Label Guide: Commodore

Commodore Records was America's first independent jazz record label. It was founded in the spring of 1938 by Milt Gabler, who in 1926 had founded the Commodore Music Shop in Manhattan, located across the street from the Commodore Hotel. The bulk of Commodore's issues were of Dixieland jazz, though other styles also sometimes appeared on the label. So is Commodore responsible for one of the most iconic jazz recordings of all time, Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit", released in 1939.

In the late 1940s, Gabler went to work for Decca Records, and his Commodore label was later used by Decca for reissuing earlier jazz recordings on LP. Gabler was also one of the first to make recordings of Broadway shows and in 1954 he produced Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock". In the early 1960s a series of Commodore albums were compiled by Gabler and part of the Mainstream label.