Morrison Records (Seattle)
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Morrison Records was an independent record label, based in
Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...
,
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,
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. It was founded in the 1940s by Howell Oakdeane "Morrie" Morrison (1888-1984) and his wife,
Alice Nadine Morrison Alice Nadine Morrison (1892-1978), birth name Alice Nadine Lanterman, was an American songwriter and musician. With her husband Howell Oakdeane "Morrie" Morrison (1888-1984) she was involved in numerous music-related business ventures, including ...
(1892-1978), and appears to have gone out of business around the time of its founders' deaths. Much of their catalogue consisted of vanity recordings by local amateur talent, but
Paul Tutmarc Paul Tutmarc (May 29, 1896 – September 25, 1972) was an American musician and musical instrument inventor. He was a tenor singer and a performer and teacher of the lap steel guitar and the ukulele. He developed a number of variant types of strin ...
and his wife
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were among those who released records on Morrison.
Peter Blecha Peter Charles Blecha is an American historian, curator, essayist, author, musician, and director of the Seattle-based Northwest Music Archives. He is primarily known for research related to aspects of Pacific Northwest musical history. In additio ...

Morrison, "Morrie" and Alice -- Northwest Music Industry Pioneers
HistoryLink, November 20, 2005. Accessed online 2009-08-02.
According to
Peter Blecha Peter Charles Blecha is an American historian, curator, essayist, author, musician, and director of the Seattle-based Northwest Music Archives. He is primarily known for research related to aspects of Pacific Northwest musical history. In additio ...
, the label "generally leaned towards the old-fashioned strains preferred by
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." Morrison began in a space in downtown Seattle at Second and Pike. In the 1950s they negotiated a national distribution deal with
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and set up a warehouse and shipping center on Queen Anne Hill, a studio near Green Lake and a pressing plant in Belltown. Master tapes were sent to California to be turned into stamps to press vinyl records. Each record was hand-pressed on colored vinyl, and because of their hand-pressing process, they could put any two songs in their catalog on opposite sides of a single disc.


References

American independent record labels Music of Seattle Recording studios in Washington (state) {{US-independent-record-label-stub