The single most important figure (imo) in the vinyl LP reissue business.

I have to give a special mention to all of us consumers that never stopped buying vinyl.

The problem with naming who I consider the "single" most important figure in the vinyl reissue business is that there is room for only one name. I couldn’t very well name both Kassem AND Fremer, now could I? I used that statement as a headline for the video. Sheesh, I am once again reminded that you can hardly make any statement without someone taking issue with it.

Kassem and Fremer (and Michael Gray) are both major players in the enduring viability of the vinyl LP business and their availability, as are---as @slaw pointed out---all of us who kept buying albums on vinyl into the 1990’s. I didn’t get a CD player until the music I wanted in my collection was not being made available on LP. There was a lot of great music being made in 1990-2015 (a quarter century!), much of it not being available on LP’s.

Thanks to the resurgence of vinyl, new releases are being offered in both LP and CD formats, while reissues of older albums are being made in LP pressings FAR superior to originals. One such example are the two albums hitting the store shelves just this past Friday: Muddy Waters The Best Of, and Moanin’ In The Moonlight by Howlin’ Wolf, both released by Chess Records in association with Acoustic Sounds. Reissue supervised by Chad Kassem, mastered at the Mastering Lab, pressed at QRP. I have Chess Records originals, and these reissues put them to shame. Retail priced at $38.99.

While the quality of LP reissue pressings has improved, the pressings of new releases varies far more than we would like. Luckily a lot of the music I favour is being made by companies who make some of today's better pressings.

When The Houston Kid by Rodney Crowell was released by Sugar Hill Records in 2001, it immediately became my favorite album in many, many years (and remains my favorite of this century. I love saying that). It was released on CD only, but got an LP release in 2024 by Vinyl Me Please (VMP), a subscription LP company (now out-of-business). The owner of VMP consulted with Chad Kassem throughout the life of the company, and would surely not have started VMP had Kassem not proven the financial viability of such a business (though Acoustic Sounds is not a subscription-based company). QRP did a lot of the LP pressings of VMP titles, which were generally excellent.

I can now listen to The Houston Kid on either CD or LP. Most of Crowell’s albums following The Houston Kid were offered in both CD and LP formats, for which we owe all involved in bringing the LP format back to life a debt of gratitude.

Now here’s a fantastic idea for a series of videos, posted today by Dylan of Noble Records, a dealer in rare and out-of-print LP's.

https://youtu.be/fp29xjmcMso?si=0Fd0hvpCpuof03q2

Another very important figure who must be included in this discussion is Michael Hobson, who along with partner Ying Tan started the LP reissue label Classic Records in 1994. Ying Tan was a dealer of out-of-print records in Los Angeles, whose apartment near the Capitol Records building I had already visited. The place was stuffed-to-the-gills with LP’s, with narrow isles between stacks to walk through. At some point Hobson bought out Ying, owning and carrying on the company alone.

Classic---along with Chesky Records in New York (another very important player in the vinyl reissue scene)---began by putting out mostly Classical titles, in particular the legendary RCA Victor and Mercury LP’s from the 1950’s and ’60’s, many of them very hard to find, and relatively expensive. Classic eventually started issuing Rock and Pop titles, which now themselves fetch high prices on the collector’s market.