American; basically a Jazz label. Verve was started by Norman Grantz; he sold it to MGM in the mid '60s, and in the '70s it settled down with that company to become part of the Polydor family. The Verve single which most people remember is the Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto version of 'The Girl from Ipanema', which was a hit in Britain as well as in the States. Verve was always more of an albums label than a singles one; the few singles it put out in the '70s tended to be reissues of past hits by people such as Ella Fitzgerald. Throughout the '60s Verve's records were handled by EMI in this country. At first the name appeared merely as a logo on EMI's HMV label (1, 2) but in October 1962 it appeared as a label in its own right (3). At this point its singles began to be numbered in a VS-500 series. Demos for this VS-500 series followed the standard EMI pattern for the most part, being white with a large red 'A' until c.1966 (7) and green with a large white 'A' (8) from October 1966 with VS-543 - thanks to John Timmis for that scan. In the summer of 1967 MGM set up its own UK operation and went independent from EMI, its agreement with that company changing from a licensing one to a pressing and distribution one. The change was marked by an alteration in the wording at the top of the Verve label, from 'EMI Records' to 'MGM Records' (4); demos became pink with a large silver 'A', following the lead set by those of the parent label (9). In 1966 an offshoot label appeared, 'Verve Folkways' (5), the fruit of an agreement between MGM and Moses Asch's 'Folkways' company. Singles on the new label were numbered in the VS-1500s, and the material on it generally had a 'contemporary singer / songwriter' slant. After a slight hiatus in the autumn of 1967 the Folkways series was relaunched as 'Verve Forecast' (q.v.), with numbers starting from VS-1510. This label kept going into the 1970s, and has enough of a discrete identity to deserve its own page, so I have listed it separately. When MGM moved to Polydor, which happened in late 1970 or early 1971, Verve went with it. At that point the catalogue numbers changed: Polydor family labels came with seven-figure catalogue numbers, the first digit of which was always a '2'; the series allotted to Verve's singles (standard and Forecast alike) for Britain and the rest of Europe, was 2009-000. In the following year, however, the Verve label seems to have been shelved in Britain, as far as singles are concerned, though it continued on the continent. The very occasional single came out over here in the '70s, '80s and '90s, but releases were few and far between and they appear to have been reissues rather than new recordings. Though there were several 1970s issues on Verve Forecast the Ella Fitzgerald single 'Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye' (2009-017) which came out in March 1976 was the only '70s British release on the actual Verve label (6), and is the record which qualifies the label for a place on this site. Originally released in 1957 - which explains the date on the label - it had also been re-released in 1971 on Verve Forecast with the same catalogue number but with 'Manhattan' as the 'A' side.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.