Chess Records was an American record company established in 1950 in Chicago, specializing in blues and rhythm and blues. It was the successor to Aristocrat Records, founded in 1947. It expanded into soul music, gospel music, early rock and roll, and jazz and comedy recordings, released on the Chess and its subsidiary labels Checker and Argo/Cadet. The Chess catalogue is owned by Universal Music Group and managed by Geffen Records and Universal Music Enterprises.
Facelift is the debut studio album by the American rock band Alice in Chains, released by Columbia Records on August 28, 1990. The tracks "We Die Young", and "Man in the Box" were released as singles. "Man in the Box" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal in 1992. Facelift became the first grunge album to be certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), achieving this feat on September 11, 1991. The album peaked at No. 42 on the Billboard 200 chart, and has been certified triple-platinum by the RIAA for shipments of three million copies in the United States.
OKeh Records is an American record label founded by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation, a phonograph supplier established in 1916, which branched out into phonograph records in 1918. The name was spelled "OkeH" from the initials of Otto K. E. Heinemann but later changed to "OKeh". Since 1965, OKeh was a subsidiary of Epic Records, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Today, OKeh is a jazz imprint, distributed by Sony Masterworks.
Herbert Jay Solomon, known by his stage name Herbie Mann, was an American jazz flute player and important early practitioner of world music. Early in his career, he also played tenor saxophone and clarinet, but Mann was among the first jazz musicians to specialize on the flute. His most popular single was "Hi-Jack", which was a Billboard No. 1 dance hit for three weeks in 1975.
Century Media Records is a heavy metal record label with offices in the United States, Germany and London. In August 2015, Century Media was acquired by Sony Music for US$17 million.
Roadrunner Records is an American record label focused on heavy metal and hard rock bands. Founded in the Netherlands in 1980, it is now a division of Warner Music Group and is based in New York City.
Warlock were a German heavy metal band founded in 1982 in Düsseldorf by members of the underground bands Snakebite and Beast. The band gained popularity and some commercial success in Europe in the mid-1980s, due to the personality and stage presence of lead vocalist Doro Pesch. Warlock supported successful heavy metal bands on tour, such as W.A.S.P., Judas Priest, Dio and Megadeth.
R. L. Burnside was an American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He played music for much of his life but received little recognition before the early 1990s. In the latter half of that decade, Burnside recorded and toured with Jon Spencer, garnering crossover appeal and introducing his music to a new fan base in the punk and garage rock scenes.
Shrapnel Records is an American record label group founded by record producer Mike Varney. The group principally uses the Shrapnel Records record label, a guitar-oriented label which features shred guitar, hard rock, metal and progressive metal. In the 1990s, he also started the Tone Center Records and Blues Bureau International sublabels to promote fusion and blues.
Modern Records was an American record company and label formed in 1945 in Los Angeles by the Bihari brothers. Modern's artists included Etta James, Joe Houston, Little Richard, Ike & Tina Turner and John Lee Hooker. The label released some of the most influential blues and R&B records of the 1940s and 1950s.
Patrick Henry Travers is a Canadian rock guitarist, singer and songwriter who began his recording career in the mid-1970s.
Charon Shemekia Copeland is an American electric blues vocalist. To date, she has released ten albums and been presented with eight Blues Music Awards.
Cleopatra Records is an American independent record label based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1992 by Brian Perera. The record label has since grown into a family of labels, including Hypnotic Records, Purple Pyramid Records, Deadline Music Records, X-Ray Records, and Goldenlane Records, encompassing a variety of genres with emphasis on unique and experimental artists.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd is an American guitarist. He has released several studio albums and experienced significant commercial success as a blues rock artist.
Blind Pig Records is an American blues independent record label.
Hyades is a thrash metal band from Busto Arsizio, Italy, formed in 1996.
X5 Music Group is a record label based in Stockholm, Sweden with a branch in Manhattan, New York. Founded in 2003, it is a digital-only label that primarily licenses pre-existing music for compilation albums. X5 originally focused on classical music, and in 2011 its custom album The Greatest Video Game Music, featuring the London Philharmonic Orchestra, debuted at #23 on the Billboard 200. Since 2009 the company has had 24 albums on the chart; all 24 were custom digital releases produced by the label.
Killer is a Belgian heavy metal band founded in 1980. The lead guitarist is Paul Shorty Van Camp. Initially, they played hard rock, but later began to weigh down their sound in favor of traditional heavy metal, speed metal and power metal.
The discography of Obituary, an American death metal band, consists of ten studio albums, one live album, two compilation albums, two extended plays, two DVDs and seven music videos.
Japanese rock, sometimes abbreviated to J-rock, is rock music from Japan. Influenced by American and British rock of the 1960s, the first rock bands in Japan performed what is called group sounds, with lyrics almost exclusively in English. Folk rock band Happy End in the early 1970s are credited as the first to sing rock music in the Japanese language. Punk rock bands Boøwy and The Blue Hearts and hard rock/heavy metal groups X Japan and B'z led Japanese rock in the late 1980s and early 1990s by achieving major mainstream success.
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