Prestige Records - History

History

Weinstock opened a record store for collectors in 1948 while still a teenager. The store was next door to the Metropole Jazz Club in New York City. Jazz musicians would hang out and rehearse at the Club, and then migrate upstairs next door to Weinstock's store. Weinstock got the idea to record these jazz stars by offering them cash payments.

Prestige office was located at 446 West 50th Street, New York City. The label's name was initially New Jazz, but changed to Prestige Records the next year. Its catalog contains a significant number of jazz classics, including renowned works by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk and many others. Weinstock was known for encouraging the performances to be unrehearsed for a more authentic, exciting sound. To this effect, Prestige Records, unlike Blue Note Records, would not pay musicians for rehearsals. Another Weinstock practice, of rewinding the tapes after "bad" takes, has resulted in very few alternate takes from the classic Prestige years surfacing.

For most of the 1950s and 1960s, the recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder was responsible for recording the company's releases and Ira Gitler occasionally fulfilled the role of producer in the early 1950s. Around 1958, Prestige began to diversify, reviving the "New Jazz" name, usually for recordings by emerging musicians, and introduced the Swingsville and Moodsville lines, though these were relatively short-lived, many albums being re-released later in the 1960s on Prestige itself. Bluesville Records was also a subsidiary label of Prestige.

During this period, Weinstock ceased supervising recording sessions directly, employing Chris Albertson, Ozzie Cadena, Esmond Edwards, Don Schlitten, and producer/music supervisor Bob Porter, among others, to fulfil this function. Musicians recording for the label at this time included Jaki Byard and Booker Ervin, while Prestige remained commercially viable by recording a number of soul jazz artists like Charles Earland.

Bob Weinstock has been criticized over the years for allegedly sharp business practices. Jackie McLean in A.B. Spellman's Four Lives in the Bebop Business (1966) is particularly outspoken, but others, including Albertson and Miles Davis in his autobiography, have defended him. The company was sold to Fantasy Records in 1971, and original releases on the label formed a significant proportion of their Original Jazz Classics line. Fantasy was purchased by Concord Records in 2005.