Saturday, September 1, 2012

Leon Russell - Stop All That Jazz, on Shelter Records label


Shelter was a U.S. record label started by Leon Russell, Denny Cordell and a group of Texas studio musician friends that operated from 1969 to 1981. Russell and Cordell ran the label and were primary owners until 1976, when the two had a falling-out and Cordell took full ownership of the label.  Shelter was distributed at various times in its history by Capitol Records, Blue Thumb, its future parent company ABC Records, and its successor, MCA. In the UK, it was distributed almost entirely by Island Records (who ironically had a formidable -- yet brief -- distribution relationship with Capitol Records in the U.S. in the early 1970s).  Apart from Russell's own albums and those of J.J. Cale, Shelter released the early work of Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, gap band, Phoebe Snow and Dwight Twilley.  Cordell sold Shelter's catalog to EMI Music in 2009, placing it back under Capitol Records' administration.  Shelter label appearance:  When it began in 1970, the Shelter label was red with an egg image bearing an inverted Superman logo*.  *From mid-1972 to 1973 [the remainder of Shelter's distribution by Capitol] this part of the Shelter logo was usually overstamped [obscured] with a black rectangle in response to a copyright infringement lawsuit and later settlement with DC Comics).  After ABC took over distribution in 1974, the Shelter label was an 'S' in egg-shape circle on orange tint background, with 'Shelter' in curved black text at top. The ABC-distributed Shelter label later became orange, with 'Shelter' in dark orange print seen in a straight line at top. In 1978, Shelter employed the eerie orange-and-yellow tinted 'Saturn & Moon' design (the "S" egg now has a Saturn ring over it), which was later continued into the MCA era when it acquired ABC Records in 1979.

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