W&G Records was an Australian recording company that operated from the early 1950s to the 1970s. It was a subsidiary of the Melbourne precision engineering company White & Gillespie.
W&G released many significant recordings by Australian popular artists of the 1960s and also issued recordings of popular American artists, notably releases from the ABC-Paramount (Ampar) label, which W&G distributed from 1955 until 1960, when the Australian distribution was taken over by Festival Records. Recording engineer and producer Bill Armstrong worked at W&G from 1956 to 1961, prior to opening his own studio in 1965. [1]
W&G also established a special subsidiary label, In Records, which released the classic mid-1960s recordings by the Loved Ones.
This is a list of recording artists who have had at least one recording released on the W&G record label. In alphabetical order:
The Seekers were an Australian folk-influenced pop group originally formed in Melbourne in 1962. They were the first Australian pop music group to achieve major chart and sales success in the United Kingdom and the United States. They were especially popular during the 1960s, with their best-known configuration of Judith Durham on vocals, piano and tambourine; Athol Guy on double bass and vocals; Keith Potger on twelve-string guitar, banjo and vocals; and Bruce Woodley on guitar, mandolin, banjo and vocals.
Judith Durham was an Australian singer, songwriter and musician who became the lead singer of the Australian folk music group the Seekers in 1962.
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the American Graphophone Company, the successor to the Volta Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, and the second major company to produce records. From 1961 to 1991, its recordings were released outside North America under the name CBS Records to avoid confusion with EMI's Columbia Graphophone Company. Columbia is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels: Epic Records, and former longtime rivals, RCA Records and Arista Records as the latter two were originally owned by BMG before its 2008 relaunch after Sony's acquisition alongside other BMG labels.
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era is a compilation album of American psychedelic and garage rock singles that were released during the mid-to-late 1960s. It was created by Lenny Kaye, who was a writer and clerk at the Village Oldies record shop in New York. He would later become the lead guitarist for the Patti Smith Group. Kaye produced Nuggets under the supervision of Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman. Kaye conceived the project as a series of roughly eight LP installments focusing on different US regions, but Elektra convinced him that one double album would be more commercially viable. It was released on LP by Elektra in 1972 with liner notes by Kaye that contained one of the first uses of the term "punk rock". It was reissued with a new cover design by Sire Records in 1976. In the 1980s, Rhino Records issued Nuggets in a series of fifteen installments, and in 1998 as a 4-cd box set.
Vee-Jay Records is an American record label founded in the 1950s, located in Chicago and specializing in blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll.
Johnny Rivers is an American musician. He enjoyed success throughout the 1960s and 1970s as a singer and guitarist, characterized as a versatile and influential artist. Rivers is best known for his 1960s output, having popularized the mid-60s discotheque scene through his live rock and roll recordings at Los Angeles' Whiskey a Go Go nightclub, and later shifting to a more orchestral, soul-oriented sound during the latter half of the decade. These developments were reflected by his most notable string of hit singles between 1964 and 1968, many of them covers. They include "Memphis", "Mountain of Love", "The Seventh Son", "Secret Agent Man", "Poor Side of Town", "Baby I Need Your Lovin'", and "Summer Rain". Ultimately, Rivers landed 9 top ten hits and 17 top forty hits in the American charts from 1964 to 1977.
Pete "La Roca" Sims was an American jazz drummer and attorney. Born and raised in Harlem by a pianist mother and a stepfather who played trumpet, he was introduced to jazz by his uncle Kenneth Bright, a major shareholder in Circle Records and the manager of rehearsal spaces above the Lafayette Theater. Sims studied percussion at the High School of Music and Art and at the City College of New York, where he played tympani in the CCNY Orchestra. He adopted the name La Roca early in his musical career, when he played timbales for six years in Latin bands. In the 1970s, during a hiatus from jazz performance, he resumed using his original surname. When he returned to jazz in the late 1970s, he usually inserted "La Roca" into his name in quotation marks to help audiences familiar with his early work identify him. He told The New York Times in 1982 that he did so only out of necessity:
I can't deny that I once played under the name La Roca, but I have to insist that my name is Peter Sims with La Roca in brackets or in quotes. For 16 or 17 years, when I have not been playing the music, people have known me as Sims....When I was 14 or 15, I thought ["La Roca"] was clever; right now, it's an embarrassment. I thought that it would be something that people would probably remember - boy, was I ever right on that one! I can't make my conversion.
Bethlehem Records was an American jazz independent record label, founded by Gus Wildi in 1953.
Introducing... The Beatles is the first studio album released by the English rock band the Beatles in the United States. Originally scheduled for a July 1963 release, the LP came out on 10 January 1964, on Vee-Jay Records, ten days before Capitol's Meet the Beatles!. The latter album, however, entered the U.S. album chart one week before the former. Consequently, when Meet The Beatles! peaked at No. 1 for eleven consecutive weeks, Introducing...The Beatles stalled at No. 2 where it remained for nine consecutive weeks. It was the subject of much legal wrangling, but ultimately, Vee-Jay was permitted to sell the album until late 1964, by which time it had sold more than 1.3 million copies. On 24 July 2014 the album was certified gold and platinum by the RIAA.
The Jordanaires were an American vocal quartet that formed as a gospel group in 1948. Over the years, they recorded both sacred and secular music for recording companies such as Capitol Records, RCA Victor, Columbia Records, Decca Records, Vocalion Records, Stop Records, and many other smaller independent labels.
Keith Leon Potger is an Australian musician. He is a founding member of the Australian folk-pop group the Seekers. He was born in Ceylon and is of Burgher descent. In 1969, Potger and his business partner David Joseph co-founded the contemporary English pop group the New Seekers. Potger also records and performs as a solo artist.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Johnny Mercer Song Book is a 1964 studio album by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, focusing on the songs of Johnny Mercer. It was recorded in Los Angeles, California. This is Fitzgerald's fifth and final collaboration with Riddle during her years on the Verve label.
The Strangers were an Australian rock band formed in 1961 and existed until 1975. The band started out playing instrumental songs in a style similar to The Shadows, with influences from Cliff Richard. The original line-up was Laurie Arthur, Peter Robinson (bass), Graeme "Garth" Thompson (drums) and Fred Wieland. Robinson had previously played with a local band The Thunderbirds and went on to replace Athol Guy in the Seekers in the late 1970s.
Lorez Alexandria was an American jazz singer, described as "one of the most gifted and underrated jazz singers of the twentieth century". She became established in the midwest before moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. Jazz critics have compared her to Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, and Ella Fitzgerald.
Keynote Records was a record label founded by record store owner Eric Bernay in 1940. The label's initial releases were folk and protest songs from the Soviet Union and the Spanish Civil War, and several anti-war releases from American musicians followed. From 1943, the label released recordings in the jazz idiom produced by Harry Lim. The music critic John S. Wilson in 1965 described the company's jazz output as "an unusually valid reflection of the jazz spirits of the times." An unwise investment in a factory to manufacture records in 1947 led to the company becoming bankrupt in 1948, and came under the control of Mercury Records.
Frankie and Johnny is the twelfth soundtrack album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley, released on RCA Victor Records in mono and stereo, LPM/LSP 3553, in April 1966. An excursion into Dixieland and ragtime music, it is the soundtrack to the 1966 film of the same name starring Presley. Recording sessions took place at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California, on May 12, 13, and 14, 1965. It peaked at number 20 on the Top LP's chart. It was certified Gold and Platinum on January 6, 2004, by the Recording Industry Association of America.
"Skinny Minnie" is a 1958 song co-written and recorded by Bill Haley and his Comets. The song was released as a Decca single which became a Top 40 chart hit in the U.S., peaking at #22 on the Billboard chart.
The Reverend Cleophus Robinson was an American gospel singer and preacher. He hosted a gospel television series which ran for over 20 years. He was often referred to as "The World's Greatest Gospel Singer".
The Red Onion Jazz Band was a trad jazz band formed in Melbourne (Australia) in the early 1960s and was also known as "The Red Onions" and "The Onions".
The Seekers Complete is a 5-disc box set by Australian band The Seekers. It was released in December 1995 following the group's induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame at the ARIA Music Awards of 1995.