21 March 2007 1,053 views One Comment

Make it five blues labels in two days to provide permissions to The Roadhouse. That’s some kind of record.

Please join me in a big “Hey, y’all” to welcome Blacktop Records to the family of permissions-based Roadhouse labels. This has been, perhaps, the hardest pursuit of a label I’ve yet made.

Blacktop has had a rough recent history. Originally based in New Orleans, it was, for a time, distributed by Alligator. No problem – we’ve got a great relationship with Alligator, right? Turns out it wasn’t so. Tim Kolleth at Alligator pointed me to eMusic. After several calls to eMusic, they were able to tell me that the Blacktop catalog had been sold to Shout! Factory. This was a few months ago, mind you. Finally, yesterday, I was able to connect with Dayna at Shout! Factory, who got the whole podcast thing immediately. Today, I received their kind permissions to play the Blacktop artists in The Roadhouse.

Blacktop has a killer catalog of regional artists, primarily from Texas and Louisiana. Solomon Burke, Freddie King, Johnny Copeland, Mike Morgan and the Crawl, Anson Funderburgh, and too many more to name.

After a long pursuit, I’m very excited to welcome Blacktop Records to The Roadhouse family.