about sugarhillrecords
In the late sixties, Barry Poss came to the United States from Canada with a fellowship and a student visa to obtain a doctorates degree of sociology from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Coming within one chapter of completing his dissertation, Poss answered a classified ad for a graphic artist placed by a small Virginia-based record label, County Records. Though Poss didnt know anything about graphic design, he applied for the job anyway, admitting his lack of experience in design but professing his love for the music. County hired him, and Poss gave up teaching to follow his main passion, music, at a record label he admired. Within the first few years Poss was immersed in the record business, learning everything from reissuing old 78s to producing traditional musicians to selling records at retail stores.
Three years later, in 1978, Barry Poss launched Sugar Hill Records (named after a song Poss heard in Western North Carolina). Poss wanted a strong label identity with a signature sound, that stood for great artists and quality production, similar to what Sam Phillips had done with Sun Records. While traveling around rural areas in the South with his banjo, engrossing himself in traditional music, Poss became intrigued by the music of the children and grandchildren of the mountain musicians he visited. Those younger generations of musicians were a combination of the old and the new influenced as much by old-time and bluegrass music as they were rock, country and other newer forms of music. This interesting combination of, and tension between, roots and contemporary music gave further impetus for Poss to start Sugar Hill Records. Ricky Skaggs was the perfect personification of this tension and became the first artist Poss targeted to help launch the new record label.
Sugar Hills first album was by a band called Boone Creek and it featured Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas, two artists Poss credits as being instrumental in shaping the Sugar Hill sound. The success of that record begat a Ricky Skaggs solo effort, Sweet Temptation , that went on to sell over 150,000 copies a huge success for the brand new independent label. Following on that success, Sugar Hill, in a joint effort with Epic Records, released Ricky Skaggs Don't Cheat In Our Hometown. That record helped pave the way for a neo-traditional movement in Nashville/Country Music. It also helped Sugar Hill cement its burgeoning legend, a legend that would, decades later, elicit praise:
Sugar Hill is one of twenty-one labels that changed the worldreinventing country music - PULSE!
Sugar Hill is the Sun Records of the 90s -BILLBOARD
Sugar Hill is one of the most important American labels - GOLDMINE
After the early triumphs with the Ricky Skaggs releases, Sugar Hill had a string of hits from other early records. Doyle Lawson & Quicksilvers Rock My Soul enjoyed meteoric success after disc jockeys and fans in rural markets championed the release. Rock My Soul is now considered one of the greatest bluegrass gospel records of all-time. Doyle Lawson (an alumnus of Jimmy Martin & the Sunny Mountain Boys, as well the Country Gentlemen) is now a core Sugar Hill artist and has over twenty records available on the label. It just feels like home to me, says Lawson. Lawsons bands are perennially decorated with multiple awards and are generally revered as the standard by which all bluegrass gospel bands are measured.
Barry Poss remembers the day (National Medal of Arts recipient) Doc Watson first called. I knew then that we had arrived as a record label. Doc Watson is one of the most important figures in folk music over the last 80 years. A National Heritage Fellowship awardee and multiple Grammy Award winner, Watsons music represents all the finest qualities of the type of music Sugar Hill releases. Thoroughly unclassifiable but distinctly influenced by everything from folk to bluegrass to blues to country to rock, Watson is the perfect embodiment of Americana music.
In 1998, the Welk Music Group acquired Sugar Hill to complement its other label, Vanguard Records, a venerable folk/jazz/blues/rock label with a fifty-year history. The Welks had acquired Vanguard Records in 1986 and looked to further their reach in the roots music world. Sugar Hill Records was their #1 choice.
Sugar Hills niche-audience philosophy has served the company well over the last twenty-plus years. By not trying to be everything to everybody, Sugar Hill has cultivated an audience that demands quality and is fiercely loyal to a company that, time and time again, has delivered the goods. Sugar Hill albums have been nominated for 38 Grammy Awards and won 10, not to mention the countless International Bluegrass Music Association, Association for Independent Music and other awards pulled in over the years. Sugar Hill cruised through the fall-out from the Urban Country and later country music movements because the label has never bowed to any trend in country music.
The focus has always been contemporary music with traditional roots, and Sugar Hill has always remained true to its motto. Sugar Hill has grown every year since the companys inception, impressive for a company that usually releases less than 25 albums a year. By maintaining a small roster of prestige artists, and staying true to their standards of quality, Sugar Hill has thrived and is poised to become an ever-increasing presence in modern music.
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