CTI is a US record label owned and overseen by legendary jazz producer Creed Taylor (CTI stood for Creed Taylor Inc.).
Label Code: LC 1969 / LC 01969
He began the CTI label in 1967 as an imprint of Herb Alpert's A&M Records. Three years later Taylor took CTI out from under the A&M umbrella and relaunched CTI as an independent label. Most titles from 1970 through 1977 were distributed by Motown.
In 1978, th
... MoreCTI is a US record label owned and overseen by legendary jazz producer Creed Taylor (CTI stood for Creed Taylor Inc.).
Label Code: LC 1969 / LC 01969
He began the CTI label in 1967 as an imprint of Herb Alpert's A&M Records. Three years later Taylor took CTI out from under the A&M umbrella and relaunched CTI as an independent label. Most titles from 1970 through 1977 were distributed by Motown.
In 1978, the label filed for bankruptcy; however, much of its catalog has remained in print (Creed Taylor launched the 8000 reissue series in 1979.) Taylor and Vic Chirumbolo, CTI's Vice-President and Sales Manager, pulled through and formed a new distribution deal with Columbia Records, but this deal was short lived, and ended in 1980 with Columbia retaining the rights to CTI's master tape library (i.e., the titles released between 1970 and 1979.) Then the label went independent once again, and continued active until 1984, releasing new albums by such artists as Jim Hall, Roland Hanna and the all-star studio band Fuse One.
Creed Taylor restructured CTI in 1989, following a jury award as a result of the long running lawsuit with Warner Brothers over George Benson's contract. Creed Taylor resumed his partnership with engineer Rudy Van Gelder and photographer Pete Turner when recording the all-star session Rhythmstick in June 1989 (an ambitious project released on vinyl, CD, VHS and LaserDisc in 1990). Five other joint CD/VHS/Laserdisc projects were planned with CD distribution initially being handled by PolyGram, then Mesa/Bluemoon Recordings, Ltd.(1991-92), Independent National Distributors, Inc. 1993-94 and finally Koch Records(1995-96). In 1993, David Bean was appointed President of CTI Records and Video in New York. He was joined shortly afterwards by David Grossman as VP of Sale and Marketing, and together they handled the final CTI original releases, numbered 6723**-2. The final CTI original release is believed to be Steve Laury - Vineland Dreams.
In 2002, CTI started to issue mail-order only releases via CTIRecords.com, but the website no longer exists. The site also sold Creed Taylor productions from the Bethlehem, ABC, Impulse, Verve and CTI catalogs. [There are a number of snapshots of the ctirecords.com website in the Internet archive, such as the one linked below]
In Japan, King Records remains CTI's distributor since 1970. More recently, Creed Taylor himself produced an extensive SHM-CD reissue series in 2009, supervising all the remasterings done by Rudy Van Gelder at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. In September 2010, a new CTI project, "The CTI Jazz All-Star Band: Montreux Jazz Festival 2009" (produced by Taylor and engineered by Van Gelder) was released in Japan on CD, DVD and Blu-ray formats.
Extensive CD reissue series have been coordinated in Europe and in the U.S. by producer Didier C. Deutsch, former CTI publicist, as well as in Japan by producers Yoichi Nakao, Arnaldo DeSouteiro and Susumu Morikawa.
CTI in Canada - help with identifying date ranges and reissues:
A&M CTI from 1967 to 1970 - handled by Quality Records Limited.
A&M CTI after 1970 - handled by A&M Records Of Canada Limited
CTI from Feb 1970 until May 1973 - handled by Quality Records Limited
CTI from May 1973 to March 1977 - handled by CTI Records Of Canada Ltd.
CTI from March 1977 to late 1979 - handled by RCA Limited
CTI from late 1979/early 1980 to 1984 - handled by Sefel Records Ltd.
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