Delmark Records is an American

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

and blues

independent record label An independent record label (or indie label) is a record label that operates without the funding or distribution of major record labels; they are a type of small and medium-sized enterprise, small- to medium-sized enterprise, or SME. The labels ...

. The label originated in 1953 in St. Louis, Missouri, as Delmar, when owner, and founder,

Bob Koester Robert Gregg Koester (October 30, 1932 – May 12, 2021) was an American record producer and businessman who was the founder and owner of Delmark Records, a jazz and blues independent record label. He also operated the Jazz Record Mart in Chi ...

released a recording of the Windy City Six, a traditional jazz group, under the Delmar imprint. Koester and the label moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1958, and the label's name became Delmark. Koester sold the label assets in 2018, and the label since operates as Delmark Records LLC.

History

Born in 1932 in Wichita, Kansas,

was the son of a petroleum engineer. While in the hospital with polio when he was a child, he listened to the radio and was cheered up when he heard

Eddie Condon Albert Edwin Condon (November 16, 1905 – August 4, 1973) was an American jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in Chicago jazz, he also played piano and sang. He also owned a self-named night club in New York City. Early ...

and

Benny Goodman Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American clarinetist and bandleader, known as the "King of Swing". His orchestra did well commercially. From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing bi ...

. In his teens, he was a dedicated jazz fan who began buying old records from a Salvation Army store. At concerts in Kansas City, he heard

Red Allen Henry James "Red" Allen Jr. (January 7, 1908 – April 17, 1967) was an American jazz trumpeter and vocalist whose playing has been described by Joachim-Ernst Berendt and others as the first to fully incorporate the innovations of Louis Armst ...

Count Basie William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and the ...

Jimmy Rushing James Andrew Rushing (August 26, 1901 – June 8, 1972) was an American singer and pianist from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., best known as the featured vocalist of Count Basie's Orchestra from 1935 to 1948. Rushing was known as " Mr. Five by ...

Tommy Douglas Thomas Clement Douglas (20 October 1904 – 24 February 1986) was a Scottish-born Canadian politician who served as the seventh premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961 and leader of the New Democratic Party from 1961 to 1971. A Bap ...

Lionel Hampton Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, percussionist, and bandleader. He worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, an ...

, and

Jay McShann James Columbus "Jay" McShann (January 12, 1916 – December 7, 2006) was an American jazz pianist, vocalist, composer, and bandleader. He led bands in Kansas City, Missouri, that included Charlie Parker, Bernard Anderson, Walter Brown, and B ...

. Moving from Wichita to St. Louis to attend college, Koester began his career as a record trader in his dormitory room. Joining a local jazz club gave Koester his first taste of live jazz, seeing

Clark Terry Clark Virgil Terry Jr. (December 14, 1920 – February 21, 2015) was an American Swing music, swing and bebop trumpeter, a pioneer of the flugelhorn in jazz, and a composer and educator. He played with Charlie Barnet (1947), Count Basie (1948� ...

perform. Koester made acquaintance with a fellow jazz club member, Ron Fister, with whom he opened his first record shop, K & F Sales. Shortly after opening in an old restaurant storefront, they changed the name to the Blue Note Record Shop. About a year after this joint venture, Fister and Koester decided to part ways, with Koester moving to the corner of Delmar and Olive streets in St. Louis. Taking the name from the street his shop was on, Koester recorded a local jazz group the Windy City Six in 1953. Shortly thereafter, Koester found local talent such as James Crutchfield,

Speckled Red Rufus George Perryman (October 23, 1892 – January 2, 1973), known as Speckled Red, was an American blues and boogie-woogie piano player and singer noted for his recordings of "The Dirty Dozens", exchanges of insults and vulgar remarks that have ...

J.D. Short J. D. Short (December 26, 1902 – October 21, 1962) was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, and harmonicist with a distinctive vibrato-laden singing voice. Early in his career, he recorded under a number of pseudonyms, including Jelly Ja ...

, and

Big Joe Williams Joseph Lee Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982) was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over five decades, he recorded the songs "Baby, Pl ...

. Koester moved to Chicago in August 1958. He bought Seymour's Jazz Mart, and in renaming the storefront the Jazz Record Mart, Delmark Records found its new home in the basement of the record shop. By 1963, Koester had moved the shop to a location at 7 West Grand. During this period in Chicago, Delmark released albums by,

Barney Bigard Albany Leon "Barney" Bigard (March 3, 1906 – June 27, 1980) was an American jazz clarinetist known for his 15-year tenure with Duke Ellington. He also played tenor saxophone. Biography Bigard was born in New Orleans to Creoles of color, Cr ...

Donald Byrd Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II (December 9, 1932 – February 4, 2013) was an American jazz and rhythm & blues trumpeter, composer and vocalist. A sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd was one of the few h ...

, Jimmy Forrest, George Lewis,

Bud Powell Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell (September 27, 1924 – July 31, 1966) was an American jazz pianist and composer. A pioneer in the development of bebop and its associated contributions to jazz theory,Grove Powell's application of complex phrasing to ...

, and

Ira Sullivan Ira Sullivan (May 1, 1931 – September 21, 2020) was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, flautist, saxophonist, and composer born in Washington, D.C., United States. An active musician since the 1950s, he often worked with Red Rodney ...

. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Delmark recorded the

Art Ensemble of Chicago The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz group that grew out of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, AACM) in the late 1960s. The ensemble integrates many jaz ...

Sonny Stitt Sonny Stitt (born Edward Hammond Boatner Jr.; February 2, 1924 – July 22, 1982) was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. Known for his warm tone, he was one of the best-documented saxophonists of his era, recording over ...

Junior Wells Junior Wells (born Amos Wells Blakemore Jr.; December 9, 1934January 15, 1998) was an American singer, harmonica player, and recording artist. He is best known for his signature song " Messin' with the Kid" and his 1965 album '' Hoodoo Man Blues ...

Luther Allison Luther Sylvester Allison (August 17, 1939 – August 12, 1997) was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was born in Widener, Arkansas, although some accounts suggest his actual place of birth was Mayflower, Arkansas. Allison wa ...

Arthur Crudup Arthur William "Big Boy" Crudup (August 24, 1905 – March 28, 1974) was an American Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known, outside blues circles, for his songs " That's All Right" (1946), " My Baby Left Me" and "So ...

Jimmy Dawkins James Henry “Jimmy” Dawkins (October 24, 1936 – April 10, 2013) was an American Chicago blues and electric blues guitarist and singer. He is generally considered to have been a practitioner of the "West Side sound" of Chicago blues. Career ...

Sleepy John Estes John Adam Estes (January 25, 1899 or 1900June 5, 1977),
known as Sleepy John Estes, was an A ...

Buddy Guy George "Buddy" Guy (born July 30, 1936) is an American blues guitarist and singer. He is an exponent of Chicago blues who has influenced generations of guitarists including Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Stevie Ray Vaug ...

J. B. Hutto Joseph Benjamin Hutto (April 26, 1926 – June 12, 1983) was an American blues musician. Influenced by Elmore James, Hutto became known for his slide guitar playing and declamatory style of singing. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame tw ...

, Jimmy Johnson,

Magic Sam Samuel Gene Maghett (February 14, 1937 – December 1, 1969), known as Magic Sam, was an American Chicago blues musician. He was born in Grenada County, Mississippi, and learned to play the blues from listening to records by Muddy Waters and ...

Robert Nighthawk Robert Lee McCollum (November 30, 1909 – November 5, 1967) was an American blues musician who played and recorded under the pseudonyms Robert Lee McCoy and Robert Nighthawk. He was the father of the blues musician Sam Carr. Nighthawk was ind ...

Yank Rachell Yank Rachell (born James A. Rachel; March 16, 1910 – April 9, 1997) was an American country blues musician who has been called an "elder statesman of the blues". His career as a performer spanned nearly seventy years, from the late 1920s to th ...

Otis Rush Otis Rush Jr. (April 29, 1934 – September 29, 2018) was an American blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter who has been long revered as one of the creators of modern Chicago blues; though he was respected and praised, the success he sought e ...

Roosevelt Sykes Roosevelt Sykes (January 31, 1906July 17, 1983) was an American blues musician, also known as "the Honeydripper". Career Sykes was born the son of a musician in Elmar, Arkansas. "Just a little old sawmill town", Sykes said of his birthplace. The ...

, and

Malachi Thompson Malachi Richard Thompson (August 21, 1949, in Princeton, Kentucky — July 16, 2006), was an American avant-garde jazz trumpet player. In addition to his own work as a bandleader, Thompson was known for his work in the brass ensemble led by fellow ...

. In 1966, Chuck Nessa, manager of the Jazz Record Mart, convinced Koester to release albums by musicians associated with the

Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is an American nonprofit organization, founded in 1965 in Chicago by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist Jodie Christian, drummer Steve McCall, and composer Phil Cohran. The AA ...

. The first record was

Roscoe Mitchell Roscoe Mitchell (born August 3, 1940) is an American composer, jazz instrumentalist, and educator, known for being "a technically superb – if idiosyncratic – saxophonist". ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' described him as "one of the key figure ...

's ''

Sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...

'' (1966) which received a five star review in ''

Downbeat ''DownBeat'' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm that it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1 ...

''. This was followed by

Muhal Richard Abrams Muhal Richard Abrams (born Richard Lewis Abrams; September 19, 1930 – October 29, 2017) was an American educator, administrator, composer, arranger, clarinetist, cellist, and jazz pianist in the free jazz medium. He recorded and toured the Uni ...

' ''

Levels and Degrees of Light ''Levels and Degrees of Light'' is the debut album by Muhal Richard Abrams which was released on the Delmark label in 1968 and features performances of three of Abrams' compositions by Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins, Charles Clark, Gor ...

'' (1968),

Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre (March 24, 1936 – November 9, 2013) ...

's ''Humility in the Light of the Creator'' (1969) and

Anthony Braxton Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945) is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto. Braxton grew up on the South Side of Chi ...

's ''

For Alto ''For Alto'' is a jazz double- LP by composer/multi- reedist Anthony Braxton, recorded in 1969 and released on Delmark Records in 1971. Braxton performs the pieces on this album entirely on alto saxophone, with no additional musicians, instrumen ...

'' (1969). Delmark released two of the earliest

Sun Ra Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific ou ...

albums, '' Sun Song'' and '' Sound of Joy'', in 1967 and 1968 respectively. Delmark has also released albums by Fred Anderson,

Frank Catalano Frank Catalano is an American jazz saxophonist. Biography Frank Catalano began playing saxophone at age 7. When he was 16, his right middle finger was severed while working on a car engine. Following reconstructive surgery, he forced his hands t ...

Rob Mazurek Rob Mazurek (born 1965) is an American composer, cornetist, and visual artist. Biography Mazurek was born in 1965 in Jersey City, New Jersey, and played trumpet and cornet in high school in Naperville, Illinois. He first learned the foundat ...

, Nicole Mitchell,

Ken Vandermark Ken Vandermark (born September 22, 1964) is an American composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist. A fixture on the Chicago-area music scene since the 1990s, Vandermark has earned wide critical praise for his playing and his multilayered composit ...

, Roy Campbell, Jr., and

Ethnic Heritage Ensemble Ethnic Heritage Ensemble is an American jazz ensemble founded in 1973 by percussionist Kahil El'Zabar. Its members have included Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Defunkt's Joseph Bowie, post-bop Post-bop is a jazz term with several possible de ...

; and blues musicians including

Zora Young Zora Young (born January 21, 1948, West Point, Mississippi, United States) is an American blues singer. She is distantly related to Howlin' Wolf. Young's family moved to Chicago when she was seven. She began singing gospel music at the Greater ...

Ken Saydak Ken Saydak (born August 18, 1951, Chicago, Illinois, United States) is an American Chicago blues pianist and singer-songwriter. In a long career, he has played as a sideman with Lonnie Brooks, Mighty Joe Young, Johnny Winter and Dave Specter. ...

, Byther Smith, Michael Coleman,

Little Arthur Duncan Little Arthur Duncan (February 5, 1934 – August 20, 2008) was an American Chicago blues and electric blues harmonica player, singer, and songwriter. He was a member of the Backscratchers and over his career was associated with Earl Hooker, Twi ...

Eddie C. Campbell Eddie C. Campbell (May 6, 1939 – November 20, 2018) was an American blues guitarist and singer in the Chicago blues scene. Biography Campbell was born in Duncan, Mississippi. He moved to Chicago at the age of ten, and by age 12 was lear ...

, Jimmy Burns, and

ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that had its peak from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its Syncopation, syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers ...

musicians including

Terry Waldo Terry Waldo (born November 26, 1944) is an American pianist, composer, and historian of early jazz, blues, and stride music, and is best known for his contribution to ragtime and his role in reviving interest in this form, starting in the 1970 ...

. In March 2010, Delmark announced the release of the album ''Revisit'' by the Polish duo Mikrokolektyw. This album was Delmark's first by a European

avant-garde jazz Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz, experimental jazz, or "new thing") is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. It originated in the early 1950s and developed through the late 1 ...

group in its 57-year history. In 2012, Delmark released two

Chicago blues Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois. It is based on earlier blues idioms, such as Delta blues, but is performed in an urban style. It developed alongside the Great Migration of African Americans of the fi ...

albums by Linsey Alexander and Mike Wheeler. In May 2018, Koester retired and sold Delmark Records to Delmark Records LLC, of which Julia A. Miller is the Managing Member. Julia A. Miller became the label President & CEO and Elbio Barilari became the Vice President & Artistic Director. They are two musicians from Chicago and Uruguay, respectively. The sale included Delmark's subsidiary labels, CD and LP inventory, the catalog of masters, and Riverside Studio.

Discography

Jazz

Delmark Records began releasing 12 inch LP jazz albums sporadically from 1959 commencing with the 400 series and continuing with the 500 series in 1998.

2000 Series

Delmark Records 2000 series consisted of eight CD releases between 2011 and 2012 when Delmark commenced the 5000 series.

5000 Series

Delmark Records 5000 series follows the 2000 series as the main series of Delmark jazz albums from 2012 onwards.

Blues

Delmark Records began releasing 12 inch LP blues albums in 1961 with the 600 series which continued through the 800s by 2008.Both Sides Now: Discography of the Delmar(k) Label
Bsnpubs.com, accessed September 23, 2019

References

External links

* *
Tail Dragger interview with Artist Connection Podcast
{{Authority control American independent record labels Blues record labels American jazz record labels Record labels established in 1953 Record labels based in Illinois

History

Discography

Jazz

2000 Series

5000 Series

Blues

See also

References

External links