Reprise Records

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Reprise Records
File:Reprise records.jpg
Parent companyWarner Music Group
Founded1960
FounderFrank Sinatra
Distributor(s)Warner Bros. Records (US)
WEA (outside the US)
GenreVarious
Country of originUS
Official websiteOfficial Web site of Reprise Records

Reprise Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group, operated through Warner Bros. Records.

Company history

Reprise was formed in 1960 by Frank Sinatra in order to allow more artistic freedom for his own recordings. Having left Capitol Records, and after trying to buy Norman Granz's Verve Records label, the first album Sinatra released on Reprise was Ring-A-Ding-Ding. Fellow Rat Pack members Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. also moved to the label. Stand-up comedian Redd Foxx also recorded for the label during its fledgling years. The label still issues any Sinatra work recorded while on the label and, after his death in 1998, it had great success with his greatest hits collections.

Reprise was sold to Warner Bros. Records in early 1963. In the time since, Warner Bros. has often treated Reprise as a bit of a secondary parent label, as many of its subsidiary labels, such as Straight and Kinetic, have had their records released in conjunction with Reprise.

In the late 1970s, as Joni Mitchell and Captain Beefheart had left the label, Sinatra expressed a wish to be the sole artist on Reprise, but Neil Young refused to leave. Mitchell returned to the label in the late 1980s after a stint on Geffen Records but now records for Warner Music's Nonesuch label. Young remains on Reprise to this day, though he also recorded for Geffen in the 1980s.

Today, in addition to Young, it is home to such artists as The Smashing Pumpkins, Avenged Sevenfold, The Used, Mastodon, Eric Clapton, Green Day, Fleetwood Mac, Josh Groban and My Chemical Romance. Reprise is also the US label for British band Depeche Mode.

It was formerly home to the Jimi Hendrix and the Barenaked Ladies' catalogs in the US.

One of the label's founding principals under Sinatra's leadership was that each artist would have full creative freedom, and at some point complete ownership of their work; including publishing rights. This is the reason why recordings of early Reprise artists (Dean Martin, Jimi Hendrix, The Kinks, etc.) are (in most cases) currently distributed through other labels. In Martin's case, his Reprise recordings were out of print for nearly 20 years before a deal was struck with Capitol Records.

Reprise Records artists

See also