Farewell to Fantasy / Pioneer Berkeley label sold to Concord Records

Farewell to Fantasy / Pioneer Berkeley label sold to Concord Records: "Farewell to Fantasy
Pioneer Berkeley label sold to Concord Records
Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, December 4, 2004
Some of the greatest names in jazz and blues are now under new management.

Berkeley's Fantasy Inc., a 55-year-old record label that won fame and fortune recording Creedence Clearwater Revival and owns a catalog rich with jazz and soul icons, has been sold to Concord Records Inc., a Beverly Hills company started in the Bay Area.

The sales price was $83 million, according to Billboard magazine.

The combined company, to be called Concord Music Group Inc., owns the rights to a dream team of musicians.

Fantasy's extensive catalog includes Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, John Coltrane and the Modern Jazz Quartet, as well as Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson, Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie.

In the soul arena, its artists include Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor, the Dramatics, the Staple Singers, and Albert King. Concord artists include Charlie Byrd, Rosemary Clooney, Herb Ellis, Stan Getz, Gene Harris, Tito Puente and Mel Torme.

Concord Music Group will operate out of both Berkeley and Beverly Hills. Although the landmark Fantasy Building at 10th and Parker Streets in Berkeley was not included in the sale, Concord will rent office space there and will use the Fantasy Recording Studios, according to Terri Hinte, Fantasy spokeswoman.

Hinte said there undoubtedly will be some workforce shifts, but not for a few months. Fantasy has 80 employees; Concord has about 40.

Fantasy's owners are Chairman Saul Zaentz, 83, an Oscar-winning film producer; President Ralph Kaffel; Al Bendich, vice president and legal counsel; and Frank Noonan, vice president of finance. All four have been with the company for decades. The latter three will stay with the new firm for several months as consultants. Zaentz has focused on his film work for almost 30 years and has not been involved in Fantasy's day-to-day operations.

Concord, which scored a platinum hit this year with Ray Charles' final recording, "Genius Loves Company" (in conjunction with Starbucks' Hear Music), is owned by Normal Lear's entertainment holding company, Act II Communications Holding LP. The 31-year-old label focuses on jazz, traditional pop and adult contemporary formats.

"I'm convinced my grown-up children are getting a good home," said San Francisco's Orrin Keepnews, 81, who oversaw Fantasy's jazz program in the 1970s after having sold it the catalog of Riverside Records, a company he ran in New York in the 1950s and 1960s.

"Concord, as far as I can see, is a rarity these days, a very vigorous and committed record label. I'll enjoy seeing what (they) can do to verify the continuing life and viability of a number of artists I worked with 40 years ago: Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins and McCoy Tyner," said Keepnews, now a Grammy-winning independent record producer.

Fantasy's revenue comes from reissues in its stable. It does not sign new artists. According to Billboard, Fantasy's 2003 sales were $22 million, half of that in the United States, while Concord's revenue was $20 million, including $13 million in the United States.

Both Fantasy and Concord have deep roots in the Bay Area.

Fantasy Records was founded in 1949 in an alley off San Francisco's Market Street by hipster brothers Max and Sol Weiss. Its first artist "was an Oakland pianist named Dave Brubeck," according to the company's Web site. It went on to record Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Cal Tjader, Odetta, comic Lenny Bruce, and beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg.

Zaentz joined the company as a salesman in 1955. A dozen years later, he assembled a group of investors to buy the label, which was heavily concentrated on jazz recordings. According to published reports, the price was $325,000.

The single rock group then signed with Fantasy was an El Cerrito garage band called the Golliwogs. It was led by a Fantasy shipping clerk named John Fogerty, who had started it in junior high school. After rechristening themselves Creedence Clearwater Revival, the quartet recorded a string of gold and platinum records and million-selling singles, including "Suzie Q," "Proud Mary" and "Bad Moon Rising." In 1970, they outsold the Beatles.

Creedence was "a lightning strike," Zaentz told The Chronicle in 1970. "If we ever find another group that sells half as much, we'll be delirious."

With the money pouring in from Creedence, Fantasy expanded by steadily buying up outstanding independent jazz labels, including Prestige, Stax, Specialty, Milestone, Riverside and Takoma.

Concord Records grew out of the Concord Jazz Festival. Both are named after the Contra Costa County town where they originated, then a sleepy little suburb.

Local businessman Carl Jefferson, a successful Lincoln-Mercury dealer with a passion for jazz, started the Concord Summer Music Festival in 1969.

Guitarists Herb Ellis and Joe Pass, who performed at an early festival, suggested to Jefferson he fund and produce a record. The Concord Jazz label was the result. Jefferson started the record company in 1973 in a former seafood restaurant next to his car dealership.

Jefferson, who died in 1995, was the motivating force behind construction of the Concord Pavilion (now The Chronicle Pavilion), the first large-scale outdoor concert venue of its kind in the West.

Jefferson's music philosophy was simple: He recorded what he liked. Under Jefferson's hand-picked successor, Glen Barros, who took over in 1995, Concord branched out from jazz, adding pop and blues artists, Latin jazz, salsa, Afro- Cuban and Brazilian music. It partnered with Chick Corea's Stretch Records and the smooth jazz label Peak Records, according to its Web site. In 2001, it started Playboy Jazz in conjunction with Hugh Hefner's Playboy Enterprises.

Concord has issued more than 1,000 albums. Its current roster of artists includes Karrin Allyson, Patti Austin, Peter Cincotti, Michael Feinstein, Nnenna Freelon, Robben Ford, Marian McPartland, Barry Manilow, Ozomatli, Eddie Palmieri, Poncho Sanchez and Curtis Stigers.

Act III, owned by Lear and Hal Gaba, bought Concord in 1999 and moved its corporate headquarters to Beverly Hills in 2002. Barros is still the president and chief executive officer, titles he will retain at the merged company, Concord Music Group.

The Concord-Fantasy deal was brokered by Tailwind Capital Partners, a private equity firm headquartered in New York and San Francisco.

The sale encompasses only Fantasy's music business. It does not affect Zaentz's film business, which has produced acclaimed adaptations of literary works such as "The English Patient" and "Amadeus" and also does post- production sound. Zaentz, who owned the film rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," was an executive producer on Peter Jackson's movie trilogy.

Creedence's Fogerty and Zaentz had a famous falling out. In 1985, Zaentz threatened to sue Fogerty for defamation of character after he wrote a song called "Zanz Kant Danz" with lyrics that said of the title character, "Watch him or he'll rob you blind."

In 1988, Fantasy sued Fogerty, claiming he'd plagiarized his own 1970 single "Run Through the Jungle," exclusively owned by Fantasy, to write his 1984 hit, "The Old Man Down the Road." A San Francisco jury ruled in favor of Fogerty.

More recently, Fogerty complained about Fantasy's selling his Vietnam War protest song "Fortunate Son" for use in Wrangler jean commercials, which stripped out his message about phony patriotism, using lines that sound like a paean to flag-waving.

Chronicle senior pop music critic Joel Selvin contributed to this story.E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com."