Guinness Records was the name of an American record label operational in 1977. It was, along with

Tiger Lily Records The United States version of Tiger Lily Records was a record label that was run by Roulette Records founder Morris Levy. Purportedly it was a tax scam created by Levy and was never intended to make a profit. Tiger Lily's primary modus operandi w ...

one of the major tax scam labels, releasing around one hundred albums.

History

Guinness Records was established in 1977 by Marvin L. Popkin as a tax shelter based around the idea of investing in a

master recording Master recordings, or simply masters, are the original recordings—including post-recording mixes and production edits—of audio performances, from which all analog and digital copies of the audio are derived from. The term refers only to the r ...

that would be greatly over valued so that the investors could claim a tax loss when the deliberately under-promoted album failed to sell. Most recordings were sourced from recording studio vaults and published as albums without the knowledge or consent of the performers. Several defunct bands are known to have had releases as a result of this practice, but the most high-profile performers identified were Detroit area band The Rockets,

Atlantic Starr Atlantic Starr is an American R&B band based in White Plains, New York. They are best known for the hits " Always", " Secret Lovers", "Circles", " Silver Shadow", and "Masterpiece". History Atlantic Starr began in Greenburgh, New York, with tr ...

, who had two unauthorized albums based on demo tapes released under their original name, Newban, independent musician R. Stevie Moore, who had a trio of demos released on an album attributed to a group called Hotgun, and

The Vibrations The Vibrations were an American soul vocal group from Los Angeles, California, active from the mid-1950s to 1976. Most notable among the group's hit singles were " My Girl Sloopy" (1964) and "Love in Them There Hills" (1968). They also had a h ...

, whose producer Robert John Gallo, provided the masters of the band's final album to Guinness Records, along with several other sets of masters, some unreleased, he had produced for other performers. The types of albums released by Guinness fell into three broad categories: * Single band/artist albums based on unpublished material. (e.g. "Rockets", "Snowball") *

Compilation album A compilation album comprises Album#Tracks, tracks, which may be previously released or unreleased, usually from several separate recordings by either one Performing arts#Performers, performer or by several performers. If the recordings are from ...

s based on unpublished material disguised as the debut album of a single band. (e.g. " Hotgun", "Living on Giving") * Bootleg re-issues of albums previously published on obscure labels. (e.g. "Sum Pear", "Good Vibrations") Throughout its short existence, the label was closely associated with another tax scam label Dellwood Records, believed to be linked to

Prelude Records Prelude Records was a New York–based independent record label that was active from 1976 to 1986. At one time, François Kevorkian held an A&R position at Prelude. The label's owner was Marvin Schlachter, and his business partner was Stan Hof ...

, which acted as Guinness Records distributor.

References

External links

* *
Label page at Discogs
Defunct record labels of the United States Record labels established in 1977 Record labels disestablished in 1977 {{US-record-label-stub