Fraternity Records is a small

record label "Big Three" music labels A record label or record company is a brand or trademark of Sound recording and reproduction, music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a Music publisher, ...

based in

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

. It was started by Harry Carlson and silent partner Dr. Ashton Welsh in 1954. The first recording to be released on Fraternity was Jerri Winters' "Winter's Here". The first hit was Cathy Carr's rendition of a

Tin Pan Alley Tin Pan Alley was a collection of History of music publishing, music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the American popular music, popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally ...

song, " Ivory Tower" in 1956. It made #2, besting a cover version by Otis Williams & the Charms. A year later came the

Jimmy Dorsey James Francis Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, composer and big band leader. He recorded and composed the jazz and pop standards " I'm Glad There Is You (In This World of Ordinary Peopl ...

#2 charting instrumental " So Rare", the famous bandleader's final hit before his death. 1959 saw another big hit, Bill Parsons' " The All American Boy", which also peaked at #2 on the ''Billboard'' pop charts. Parsons was a friend of country singer Bobby Bare and it was actually Bare's voice heard on the hit record. Parsons sang on the B-side. Fraternity also leased songs from smaller labels, including one track by Jackie Shannon (later

Jackie DeShannon Jackie DeShannon (born Sharon Lee Myers; August 21, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter and radio broadcaster who has had many hit song credits beginning in the 1960s, as both a singer and composer. She was one of the first female singer-son ...

). Fraternity's biggest-selling hit was Lonnie Mack's 1963 guitar instrumental cover of the

Chuck Berry Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer, guitarist and songwriter who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and de ...

song " Memphis", which rose to #5 on ''Billboard''′s Pop chart and #4 on ''Billboard''′s R&B chart. The final national Top 40 hit for the label was "

Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye" is a song written by John D. Loudermilk. It was first released in 1962 by Don Cherry (singer/golfer), Don Cherry, as a country song and again as a doo-wop in 1967 by the group The Casinos on its album of the same nam ...

" by

The Casinos The Casinos was a nine-member doo-wop group from Cincinnati, Ohio, led by Gene Hughes and which included Bob Armstrong, Ray White, Mickey Denton, and Pete Bolton. Ken Brady performed with the group, taking over for Hughes from 1962 to 1965 as ...

, which reached #6 on the ''Billboard'' pop chart in 1967. Shad O'Shea purchased the company from Carlson in 1975. Applegate Recording Society was also a subsidiary label of Fraternity. UK reissue label Ace Records Ltd. currently makes a large handful of Fraternity recordings available on compact disc albums and digital downloads, including the original big hits mentioned here.

References

External links

Official website

Fraternity Records
on the Internet Archive'
Great 78 Project
Record labels established in 1954 Music of Cincinnati {{US-record-label-stub

See also

References

External links