Celebrate the 75th Year of King Records with Artists, Live Performances, Storytellers, Writers, Videos and Lifetime Achievement Awards. Our goal is to provide a unique experience by bringing together the King Records community. We plan to develop awareness, identify and support the fan base and celebrate all the King Records artists and musicians of the first 75 years...and beyond.
A portion of tickets from the night will help save the building at 1540 Brewster Avenue – the original building of True American Music – and to support the artists and musicians of King Records.

Music historians have often referred to the melding together of Country & Western and Rhythm & Blues as an origin of the American art form known as Rock and Roll. Cincinnati's King Records was the first record label to cross boundaries between these two distinctive musical styles. Between the years 1943 and 1971 Cincinnati's King Records revolutionized the process in which music was recorded, manufactured, distributed and promoted. Nearly 250 hit songs were recorded and more than 150 million records in the Jazz, Country, Bluegrass and Rhythm & Blues fields were manufactured.

Syd Nathan put his plan to launch a record label into action in September of 1943, enlisting Country music entertainers Grandpa Jones and Merle Travis to record the first music for the venture, which Nathan dubbed “King Records.” To mark the beginning of what would become one of the most crucial record labels in the history of music, Cincinnati has been celebrating King Records Month in September for the past several years.

In honor of the 75th anniversary of those first King sessions, this year’s celebration is too big to contain in just one month, getting an early start last weekend (Aug. 25) with the 'Celebrate the King: The Gala' event and with exhibits and other events extending through the end of 2018.

The Gala was a multimedia celebration of all things King, honoring some of the legends associated with the label and sharing stories about the past, while also looking ahead to the future of King. There were musical performances throughout the evening, a panel discussion, video testimonials and lots of surprises. Lifetime Achievement Awards were presented in honor of King greats Bootsy Collins, Henry Glover, Philip Paul and Otis Williams.

The design company We Have Become Vikings organized the event; its co-founder Jason Snell did some King-related design work for projections on the exterior wall of downtown’s St. Xavier Church during 2017’s massively successful BLINK Cincinnati.

“The idea for the gala started over beers with two people active in (the King Studios project),” Snell says. “I’d just be sitting there and go, ‘What? That happened? No.’ Just being a fan of the music coming out of here and not really knowing a tenth of what happened… it gives me goosebumps.”

According to promotional materials, a portion of the proceeds from tickets went to preserving the original King site in Evanston and to support the musicians associated with King.

King Records 75th Anniversary at Memorial Hall, Photos courtesy of Hailey Bollinger