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Atco Records
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Atco Records | |
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| Parent company | Warner Music Group |
| Founded | 1955 |
| Founder(s) | Herb Abramson |
| Distributing label | Rhino Entertainment (US) |
| Genre(s) | Various. |
| Country of origin | US |
| Official Website | http://rhinorecords.com/ |
Atco Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group, currently operating through WMG's Rhino Entertainment.
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Atco Records was founded by Herb Abramson in 1955 as a sub label of Atlantic Records; operating as an outlet for acts that did not fit the format of Atlantic, which until 1968 was strictly blues, jazz, and R&B/soul. It also housed almost all of the company's non-African American artists (the main exception being The Young Rascals, who were considered a blue-eyed soul group.) The Atco name is simply an abbreviation of ATlantic COrporation.
In 1964 Atco released a single in the USA by the Beatles, "Ain't She Sweet" (flip side "Nobody's Child," with lead singer Tony Sheridan), which had been recorded in Hamburg in 1961. With lead vocal by John Lennon, "Ain't She Sweet" reached #19 on the Billboard chart in August 1964. Atco also released an album entitled Ain't She Sweet which featured the other two tracks by Sheridan and the Beatles from the Hamburg session and filled out by eight other songs (Beatles and other British Invasion numbers) covered by the Swallows.
Atco went on to distribute other labels, such as: Robert Stigwood's RSO Records, Volt Records, Rolling Stones Records, and Ruthless Records in the late 1980s.
Some of the best known Atco artists were Bobby Darin, The Coasters, Ben E. King, Acker Bilk, Nino Tempo and April Stevens, Dream Theater, Sonny and Cher, the Bee Gees, Bad Company, Lulu, Blue Magic, Donny Hathaway, Blind Faith, Buffalo Springfield, Cream, Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge, Enuff Z'Nuff, Pantera, Tangiers, Vandenburg, AC/DC, Eric Clapton, INXS, Pete Townshend, Yes, Michel'le, Peter Gabriel and Genesis.
The last number one hit on Atco was "If Wishes Came True" by Sweet Sensation in 1990. In 1991, Atlantic merged Atco with its fledgling Eastwest Records label, and briefly operated the combination as "Atco/Eastwest Records." The following year, the Atco name was dropped and the label continued operating as Eastwest Records. Since then, the Atco name and logo have been seen only on reissues of old material. As of mid-2005, its most recent release (in a joint venture with Rhino Records) was the soundtrack to the Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Sea, starring Kevin Spacey and featuring Spacey's renditions of Darin classics.
In 2006, Warner Music Group reactivated Atco Records in conjunction with Rhino Entertainment. A Warner Music Group executive, Karen Ahmet, has recently been promoted to head of Atco. She is based in Los Angeles, California. Scarlett Johansson and Art Garfunkel were among the first artists signed to the label. Johansson is recording an album of songs composed by Tom Waits. Garfunkel issued Some Enchanted Evening on January 30, 2007.[1]
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