint Jam, has still been selling steadily via the website, and has been getting rave reviews in the press. Heads Up currently distributes Mint Jam for all non-US orders.

Let's hope Heads Up gives their bands a lot better treatment than Univer$al or Warner Bro$ ever did...[/i]

 

[jimac51]

Neil-This little announcement got by me and i would like to comment. As a former retailer and Telarc customer I had great success with their entire catalog. Audiophiles,wannabees and just plain music fans all seemed to find selections and at a fair price. They had a fairly regular restockng program,an incentive for a store to carry the complete catalog so we carried just about everything in print. Their bread & butter has been Eric Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops,overtaking the Boston Pops in sales through the '90s with as many as four or five recordings a year and featuring guest stars like Doc Severinsen and Henry Mancini. Also,they had Robert Shaw and his Atlanta vocal and orchestral groups for the last years of Shaw's life-the only complaint was that the Atlanta musicians were all NARAS voting members and garnered many Grammy awards by stuffing the ballot box with their own work.Telarc seems to pump their profits into more recordings and ventured into jazz in a dedicated way by signing Oscar Peterson over a decade ago. Though ignored by mass merchants like Walmart & Best Buy,Telarc has made a niche for themselves with Borders,Barnes & Noble and the internet and seem to do right by the artist,too. Here's hoping the Yellowjackets have a new recording life ahead of themselves. Mac

 

[Rudy]

It's good that Telarc got into jazz, for a couple of reasons. Their classical recordings have always been technologically superior to many other labels out there--the classic "1812" CD is still a standard for testing bass response in speakers, having used real cannons on the digital recording. Their jazz recordings are similarly clean and dynamic.

The other reason--I don't know if Telarc could have continued to survive on classical music alone. Telarc didn't get into jazz in a small way with just anyone, either: they grabbed artists like Oscar Peterson, Brubeck, even George Shearing. (Wait...it almost seems like an old folks' home. ) Having HeadsUp be a separate division is a good idea--a different identity, a more contemporary roster, but still has Telarc as a parent.

The Jackets certainly have taken their lumps from the majors. Moved from Warner to MCA in the mid 80's. Then MCA Jazz was absorbed by GRP, and they made a few albums for GRP as a result. When "the Univer$al Thing" happened with MCA and GRP, they were welcomed with open arms back to Warner, whereupon they were resoundingly ignored amongst all the $moot Jazz muck. The lack of promotion from Warner didn't help matters--their last Warner CD, they found out, was "recycled" by the boxload after being on the market for a couple of years. (They found this out after the fact, after having tried to order more for the online store.) So now, GRP puts out an ill-conceived new compilation every couple of years, and Warner sells the "Best Of" and a selected few reissued titles. And as usual, the labels own the masters.

They were talking of only leasing the masters to labels in the future...so I hope HeadsUp has given them the opportunity to do so, or at least the rights to get their own creation back in the future.