GRP Records (Grusin-Rosen Productions) is a jazz record label founded by Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen in 1978. Distributed by Verve Records, GRP was originally known for its digital recordings that focuses on its jazz genre.
History With Grusin and Rosen flourishing in their respective careers as a film composer, jazz musician, engineer and commercial music producer, a chance recording session for a commercial would set up what would become the seeds of their eventual partnership. Rosen had just recorded a musician named Jon Lucien in 1972 in which Lucien would sing and play for the engineer and fledging producer. Rosen was excited about the prospects of recording him and then contacted Grusin to do the musical arrangements for the potential album. The album, Rashida for RCA Victor, released in 1973, was Grusin and Rosen's first producing job and they followed up their first collaboration with Lucien with Song For My Lady for Columbia Records in 1975. Grusin during this time would not only provide arrangements for the likes of Sergio Mendes and Peggy Lee but also began a prolific partnership in Hollywood with director Sydney Pollack, that would benefit both men as they worked together for more than three decades until Pollack's death in the late 2000s. Their first film together The Yakuza for Warner Bros. would also feature one of Grusin's best friends and also a label mate in popular guitarist Lee Ritenour, who was around 19 years old at the time, and Three Days of the Condor starring Oscar Award winner Robert Redford, which is the most popular score and film of their decades-long collaboration.
1975–1977 In 1975 when Rosen was visiting Los Angeles CA where Grusin was working at the time, he made a proposition to Grusin to form a company together since they had already been collaborating on several projects. Grusin agreed and as soon as that happened, Dr. George Butler, who was running Blue Note Records called them to produce an album by a young musician from Detroit MI who been playing with jazz and R&B star George Benson with CTI Records named Earl Klugh. They both agreed and Klugh's self-titled album released in 1976 would be the first official release under their newly formed production company, Grusin/Rosen Productions. They would produce two more Klugh albums for Blue Note, Living Inside Your Love and Finger Paintings.
Also during this period, the pair would go on to produce another of Rosen's recording musicians for his commercials in violinist Noel Pointer, his debut album for Blue Note Phantazia and his follow-up album, Hold On. Phantazia featured the debut of flautist Dave Valentin, who would be the first artist signed to the soon-to-be-born label in 1978.
They also produced albums for other artists, including Patti Austin's Havana Candy for CTI Records, Lee Ritenour's The Captain's Journey for Elektra Records, and Yutaka Yokokura's Love Light for Alfa Records Japan, which was a hit throughout the US despite being released only in Japan, where the album was considered a commercial failure, as well as Grusin's One of a Kind for Polydor Records.
They were all successfully-produced albums, especially during the latter half of the decade, when disco had become a successful musical fad. They were also able to accomplish this with somewhat limited airplay before more radio stations that featured solely jazz would hit the airwaves, which eventually happened in later years throughout the US. Grusin and Rosen's albums were so well produced that radio stations did find a place for them, which would benefit them in the next couple of decades.
1978–1981
Grusin and Rosen's success as producers led to a meeting with Arista Records chief Clive Davis, whose Novus Records jazz banner had produced solid albums that were not selling despite positive reviews. Davis offered Grusin and Rosen a deal that would make them producers for at least three jazz artists per year, which the pair was not interested in doing. Grusin and Rosen wanted a logo deal that would make them established, and Davis agreed to it.
GRP/Arista Records was formed and the very first artist signed under their new deal was flautist Dave Valentin, who had made his debut on his friend Noel Pointer's albums for Blue Note. Singer Angela Bofill, who was Valentin's girlfriend at the time, was also signed to the label along with trumpet player Tom Browne, vibraphonist Jay Hoggard and the youngest performer under their banner, high school piano prodigy Bernard Wright, who was 16 years old when he recorded his debut album 'Nard in 1980, among the other artists they signed and produced.
Valentin's debut album Legends would sell more than 70,000 copies, Bofill's debut album Angie would sell over 280,000 copies and Browne's debut album Browne Sugar would sell more than 700,000 copies, which surprised many and solidified Grusin's and Rosen's reputations as producers.
Also during this period, Grusin made his first pure digital recording, the best-selling album Mountain Dance, which was recorded live with no overdubbing and utilized some of the best recording technology at the time including the digital Soundstream Editing System, which was from Salt Lake City UT. The album was recorded in five grueling days and was one of the first digital recordings produced in 1979.
Grusin then took a group of artists for a tour in Japan which was documented by the album Dave Grusin and the GRP All-Stars In Japan and featured many of the label's artists including Grusin and his brother Don Grusin, Tom Browne, Dave Valentin, Bobby Broom, Marcus Miller, Buddy Williams, and guest Japanese saxophonist Sadao Watanabe, which was recorded in fall of 1980 and would be the first of many GRP concerts that they would hold over the years there.
1982
Grusin and Rosen's time at Arista Records was coming to an end as Clive Davis and the label were seeing different visions for the success of the label. Davis wanted to concentrate on hit singles by the latest hot artists for extended airplay, while Grusin and Rosen were concentrated on great sound quality, performances and establishing a bigger audience for jazz at that point in time. They also felt that the albums they produced were not given the highest priority and given the back of the bus treatment with no advertising or advertising to the wrong demographic of music fans or the albums were not available on their release date. Grusin and Rosen made an amenable parting with Arista and Davis in which they were able to acquire a few albums that they produced including bestsellers such as Legends, Browne Sugar, The Hawk (Dave Valentin's follow-up album to Legends), Without Rhyme Or Reason by Scott Jarrett (brother of jazz pianist Keith Jarrett), Days Like These by Hoggard and Grusin's own albums Mountain Dance and Out of the Shadows. They were also able to acquire other albums they were involved with from other labels that included Grusin's One of a Kind from Polydor Records and Lee Ritenour's On The Line and Rio from Elektra Records, which was recorded in 1978 as a hybrid digital and analog recording that was recorded both in the US and in Brazil, while the former was a pure digital recording with no overdubbing whatsoever.
Other albums that they produced under their banner would stay with Arista, which is now owned by Sony Music Entertainment. This would also be true of artists such as Tom Browne and Angela Bofill, who was coaxed into leaving GRP by Davis for a more lucrative deal with the label that resulted in watered-down drum machine material much like Browne's. In later years, after her short-lived success under Grusin and Rosen's tutelage, Bofill would suffer some personal health-related setbacks after recording with various different labels throughout the 80's and 90's. Browne's career would not take off after such a promising start and ended up much like Bofill's throughout the rest of the 80's and Browne tried to return to his roots throughout the 1990s without much success.
Soon they would make a very important decision that would change the history of jazz, since both Grusin and Rosen both strongly felt that all of the albums they had produced for most labels were getting the "back of the bus" treatment without proper advertising or promotion. They were also disappointed that the albums they produced were not released or available at record stores on their release dates. Taking in all of these factors, Grusin and Rosen formed a record company because they wanted to be in control of all of these factors. This led to them signing established jazz stars such as Lee Ritenour, Billy Cobham, Chick Corea, Dizzy Gillespie, and Gerry Mulligan, to go along with Dave Valentin, who joined Grusin and Rosen after leaving Arista Records along with newbies, guitarist Kevin Eubanks, the group Special EFX and Diane Schuur, a blind singer-pianist from Seattle WA, who was discovered by saxophonist Stan Getz and invited to the White House in 1982 to perform with Getz for First Lady Nancy Reagan on a special that aired on PBS.
The Compact Disc Player and Compact Disc were introduced that year in Japan; Grusin and Rosen were intrigued by its audiophile sound and it was something they felt would be vital to the growth of the company.
1982–1989
Now established as a record company, Grusin and Rosen were pushing forward and thinking of the future and how to make the label stand out with the evolving technology of the times. Grusin and Rosen figured that the compact disc with its optical and audiophile capabilities would be a very important part of what they were trying to do to make the label successful, which was to produce high-quality recordings with the best sound and production available to them including recording venues, musicians and orchestras.
To accomplish this, they decided on a specific album that not only would introduce the best of what they were producing, but also an album that catered to those people who could afford the first CD players available for their homes, which cost $1,000 per unit at the time in 1982 and wouldn't be completely available onto the market until Christmas 1983. After much research, the Glenn Miller Band was chosen to be the first album recorded for their company in January 1983. Members of the original band, as well as special guests like singer Mel Tormé, also participated in the ambitious project recorded in New York NY. The album In the Digital Mood not only became a popular album after its release selling more than 100,000 units, but also one of the label's greatest selling albums to this day, and was recognized as such in 1992 with a "Gold Edition" to not only commemorate the label's 10th Anniversary celebration but the Gold record status the album achieved.
They followed up this best selling album with Gerry Mulligan's Little Big Horn and Grusin's Dave Grusin and the NY-LA Dream Band, which was a live concert from 1982 that was recorded in Japan and seen throughout the country. The label during this period would be known mainly for its fusion work, but two of the first three releases were the straight-ahead jazz albums by Glenn Miller Band and Mulligan. Another vital addition was recording the great Dizzy Gillespie, which helped the label even more as Grusin and Rosen teamed him up with the best of the young jazz musicians performing at the time, including saxophonist Branford Marsalis and pianist Kenny Kirkland for the album New Faces.