Small independent record labels, like the smaller independent sheet music companies before them, were always a little braver and more experimental than larger conglomerates. This was the norm during the heyday of jazz as well as the pop and rock era that followed. Unfortunately, corporate behemoths have either crowded out the little labels or absorbed them in their thirst for greed. While over one hundred years have passed since the music industry began in the United States, not much has changed, except that we may have forgotten which record labels were small outfits once upon a time. That’s certainly the case with the Prestige jazz label. Tad Richards wrote a book so we wouldn’t forget that from small things, big things may grow.
The history isn’t clean or perfect, and Richards leaves the contemporary exploitation and racism in the music business to other scholars and writers. He focuses on the love of the music and the burgeoning growth of the ten- and twelve- inch 33 1/3 RPM LP, introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, holding almost a whopping fifteen minutes and twenty-one minutes on each side versus the 78 RPM side that could hold, at most, four minutes. By the mid-1950s, the popular LP had expanded to a standard twelve. Most of these were rereleased and reissued sides, if you ever wander into any used record store and look at the older releases.
The heart of the book is a look inside of a burgeoning and growing label that was eventually sold to Fantasy Records in 1972 who treated the catalogue, mostly, as a reissue label. But it all started in Times’ Square as an offshoot of a record store, next to a jazz venue whose performers wandered over on breaks to explore and talk possibilities, as musicians are always wont to do when the opportunity presents itself. Some of the incident explored are mere accidents and being in the right place at the right time, serendipity. That serendipity has confronted all of us, from time to time, but it’s fascinating when we look back on it over sixty years later as history.
The story of Rudy Van Gelder has fascinated me since I heard the skeletal outlines of his story when I began my deep dive into jazz about fifteen years ago. Van Gelder went to school to become an optometrist and did. That “day job” supported a passion he developed as a small child: sound recording. As he matured, his fascination with sound developed into a deep exploration of sound engineering. What is astounding is the fact that Van Gelder asked his parents to alter the blueprints and plans for the living room of the house they were building in Hackensack, NJ and expand it to accommodate a recording studio. And he did, eventually those early recordings were delivered to Blue Note and Prestige who used that living room for many major recordings. After a few years, the bands and the engineer eventually outgrew the living room and Van Gelder moved to Englewood Cliffs, NJ and had a space designed that was influenced by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright with acoustics designed to sound like a church. With the sounds coming out of that studio for several years, church is probably the only way it should be described.
In each chapter, there is a centerpiece, like the boxes set aside for key information in the textbooks we all know, love, and loathe. Richards uses the space to exhibit key information about an artist’s Prestige releases with some details about an artist, a composition, or the recording in question. Unexpectedly, the chapter, “Cover Art, and a Dual Role for Esmond Edwards,” does not discuss the chapter subject in question, but it does include a photo of an album featuring Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis. Scrolling through the abandoned LPs at thrift stores and the older used sections of record stores, one will notice that the really old jazz albums don’t feature a lot of photography but do include an abundance of insignificant abstract art that has no connection to the album in question. Apparently, that all changed when Esmond Edwards was invited to a session at Van Gelder’s studio / living room to shoot off a few rolls of film. Through a few more accidents and invitations over a few years, Edwards became the head of “Artists & Repertoire” which put him in charge of production and included album layout.
Each chapter includes a standout gem of the label’s storied history. While it’s difficult to point out every highlight for a tome of this size since you should grab a copy and read it yourself, it is important to point out that the book does its best to cover the most important events of the label’s history from small indie label to major player to its sale to one of the majors, an event that was probably precipitated by the owner, Bob Weinstock’s retirement from the music business which is something we all look upon as an evolution of time. If only it wasn’t followed by the greed of major labels cashing in on death and birth anniversary re-releases, but that may also be the nature of this business, unfortunately.
Grab a copy from Amazon or better, your favorite independent book store.
RadioMike, 20 September 2026