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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZBEAR FAMILY labelGerman record label founded by Richard Weize, who began as a record collector in the 1950s, had a short-lived collectors' magazine, lived in England for a while, attended the annual country music festival at Wembley in 1968 and got hooked all over again. Back in Germany he had a Folk Variety label and booked acts for clubs; when his partner quit he formed Bear Family '75 (he is fond of bears, the new label named from an 1898 encyclopedia illustration). An album of previously unissued Johnny Cash material in 1978 gave him a taste for vault research, and he became a serious thorn in the side of multinational record companies, who have to concentrate on current product: Bear Family reissues vault material, refusing to accept any but the best source materials and searching for every available track, previously issued or not. No advantage is taken of strange copyright laws in various countries: masters are licensed directly from the copyright holders. It took him a while to convince the record companies that he was serious, but the Bear Family catalogue today is almost unbelievable: apart from CD compilations often including rare tracks and entire albums by such artists as Pérez Prado, Al Sears, the Collins Kids, Sanford Clark, King Curtis, Jimmy Dean, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Tompall Glaser, Leroy Van Dyke, Tito Puente and too many more to mention, Bear Family issues complete boxed sets of some of the most popular and/or influential artists of all: Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Snow, Lonnie Donegan, Jimmie Driftwood, Connie Francis, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Cash, Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Monroe, Don Gibson, Bill Haley, Johnny Horton, Johnnie and Jack, Jerry Lee Lewis, Louis Jordan, Buddy and Ella Johnson, the Louvin Brothers, Webb Pierce, the Platters, Jim Reeves, Marty Robbins, Jack Scott, the Sons of the Pioneers, Julia Lee, the Osborne Brothers, Merle Haggard, the Cadillacs, the Orioles ... Each CD includes 20-30 tracks; one may think that four boxes of the complete Doris Day (Secret Love: five CDs plus 100-page book, It's Magic: six CDs plus 90-page book, Que Sera, Sera: five CDs plus 96-page book, and Move Over Darling: eight CDs plus 120-page book) is overkill, but she was one of the most successful recording artists of all time, of whom Paul Weston said that she never knew what a good singer she was; it is astonishing how much fun it can be to wallow in such sets, to say nothing of the books, which contain first-class documentation, essays and photographs; and if Doris Day happens to be your favourite recording artist, you'll sell the family silver. Lefty Frizzell was one of the most influential country stars of all time, his recordings nearly all out of print; his Bear Family set contains twelve CDs of solid musical history. None of this would work if it were not an international operation, and Bear Family's mail-order service is also first-class. Click here for the website. |