Rhino Founder Buys Historic Blues/Jazz Label

As the founder of Rhino Entertainment, Richard Foos built his company into a music-business powerhouse — the premier reissue label — by repackaging and/or reissuing music from artists as diverse as The Monkees and Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, John Coltrane and Roy Rogers. Now Foos, 53, and former Rhino executive Bob Emmer, 51, are about to do it all over again.

With the acquisition of the Somerville, Mass.-based Biograph Records catalog of historic jazz and blues recordings, Foos and Emmer have announced their re-entry into the music business: Retropolis Entertainment. "The freshness of starting anew is exciting," Foos said during a recent interview. "It reconnects me with my youth and the excitement of first starting. It's my biggest move since starting Rhino."

The purchase of the Biograph catalog is a major first step for Retropolis. Biograph, founded by Arnold Caplin in 1967, has released over 225 albums. Among them are more than 50 CDs featuring such American legends as New Orleans composer/piano man Jelly Roll Morton, Kansas City stride-piano player/singer Fats Walker, ragtime pianist/composer Scott Joplin and Delta blues legends Son House and Skip James.

"It became available, and I've always had a great love of blues and early Americana music," Foos said. "So the timing was right and the masters were right and it just kind of happened."

The Biograph catalog — which, in addition to recordings made specifically for Biograph, contains the Melodeon, Center, Regal and Dawn labels — also includes recordings by Reverend Gary Davis, Eubie Blake, Blind Willie McTell, Stan Getz, Art Farmer, Johnny Shines, Zoot Sims, Memphis Minnie, Little Brother Montgomery and Johnny Shines.

Foos began collecting records in 1960. He opened a record store, Rhino Records, on Westwood Boulevard in West Los Angeles (near UCLA) in October 1973. Two years later Foos released a 45, "Go to Rhino Records," by Wild Man Fisher; the single was given away at the store. In 1978, Foos and Harold Bronson launched Rhino Records, the label, with the release of a full-length Wild Man Fisher album, Wildmania. In the years that followed, Foos and Bronson transformed the company into Rhino Entertainment, perhaps the best music reissue company in the world. But after nearly 25 years with Rhino, in late 2001 Foos and Bronson (who is currently producing movies) decided to leave the company, which is now part of AOL Time-Warner.

"My contract was up and I just thought it was the right time," he said. "I've always been more of an entrepreneur and was ready to go back to my entrepreneurial roots. I wasn't getting away [from Rhino] as much as going towards something else."

Although it's too early for specifics, Foos said that Retropolis plans to repackage classic Biograph albums with extra tracks and extensive liner notes and to issue career compilations for artists such as Son House and Scott Joplin. There aren't many unreleased Biograph recordings waiting to be discovered, according to Foos. "Since most of the material has been released, it's more what we can do in terms of marrying the Biograph materials with great earlier music," he said. Rhino won numerous Grammies for its innovative reissue packages; the Biograph material cries out for the kind of high-quality packaging at which Foos excels.

For Foos, the crown jewel of the Biograph catalog is Skip James' 1964 album, Hardtime Killing Floor Blues. The career-spanning comeback album was recorded following James' acclaimed 1964 appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, and includes re-recorded versions of songs James first tracked in 1931 for Paramount, including "Devil Got My Woman" (the original version was heard in "Ghost World") and "Cherry Ball Blues."

"I think [the '20s and '30s] were a dark mark on American music history," Foos said. "There were so many great blues musicians who, after the blues waned in popularity in the '40s and '50s, couldn't make a living from playing blues. So you had everybody from Mississippi Wallace to Elmore James making a living doing everything from working as domestic helpers or waiters or janitors. These great blues musicians, who begot rock 'n' roll, they are the founders of American popular music."

Foos sees Retropolis following in Rhino's eclectic footsteps. "We are looking at acquiring other music like the Biograph recordings," he said. "But it's going to be similar to Rhino because we'll be working on various genres from rock to blues to jazz to pop, so it'll cover the whole gamut. We'll also do videos as well. We're looking into music videos and great TV show classics."

As far as reissuing important, overlooked music, Foos now finds himself competing with Rhino. But he says he isn't intimidated by his past or his competition. "It forces us to be even more creative than we were at Rhino," he said. "To come up with really interesting compilations that haven't been done." —Ryan Dombal [Wednesday September 25, 2002]