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Syd Nathan

 


Music business executive, drummer and vinyl recycling pioneer Sydney Nathan was born in Cincinatti on April 27, 1904. He left school in ninth grade due to health problems and poor eye sight. He played drums in clubs and held a variety of jobs in real estate, pawn shops and amusement stores. He moved back to Cincinatti in the early 1940s, at first opening a record shop selling jukebox records, then in 1943 founded King Records in a disused (and smelly) spice warehouse. It was a self contained independent record company which, unusually, even pressed its own records – and any that didn’t get sold were recycled and re-pressed.

He will always be associated with James Brown but also helped develop other musicians and singers including Earl Bostic, The Five Royales and Lonnie Mack.

He died in Miami, Florida of heart disease and pneumonia on March 5, 1968 and was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

King Records was sold to Starday Records in the early 1970s, its back catalogue was also sold on, and the record presses ended up in Jamaica pressing reggae records.

Image: Public Domain

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