Verve Music Group (now known as Verve Label Group; not for release label use!)
~ Label
Annotation
The Verve Music Group is the consequence of the Seagram/Polygram merge, and the result of the combination of the Verve and GRP earlier assets.
Universal Music Group armed-jazz-fist, it owns a number of labels and catalogs (Verve, EmArcy, Mercury, GRP, Down Home, impulse!, Norgran, Clef, Verve Forecast, Verve by Request, Commodore, Coral, Blue Thumb, Brunswick, Decca).
Though not as important as Concord, VMG still is a major force in the jazz landscape.
In 2002, VMG introduced a serie of Verve Remixed compilations, presenting remixes from its jazz back catalog.
Lately (December 2006), the Universal Music Group axed most of VMG and laid out nearly all the staff and a good part of the artist contracts, handing the catalogs over to UME.
You will probably never have to fill any release under the Verve Music Group itself, but rather under one of its subsidiary, most notably Verve or GRP and their numerous reissues collections:
- Best Of GRP
- Commodore
- Definitive
- Desert Island
- Divas
- Finest Hour
- For Lovers
- Free America
- Jazz Books
- Jazz in Paris
- Ken Burns Jazz
- LP Reproductions
- Priceless Jazz
- Quiet Now
- Swingstation
- Verve by Request
- Verve Elite Ed.
- Verve Master Ed.
- Verve Out of Print
- Verve Ultimate
For some insight about Verve history, please consult its annotation.
Also note that following its pop/commercial reorientation during the late 60s, then the Polydor buy-out during the 70s, Verve produced a number of non-jazz records and inherited from Philips/Mercury vaults and leases (making VMG the actual owner of stuff from the Velvet, Nana Mouskouri...).
