is an
American Record Label , owned by
Warner Music Group , operated through
Warner Bros. Records .
Reprise was formed in
1960 by
Frank Sinatra in order to allow more artistic freedom for his own recordings. Having left
Capitol Records , and after trying to buy
Norman Granz 's
Verve Records label, the first album Sinatra released on Reprise was ''
Ring-A-Ding-Ding ''. Fellow
Rat Pack members
Dean Martin and
Sammy Davis Jr. also moved to the label. Stand-up comedian
Redd Foxx also recorded for the label during its fledgling years. The label still issues any Sinatra work recorded while on the label and, after his death in
1998 , it had great success with his greatest hits collections.
Reprise was sold to
Warner Bros. Records in early
1963 . In the time since, Warner Bros. has often treated Reprise as a bit of a secondary parent label, as many of its subsidiary labels, such as
Straight and
Kinetic , have had their records released in conjunction with Reprise.
In the late 1970s, as
Joni Mitchell and
Captain Beefheart had left the label, Sinatra expressed a wish to be the sole artist on Reprise, but
Neil Young refused to leave. Mitchell returned to the label in the late 1980s after a stint on Geffen Records but now records for Warner Music's Nonesuch label. Young remains on Reprise to this day, though he also recorded for Geffen in the 1980s.
Today, in addition to Young, it is home to such artists as
The Smashing Pumpkins ,
Avenged Sevenfold ,
The Used ,
Mastodon ,
Eric Clapton ,
Green Day ,
Fleetwood Mac ,
Josh Groban and
My Chemical Romance . Reprise is also the US label for
British band
Depeche Mode .
It was formerly home to the
Jimi Hendrix and the
Barenaked Ladies ' catalogs in the
US .
One of the label's founding principals under Sinatra's leadership was that each artist would have full creative freedom, and at some point complete ownership of their work; including publishing rights. This is the reason why recordings of early Reprise artists (Dean Martin, Jimi Hendrix,
The Kinks , etc.) are (in most cases) currently distributed through other labels. In Martin's case, his Reprise recordings were out of print for nearly 20 years before a deal was struck with Capitol Records.
As CEO of Reprise, Frank Sinatra recruited a host of his cronies for the fledgling label. The original roster from 1961-63 included such names as Bing Crosby, Jo Stafford, Rosemary Clooney and Esquivel! Many of the older artists were dropped when Sinatra sold control of the label to Warner Bros. in 1963. At that point label executives began targeting younger acts beginning with The Kinks in 1964. Reprise would later add teen oriented pop acts like
Dino, Desi & Billy and
Nancy Sinatra , before moving almost exclusively to rock in the late 1960's.
