THE LIN & KLIFF STORY
"It was something we had burning desire to do. We felt like we were right about the commercial potential of an artist. It turned out lots of times that we were wrong, but we kept on going."
Joe Leonard
Joe Leonard's Lin Records out of Gainesville, Texas arrived relatively late among the independent labels that proliferated in the years following World War II, its first session taking place in the winter end of 1953-54. The labels that sprang up in this boom period ran the gamut from tiny, one or two-off locals to more ambitious companies that enjoyed lengthy and successful regional, and in a few cases national, identities. The smaller of these were sometimes merely a recording artist's vanity label, or sometimes short-lived because they were ill-timed or ill-financed, or simply unlucky despite big-eyed ambition, while the larger companies were often characterized by the forceful personalities and/or ruthless business operations of their owners, like Lew Chudd's Imperial or Bill McCall's Four Star Records -- though there were ruthless small timers, too, like Jimmy Mercer at Royalty in Paris, Texas, and honest big shots, like Starday's Pappy Daily in Houston.
"It was something we had burning desire to do. We felt like we were right about the commercial potential of an artist. It turned out lots of times that we were wrong, but we kept on going."
Joe Leonard
Joe Leonard's Lin Records out of Gainesville, Texas arrived relatively late among the independent labels that proliferated in the years following World War II, its first session taking place in the winter end of 1953-54. The labels that sprang up in this boom period ran the gamut from tiny, one or two-off locals to more ambitious companies that enjoyed lengthy and successful regional, and in a few cases national, identities. The smaller of these were sometimes merely a recording artist's vanity label, or sometimes short-lived because they were ill-timed or ill-financed, or simply unlucky despite big-eyed ambition, while the larger companies were often characterized by the forceful personalities and/or ruthless business operations of their owners, like Lew Chudd's Imperial or Bill McCall's Four Star Records -- though there were ruthless small timers, too, like Jimmy Mercer at Royalty in Paris, Texas, and honest big shots, like Starday's Pappy Daily in Houston.