The Birth of Vee-Jay Records

Vivian Carter was born in 1921 in Tunica, Mississippi, but moved to Gary, Indiana, as a child. Her love of music was evident in 1948, when she entered a competition organized by Al Benson, a Chicago DJ. The prize was the chance to take over a fifteen-minute slot on WGES Radio, and, of course, Vivian won. She worked in Chicago for a few months, before moving to a series of radio stations nearer her home in Gary. By 1954, she was working six nights every week on WWCA Radio in Gary, playing Blues, Jazz, Gospel and Doo-Wop music.

Vivian Carter at Radio Station WWCA in Gary, Indiana (Wikimedia Commons)

Earlier, in 1944, she had met Jimmy Bracken, who became her business partner. In 1950, they opened a record store in Gary, which they named Vivian’s Record Shop. The foundations were being laid.

Then, in 1953, two key events took place. First, Vivian and Jimmy decided to set up their own record company. The new company was named Vee-Jay Records, using their first initials, and was registered in Gary.

Second, they decided to get married.

At the record shop, Vivian was approached by the Spaniels, who were a group of schoolboys from Roosevelt High School in Gary, where Vivian had herself been a pupil. The boys had won a talent show at the school and asked Vivian’s advice about getting a record deal. She listened to them, organized some rehearsal space in her mother’s garage, and set up a recording session at Chicago’s Chance Records, where they recorded “Baby It’s You”. Calvin Carter recalls that Vivian borrowed five hundred dollars from a local pawn shop to fund the recording.

Around the same time, they heard Blues singer Jimmy Reed playing harmonica and approached him, to ask if he wanted to make a record with Vee-Jay. The result was “High and Lonesome” (B-side “Roll and Rhumba”).

Both songs were issued by Chance Records. That first song, “Baby It’s You”, made an immediate impact, climbing to number ten on the Billboard R&B chart.

Like many independent record companies before and since, Vee-Jay had the problem of distribution. They could sign and record local artists, but then they had to organize production, marketing and distribution to bring the records to the shops. The more successful the music became, the wider the distribution needed to be, and that often resulted in large record corporations getting involved and sharing the profits. For Jimmy and Vivian, the deal with Chance Records meant that they had a viable outlet for their recordings.

Vivian’s brother Calvin Carter was employed as Vee-Jay’s A&R man and had set up a rehearsal space in a Chicago garage on 47th Street and King Drive. He also organized regular recording sessions at an independent studio in Chicago called Universal Recording Corporation, located first on Ontario and then on East Wall Street. He worked out of an office on Record Row, at 2129 South Michigan Avenue.

More important still, Vivian and Jimmy were able to link up with a Chicago record distribution company called United Record Distributors. The company had been set up by two brothers, Ernie and George Leaner, after they received a loan from their uncle Al Benson to finance the project. It employed mainly Black staff in its promotion, accounting, and sales departments. In December 1953, Jimmy and Vivian were visiting the distribution company, when they mentioned to Ernie Leaner that they were looking for a preacher, in order to get married. By chance, Ernie knew a local preacher and went off to fetch him. Appropriately, the two music lovers were married in the office on Record Row, just a few minutes later.

Sadly, Chance Records went out of business in 1954. Vivian, however, saw an opportunity. She approached Ewart Abner, Chance’s accountant, and offered him a management role at Vee-Jay. With Abner on board, the leadership of the company was complete, and the business could grow.

The first two recordings were reissued as Vee-Jay’s first singles, with Reed’s song as VJ-100 and the Spaniels’ song as VJ-101. By the end of 1953, the company had signed a few more artists and had recorded over fifty songs. After every recording session, Vivian wrote all the details in a notebook, which became known as the Master Book.

The Spaniels had another hit in 1954 “Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite”, which also charted. It was a doo-wop song written by Calvin Carter and James Hudson, the group’s lead singer. These early successes put Vee-Jay on the map. Calvin Carter was able to bring together a group of local musicians that he could call on to play on most of the Vee-Jay recordings. By 1955 the group included bass player Al Smith, the band’s leader, guitarist William “Lefty” Bates, saxophonists “Red” Holloway and Lucius Washington, bassist Quinn B. Wilson, drummers Paul Gusman and Vernier Fournier, McKinley “Mac” Easton on baritone sax and Harlen “Booby” Floyd on trombone. Arrangements were usually handled by Von Freeman and Riley Hampton. The Vee-Jay management personnel didn’t know much about the technical side of record production, so Calvin Carter (who was a singer) took charge of vocals and the senior musicians did the quality control for the backing tracks.

Red Holloway has described the way that the session men were paid in the early days: “At that time they were paying $41.25, and you might have to wait a couple of months before you got that.… So, we never refused, because we all needed money, and they were on the same basis as we were, poor and broke.” (The Vee-Jay Story). AI and his musicians participated on approximately one fifth of the recordings released by Vee-Jay from 1954 to 1959. The recordings were always conducted at Universal Studios on Chicago North Side. The studio band did between three and six sessions in a day. Al Smith and his band were so excellent that several other local labels such as Chance, Parrot and United/States hired them to improve the quality of their recordings.

In 1955, the El Dorados, a local doo-wop group, became the first Vee-Jay act to enter the national Pop chart, with their single “At My Front Door”, which also reached number two on the R&B chart. Vee-Jay had their first number one hit on the Billboard R&B chart that same year with Jay McShann’s single “Hands Off”, featuring the female vocalist Priscilla Bowman. Preston Foster re-worked the song in 1956 as the iconic Blues “Got My Mojo Working”.

Other artists began taking notice, as the roster was expanded and hit records started to accumulate. Thanks to Vivian’s vision and Ewart Abner’s drive, Vee-Jay quickly grew into a company that could take on the big music corporations. In 1960, the company moved its offices from the original location at 2129 South Michigan Avenue to 1449, South Michigan Avenue.

The aim of the owners was to develop music that would appeal to both Black and White artists, and to break away from the segregation that divided up the music market into distinct racial groups. Vivian wanted the session band to play in a style that could be appreciated by a wide racial mix.

Gradually, Ewart Abner became the de-facto chief executive, as he master-minded the growth of Vee-Jay into an internationally known record label. Under his leadership, the label developed into a multi-genre operation with major hits in Jazz, Gospel, Pop, R&B and Soul. To achieve these levels of success, Abner would appoint key individuals to run different regional operations on the West Coast and the East Coast to give the company a strong presence, with involvement in the emergence of Soul music and the British invasion. In 1961, Abner was appointed President of Vee-Jay. He shared Vivian Carter’s vision of building a music company that could appeal to all parts of the market and he was determined to get Vee-Jay’s music heard.

An important breakthrough came through Randy Wood, Vee-Jay’s sales manager on the West Coast. He drew Abner’s attention to a new group, the Four Seasons, who were looking for a record deal. On hearing “Sherry”, Vee-Jay’s management saw an ideal opportunity to sign a White group, who had the potential to break into the Pop charts internationally. That first single went to number one, followed by two more massive hits, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Walk Like A Man”.

The company’s success with The Four Seasons drew the attention of transglobal Music Co Inc. who were looking for a US company to release Frank Ifield’s “I Remember You”, a big hit in the UK. The leasing deal was signed in 1962 and contained a small bonus. A new UK group from Liverpool was included in the package, so Vee-Jay found themselves with the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why” in their hands. The single (VJ 498) was released in 1963 but made little impact. Later that year, Beatlemania took off in the UK and Vee-Jay relaunched the songs, also releasing an album to compete with Capitol Records, who had now acquired the rights to later Beatles recordings. Vee-Jay sold a million copies of their “Introducing the Beatles” album, but, sadly for Vivian and Jimmy, problems with the contract meant that Vee-Jay’s deal with EMI in the UK were now under threat.

The influence of the R&B music that had developed in New Orleans and other southern cities was also becoming evident at Vee-Jay, as R&B artists were signed to the label. Gene Chandler, Betty Everett, Dee Clark and Jerry Butler began to build a body of work that underpinned Chicago Soul, building on the foundations set by the early vocal harmony groups the Spaniels, the Dells and the El Dorados.

Other R&B acts that released songs on the Vee-Jay label during the sixties were the Pips (later known as Gladys Knight and the Pips, of course), Little Richard and Billy Preston.

Vee-Jay Records became one of the most successful independent record labels in the early sixties. The company was the biggest such label owned by African Americans. In early 1964, over just one month, they sold 2.6 million copies of singles by the Beatles. Two years later, the company was bankrupt!

The problems had started earlier, as Abner made several financial mistakes. In his determination to build Vee-Jay into an international company, he had adopted an approach that was not illegal at the time but now is. He paid radio DJs to play Vee-Jay’s releases. He also spent a large entertainment budget on wining and dining the decision-makers at important radio stations, befriending them and trusting that they in their turn would support Vee-Jay. Abner also developed a gambling habit. He denied taking money from Vee-Jay to support his habit, but there must have been doubts at Vee-Jay. In 1963, Vivian and Jimmy decided to sack Abner, along with Barbara Gardner (Head of Public Relations) and Bill Sheppard (Producer and A&R man). In Abner’s place they brought in Randy Wood, who had been in charge of Vee-Jay’s operation on the West Coast. Never one to rest on his laurels, Abner soon set up a rival record company, in partnership with Bill Sheppard and Art Sheridan (owner of Chance Records), which he called Constellation Records. He also took with him two of Vee-Jay’s biggest R&B artists, Gene Chandler and Dee Clark.

There were other serious financial issues at Vee-Jay. The Four Seasons and other Vee-Jay artists had already begun to sue Vee-Jay for non-payment of royalties. This accusation was also used by Capitol Records in their attempt to force Vee-Jay to give up their Beatles contract with EMI. The cost of defending the lawsuits mounted by Capitol Records to get the Beatles back was an enormous drain on the company’s finances. Together with other cash-flow pressures, this brought the company to its knees. The legal settlements meant that Vee-Jay retained rights to existing songs they held but the Beatles and the Four Seasons moved on. Vee-Jay would get no new material from them.

Vee-Jay’s production came to a halt in 1964, as the company battled to stay afloat. Randy Wood moved the whole operation to California, with only Calvin Carter and the Brackens remaining in Chicago. This split management arrangement caused several problems, as the new expanded management team began arguing amongst themselves. In 1965, in desperation, Jimmy Bracken paid off everyone in Los Angeles and asked Ewart Abner to come back and help sort out the company’s problems, which he tried to do. However, the root causes of the company’s weak financial position were too deep. Vee-Jay Records folded in May 1966 and its assets were auctioned off in 1967. Randy Woods and Betty Chiapetta bought the Vee-Jay Records name and masters.

Vivian and Jimmy lost everything, including the record shop in Gary, where their adventure had begun. They divorced and Jimmy died. Vivian found a new job away from the record industry. She did, however, maintain one link to the music she loved; from 1967 to 1982 she hosted a late-night radio show in Gary.

Vivian died in 1989. According to Dr. James B. Lane (in his “Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History” article), one of her last visitors was James “Pookie” Hudson, one of the Gary schoolboys who had come to Vivian’s record shop to ask advice in 1953 and who had recorded “Baby It’s You”, kickstarting Vee-Jay’s entry to the music industry in Chicago. The wheel had turned a full circle.

By another twist of fate, when Vee-Jay Records was closed down in 1966, the offices were taken over by Brunswick Records. 1449 South Michigan Avenue began a new chapter in the history of Chicago music making.

Various attempts have been made over the years since Vee-Jay’s demise to re-issue the old songs. Betty Chiapetta sold everything to a Limited Partnership headed by Daniel Pritzker around 1990. Then in 1999 the Vee-Jay Limited Partnership was taken over by Michelle Tayler Management, who have licensed the re-issue of much of the old material by a string of companies, including Ace Records UK. The best compilation is probably the 1993 box set “The Vee-Jay Story: Celebrating 40 Years of Classic Hits 1953-1993”.