Rhino Entertainment
Encyclopedia
Rhino Entertainment Company is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 specialty record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 and production company. It is owned by Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...

.

History

Rhino was originally a novelty song
Novelty song
A novelty song is a comical or nonsensical song, performed principally for its comical effect. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs. The term arose in Tin Pan Alley to describe one of the major divisions of popular music. The other two divisions...

 and reissue company during the 1970s and 1980s, releasing compilation albums of pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

, rock & roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

, and rhythm & blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...

 successes from the 1950s through the 1980s. They were also known for releasing retrospectives of famous comedy performers, including Richard Pryor
Richard Pryor
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor was an American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer and MC. Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities, and profanity, as well as racial epithets...

, Stan Freberg
Stan Freberg
Stanley Victor "Stan" Freberg is an American author, recording artist, animation voice actor, comedian, radio personality, puppeteer, and advertising creative director whose career began in 1944...

, Tom Lehrer
Tom Lehrer
Thomas Andrew "Tom" Lehrer is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, mathematician and polymath. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater...

, and Spike Jones
Spike Jones
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, performed a drunken, hiccuping verse for 1942's "Clink! Clink! Another Drink"...

. Starting during the late 1980s, Rhino transitioned into a complete entertainment company specializing in home video/DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 re-issues of television programs such as The Transformers
The Transformers (TV series)
The Transformers is an animated television series depicting a war among giant robots who could transform into vehicles, other objects and animal-like forms. Written and recorded in America, the series was animated in Japan and South Korea...

, G.I. Joe
G.I. Joe
G.I. Joe is a line of action figures produced by the toy company Hasbro. The initial product offering represented four of the branches of the U.S. armed forces with the Action Soldier , Action Sailor , Action Pilot , Action Marine and later on, the Action Nurse...

, Jem
Jem (TV series)
Jem, also known as Jem and the Holograms, is an American animated television series that ran from 1985 to 1988 in U.S. first-run syndication...

, The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger is a fictional masked Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture....

, My Favorite Martian
My Favorite Martian
My Favorite Martian is an American television sitcom that aired on CBS from September 29, 1963 to May 1, 1966 for 107 episodes...

, The World of Sid & Marty Krofft collection and Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an American cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Best Brains, Inc., that ran from 1988 to 1999....

, and Compact Disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

 releases of select artists and movie soundtracks.

Rhino started as a record shop on Westwood Boulevard
Westwood Boulevard
Westwood Boulevard is a street in Los Angeles that runs through the heart of Westwood Village and further south in West Los Angeles.Westwood Blvd begins south of Sunset Boulevard in the campus of UCLA as Westwood Plaza. After exiting UCLA, it is one of two major thoroughfares in the Village...

, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, during 1973 by Richard Foos. It became a record distributor five years later thanks to the effort of then-store manager Harold Bronson. Their early releases were mostly novelty records (with their first single being Wild Man Fischer
Wild Man Fischer
Larry Wayne Fischer , better known as Wild Man Fischer, was an American songwriter in the outsider genre. He was notable for being responsible for Rhino Records' first release, Go To Rhino Records...

's "Go To Rhino Records") and some punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

 singles; the difficulties involved in getting airplay and distribution for such material eventually caused Foos and Bronson to take the label in other directions. One of their earliest reissues was by acquiring the rights to the White Whale
White Whale Records
White Whale Records was an American record label, founded in 1965 by Ted Feigin and Lee Lassiff in Los Angeles, California, and probably best known as the record label of The Turtles....

 label. By the mid-1980s most of their releases were reissues of previously released recordings licensed from other companies. Superior sound quality (remastering
Audio mastering
Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...

 of the original tapes was done under the direction of Bill Inglot
Bill Inglot
Bill Inglot is an American music engineer and producer, best known for remastering older recordings to high quality digital standards.Inglot worked for Rhino Entertainment and other Warner Music Group labels from 1982 to 2007. He was largely responsible for reintroducing historically popular pop...

) and creative packaging made Rhino one of the most respected reissue record labels, receiving rave reviews from music collectors, fans, and historians. Rhino was quick to get into the Compact Disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

 market, releasing dozens of oldies
Oldies
Oldies is a term commonly used to describe a radio format that concentrates on music from a period of about 15 to 55 years before the present day....

 CDs at the dawn of the CD age in 1984. Their retrospective compact disc releases are often remaster
Remaster
Remaster is a word marketed mostly in the digital audio age, although the remastering process has existed since recording began...

ed to restore or improve upon the original analog release's audio quality.

The company also continued to produce new music, with releases on subsidiary labels such as RNA (Rhino New Artists) and Forward, as well as the main Rhino label. However, the company's entertainers tended to generate more critical acclaim than public interest. One of Rhino's early artists was The Twisters
The Twisters
The Twisters are a Canadian blues band signed to Toronto's NorthernBlues Music.The band consists of 4 members:David "Hurricane" Hoerl ,Brandon Isaak ,Chip Hart Keith Picot ....

 whose Los Angeles popularity far exceeded their album sales. For the most, sales totals in the low five figures or less were routine for Rhino-produced albums, and the less costly, less risky reissue business remained the company’s primary revenue stream. One exception was the late-1986 success "At This Moment" by Billy Vera & the Beaters
Billy Vera
Billy Vera is an American singer, actor, writer and music historian.-Life and career:Vera was born in Riverside, California. He began his singing career in 1962 as a member of the Resolutions. He went on to write several songs throughout the early 1960s, writing for the likes of Barbara Lewis,...

, a 1981 song that unexpectedly made it to the top of the U.S. Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

charts after being featured in a 1986 episode of the hit NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 series Family Ties
Family Ties
Family Ties is an American sitcom that aired on NBC for seven seasons, from 1982 to 1989. The sitcom reflected the move in the United States from the cultural liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s to the conservatism of the 1980s. This was particularly expressed through the relationship between young...

.

During 1986, Rhino signed a six-year distribution agreement with Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...

. During 1989 Rhino and Capitol’s parent EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...

 made a deal to jointly acquire Roulette Records
Roulette Records
Roulette Records is an American record label, which was founded in late 1956, by George Goldner, Joe Kolsky, Morris Levy and Phil Khals, with creative control given to producers and songwriters Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore. Levy was appointed as director...

; Rhino received the US rights to Roulette's catalog, excluding jazz. When the distribution deal with Capitol ended in 1992, Rhino signed a new distribution deal with Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...

, and in turn Time Warner
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...

 bought a 50% stake in the record company. In 1998, Time Warner bought the other half of Rhino; thus the company became a wholly owned unit of Time Warner. The Rhino Records retail store, which was not part of the sale, closed in 2005. In 1999, Rhino started the Rhino Handmade division of limited edition releases available primarily from their website. All of these Handmade reissues are limited to about 3000 copies or less and once sold out are not repressed.

It is through this merger that the label has released remastered editions of collections from such musicians as Eric Burdon
Eric Burdon
Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer-songwriter best known as a founding member and vocalist of rock band The Animals, and the funk rock band War and for his aggressive stage performance...

, Fanny
Fanny (band)
Fanny was an American girl band, led by June Millington. They were pioneers as one of the first rock bands to feature all women, and the third to sign to a major record label, after Goldie & the Gingerbreads and The Pleasure Seekers...

, Dannii Minogue
Dannii Minogue
Danielle Jane "Dannii" Minogue is an Australian singer-songwriter, actress, television personality, radio personality, fashion designer and model...

, Ramones
Ramones
The Ramones were an American rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first punk rock group...

, Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...

, Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, also known as ELP, are an English progressive rock supergroup. They found success in the 1970s and sold over forty million albums and headlined large stadium concerts. The band consists of Keith Emerson , Greg Lake and Carl Palmer...

, The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American rock band, formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California. The group was initially composed of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, The Beach Boys signed to Capitol Records in 1962...

, Yes
Yes (band)
Yes are an English rock band who achieved worldwide success with their progressive, art, and symphonic style of rock music. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the progressive genre, Yes are known for their lengthy songs, mystical lyrics, elaborate album art, and live stage sets...

, The Doobie Brothers
The Doobie Brothers
The Doobie Brothers are an American rock band. The group has sold over 40 million units worldwide throughout their career. The Doobie Brothers were inducted into The Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2004.-Original incarnation:...

, The Cars
The Cars
The Cars are an American rock band that emerged from the early New Wave music scene in the late 1970s. The band consisted of lead singer and rhythm guitarist Ric Ocasek, lead singer and bassist Benjamin Orr, guitarist Elliot Easton, keyboardist Greg Hawkes and drummer David Robinson...

, Chicago
Chicago (band)
Chicago is an American rock band formed in 1967 in Chicago, Illinois. The self-described "rock and roll band with horns" began as a politically charged, sometimes experimental, rock band and later moved to a predominantly softer sound, becoming famous for producing a number of hit ballads. They had...

, Tom Paxton
Tom Paxton
Thomas Richard Paxton is an American folk singer and singer-songwriter who has been writing, performing and recording music for over forty years...

, Third Eye Blind
Third Eye Blind
Third Eye Blind is an American alternative rock band formed in the early 1990s in San Francisco. The songwriting duo of Kevin Cadogan and Stephan Jenkins signed the band's first major label recording contract with Elektra records in 1996 resulting in two multi platinum albums. The band's lineup...

, The Doors
The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...

, War
War (band)
War is an American funk band from California, known for the hit songs "Low Rider", "Spill the Wine", "The Cisco Kid" and "Why Can't We Be Friends?". Formed in 1969, War was a musical crossover band which fused elements of rock, funk, jazz, Latin, rhythm and blues, and reggae...

, Spirit of the West
Spirit of the West
Spirit of the West are a Canadian folk rock band, who were popular on the Canadian folk music scene in the 1980s before evolving a blend of hard rock, Britpop, and Celtic folk influences which made them one of Canada's most successful alternative rock acts in the 1990s.-Early years:The band began...

 and most recently Bee Gees
Bee Gees
The Bee Gees are a musical group that originally comprised three brothers: Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio was successful for most of their 40-plus years of recording music, but they had two distinct periods of exceptional success: as a pop act in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and as a...

; as well as soundtracks spanning the Turner-owned pre-1986 MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...

 and pre-1950 Warner Bros. periods, in addition to WB's own post-1949 period. Rhino's soundtrack releases include Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...

, The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...

, Easter Parade, North by Northwest
North by Northwest
North by Northwest is a 1959 American thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason, and featuring Leo G. Carroll and Martin Landau...

, Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...

, King Kong
King Kong
King Kong is a fictional character, a giant movie monster resembling a gorilla, that has appeared in several movies since 1933. These include the groundbreaking 1933 movie, the film remakes of 1976 and 2005, as well as various sequels of the first two films...

, Doctor Zhivago
Doctor Zhivago (1965 film)
Doctor Zhivago is a 1965 epic drama-romance-war film directed by David Lean and loosely based on the famous novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak...

, Superman, and Finian's Rainbow
Finian's Rainbow (film)
Finian's Rainbow is a 1968 American musical film directed by Francis Ford Coppola that stars Fred Astaire and Petula Clark. The screenplay by E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy is based on their 1947 stage musical of the same name.-Plot:...

.

Rhino also owns the rights to The Monkees
The Monkees
The Monkees are an American pop rock group. Assembled in Los Angeles in 1966 by Robert "Bob" Rafelson and Bert Schneider for the American television series The Monkees, which aired from 1966 to 1968, the musical acting quartet was composed of Americans Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork,...

’ master tapes and film footage (which they acquired from Raybert Productions
Raybert Productions
Raybert Productions was a 1960s production company, founded by Robert Rafelson and Bert Schneider. Its principal works were the wildly successful situation comedy The Monkees , and the 1969 movie Easy Rider...

 in 1994), and thus has released home videos and CDs from the group.

In 2003, co-founders and longtime executives Richard Foos and Harold Bronson left Rhino, reportedly due to frustration at being unable to release compilation albums in an increasingly competitive market. In fact, Time Warner's final vesting of its 100% ownership of the label, and its subsequent 'reorganization' of label staff, which did not stop at the former owners, were the major factors in their exits. Soon after, Foos inaugurated a new label, Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory is an entertainment company founded in 2003 that was started by Richard Foos , Bob Emmer and Garson Foos initially as a specialty music label...

, which began releasing dozens of CDs and videos mirroring the original early-1990s Rhino philosophy.

In 2004, Time Warner spun off its music divisions and today Rhino is part of the newly organized Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...

.

In addition to dealing with archive material, the label also manages the US distribution or worldwide production of compilations for more recent Warner acts, including still-active artists such as Enya
Enya
Enya is an Irish singer, instrumentalist and songwriter. Enya is an approximate transliteration of how Eithne is pronounced in the Donegal dialect of the Irish language, her native tongue.She began her musical career in 1980, when she briefly joined her family band Clannad before leaving to...

, New Order
New Order
New Order are an English rock band formed in 1980 by Bernard Sumner , Peter Hook and Stephen Morris...

, and Chicago
Chicago (band)
Chicago is an American rock band formed in 1967 in Chicago, Illinois. The self-described "rock and roll band with horns" began as a politically charged, sometimes experimental, rock band and later moved to a predominantly softer sound, becoming famous for producing a number of hit ballads. They had...

.

In May 2007, Warner Strategic Marketing
Warner Strategic Marketing
Warner Strategic Marketing is a record label that is part of the Warner Music Group. It specializes in compilation albums, much like sister division Rhino Entertainment. However, unlike Rhino, it does not reissue classic albums in the WMG catalogue...

 in the UK was dissolved and Rhino Records UK was formed. The division has two main factions - TV advertised compilations (for example Pure Garage Rewind Back to the Old School
Pure Garage
Pure Garage is a successful series of UK garage compilation albums. Nearly all of them are mixed by DJ EZ.In January 2000, Warner Music chose Kiss 100's DJ EZ to mix Pure Garage, a new garage compilation CD. Pure Garage...

) and catalog material from the Warner vaults. Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...

's 2007 release Mothership
Mothership (album)
Mothership is a compilation album by English rock group Led Zeppelin, released by Atlantic Records and Rhino Entertainment on 12 November 2007 in the United Kingdom, and 13 November 2007 in the United States. It was released on the same day that Led Zeppelin's entire catalog became available in...

and the soundtrack
Juno (soundtrack)
Music from the Motion Picture Juno, released on January 8, 2008, is the soundtrack that accompanies the Academy Award-winning film Juno.-Background:...

 to the film Juno
Juno (film)
Juno is a 2007 comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. Ellen Page stars as the title character, an independent-minded teenager confronting an unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her. Michael Cera, Olivia Thirlby, J. K....

serve as the label's most recent successes.

Similar music companies include Collectables Records
Collectables Records
Collectables is a reissue record label founded in 1980 by Jerry Greene. Greene was previously associated with New York City's Times Square Record Shop, Philadelphia's Record Museum retail chain, and the Lost Nite and Crimson record labels....

, Hip-O Records
Hip-O Records
Hip-O Records is a record label, currently part of Universal Music Group, which specializes in reissues and compilations. Their Hip-O Select label is currently in the midst of releasing the Complete Motown Singles, a series of fourteen box sets which include both sides of every 45 from Motown...

, One Way Records, Beat Goes On Records Varèse Sarabande
Varèse Sarabande
Varèse Sarabande is an American record label, distributed by Universal Music Group, which specializes in film scores and original cast recordings. It aims to reissue rare or unavailable albums as well as newer releases by artists no longer under a contract...

, and Sony Music's Legacy Recordings
Legacy Recordings
Legacy Recordings is Sony Music Entertainment's catalog division. It was founded in 1990 by CBS Records under the leadership of Jerry Shulman, Richard Bauer, Gary Pacheco and Amy Herot to handle reissues of recordings from the vast catalogues of Columbia Records, Epic Records and associated...

, as well as Ace Records of Britain and Bear Family of Germany.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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