Starday-King Records, Inc.

Also appears as "Starday-King Records" only. In 1968, Starday Records purchased King Records (3) of Cincinnati, Ohio which was a powerhouse independent label and had a strong country catalog as well as a strong R&B catalog with James Brown, Little Willie John, Freddie King and Hank Ballard among others. Three years later, Don Pierce (2) sold Starday-King to Lin Broadcasting Corporation for about five million dollars and retired from the record business. In July, 1971, Lin sold James Brown's King contract to Polydor, then sold the Starday-King labels to a company Leiber & Stoller had set up called Tennessee Recordings And Publishing Co.. From 1971 to 1974, not much happened at Starday-King except the designs of the labels changed. Very few albums were being released and even fewer hits emerged. In 1975, Tennessee Recording and Publishing, still running under the Starday-King name, revived the DeLuxe (2) and Federal Records (2) labels and began a new series of reissues. This ploy was apparently to generate enough revenue to make the label salable, since almost immediately it was sold to another Nashville concern, GML Inc., who operated the Gusto Records (2) label.