Black-owned record companies in the 60s and 70s

[roger]

Honestly, robb k, I am finding it very very hard to believe that there ever were literally
"hundreds" of black owned record companies in America at anytime and I've never seen
any evidence of it. Are you sure you don't mean something else?...

I suspect that Robb is correct Splanky, a lot of successful [[or merely aspiring) singers, producers and songwriters thought that the next step in their career was to start their own record label.

For example ...
GENE CHANDLER had "Mr Chand" [[SIMTEC & WILLIE) and "Bamboo" [[MEL & TIM).
JAMES BROWN has already been mentioned.
WILLIAM BELL had "Peachtree".
ISAAC HAYES had "H.B.S." [[Hot Buttered Soul).
OTIS REDDING had "Jotis".

And I'm sure there are a whole lot more ...

Most of these ventures didn't last long or were distributed nationally/internationally by larger companies and so it wasn't always obvious which was the original label.

Roger