Onyx Records was founded as a New York corporation on July 15, 1971, under the name of Avatar Productions, Inc. The name was changed to Onyx Records, Inc., in 1973. Onyx was owned equally by Joe Fields and Don Schlitten. Onyx was in the business of securing rights in "classic" jazz master recordings and manufacturing and distributing phono records derived from such master recordings.
Selected discography
Newman's collection
Newman,[a] while a student at Columbia in 1941, lugged his acetate disc recording machine — a portable Wilcox-Gay Recordio "disc cutter" — to jazz clubs in Harlem, including Minton's Playhouse on 118th Street and Clark Monroe’s Uptown House on 134th Street, both of which were incubators of jazz of the day. Newman's collection became the backbone for Onyx Recording, Inc.
Newman's recordings have been issued as unauthorized records, variously over the years, but none were done so with the permission or participation of the artists or their estates.[6] The commercial value of the recordings were nil; and those who acquired them viewed the market as one of historic preservation.
† Replaced for the second sessions by Bob Mabane (né Robert Lee Mcbane, Jr.; 1914–1991) (tenor sax)
Charlie Parker
A compilation album, Charlie Parker – First Recordings! (ORI 221), which included the KFBI sessions of November 30, 1940, and December 2, 1940, plus an AFRS #582 broadcast from the Savoy Ballroom on February 12, 1945 – released in 1974 – won a Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Soloist in 1975. The 1945 session featured Cootie Williams and his Orchestra:
Fields was also the sole shareholder of Blanchris, Inc., the parent company of Muse Records (co-founded by both Fields and Schlitten). Muse was primarily in the business of recording and distributing contemporary jazz records.
Onyx Records, an Americanrockabilly label from the late 1950s, owned by Jerry Winston. The label was known for having recorded The Velours.
Onyx International Records, a gospel label
Notes and references
Notes
^Bill Fox (aka Bill Mink, Bill Wolf/Wolfe), Jerry Newman, and Seymour Weiss (né Seymour Michael Wyse; born 1923 in London) founded the Esoteric Record Corporation in 1949 in New York. In 1957 the label was renamed Counterpoint; and after being first sold to Eichler Records Corporation in 1960, and then to Everest Record Group in 1963, to Counterpoint / Esoteric Records. Earlier, in 1948, Newman and Wyse founded Greenwich Music Shop. In 1964, Fox moved to Vanguard Records, to become the production coordinator. Fox had been Newman's business partner with the Greenwich Music Shop
^"Jazz from the Forties on Onyx Records," Timothy Evans, Journal of Jazz Studies (Institute of Jazz Studies), Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1975, pps. 96-103; ISSN0093-3686
