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| Nick Perls | |
|---|---|
| Name | Nicholas "Nick" Perls |
| Birth date | 1942 |
| Death date | 1987 |
| Occupation | Record producer; record label founder; audio archivist |
| Known for | Founding Yazoo Records; founding Blue Goose Records; field recordings and reissues of blues, country, gospel, jug band, and hokum music |
| Notable works | Reissues of 1920s–1940s blues and folk recordings; original sessions with rediscovered artists |
| Nationality | American |
Nick Perls
Nick Perls was an American record producer, label executive, and audio archivist notable for rescuing and reissuing early American blues, country, gospel, jug band, and hokum recordings. His work through independent labels revitalized interest in pre-war and early post-war vernacular music among collectors, musicians, and scholars in the United States and Europe. Perls combined field-collector zeal with a collector’s archive, influencing record collectors, revivalists, and later reissue programs.
Perls was born in New York City in 1942 and grew up amid the postwar cultural milieu of Manhattan and Brooklyn, where exposure to jukeboxes, radio broadcasts, and record shops nurtured an early fascination with 78 rpm records and vernacular music forms. During adolescence he frequented record stores and collectors’ circles associated with Greenwich Village, Blue Note, and Atlantic Records scenes, forming connections with collectors and historians active around Folkways Records, Riverside Records, and JSP Records. Perls attended local schools and later studied in university settings that placed him in proximity to archives and libraries housing historic discs, interacting with archivists from institutions such as the Library of Congress and curators involved with the Smithsonian Institution’s folk music initiatives. Early contacts included notable collectors and researchers who had ties to figures associated with the British blues revival, Alan Lomax, John Hammond, and the network of collectors around Ralph Peer, Muddy Waters, and Lead Belly scholarship.
In the late 1960s Perls founded Yazoo Records, naming it after the Yazoo River region associated with Mississippi Delta traditions, to reissue rare 78s and 45s by early blues and country performers. Yazoo’s catalogue drew on 78 rpm collectors’ treasures and sought masters associated with labels such as Paramount Records, Vocalion Records, and Columbia Records. Perls also established Blue Goose Records in the 1970s to issue both reissues and contemporary sessions, engaging musicians connected to revivalist and roots circuits like those linked to The Band, Hot Tuna, Country Joe and the Fish, and players from Camden and New York City clubs. Through Yazoo and Blue Goose he worked with licensors, surviving artists, and estates tied to figures such as Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Skip James, and later performers involved in the blues revival such as Mick Taylor, David Bromberg, and Paul Butterfield.
Perls amassed a private archive of original 78 rpm discs, test pressings, and shellac masters which he transferred, restored, and annotated for scholarly and collector release. He used techniques paralleling restoration practices evident at institutions like the British Library’s sound archive and the Library of Congress's Recorded Sound Research Center, collaborating with engineers versed in disc-to-disc transfer methods pioneered by archivists connected to Alan Lomax projects and reissue producers working with RCA Victor and Decca Records. Yazoo reissues emphasized accurate documentation with discographical notes and collector-oriented sleeve essays similar to those appearing in publications from JEMF Records and Document Records. Perls also organized recording sessions that captured veteran performers in contemporary studio and club settings, producing new recordings with artists who had been marginalized by the mainstream industry, paralleling independent projects from labels like Arhoolie Records and Rounder Records. His work sometimes intersected with academic oral-history initiatives around figures documented by Samuel Charters, Greil Marcus, and Ted Gioia.
Perls’ reissues supplied accessible editions of pre-war blues and regional vernacular music to record collectors, musicians, radio programmers, and scholars, thereby shaping repertoires in the 1960s and 1970s revival scenes tied to Greenwich Village, Chicago blues, and the British blues boom. His releases influenced artists and producers in the circles of Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The White Stripes, and revival-era bands who drew on rediscovered repertoire from compilations issued by Yazoo and Blue Goose. Perls’ discographical rigor aided researchers and informed liner-note scholarship that appears in works about Robert Johnson, Homesick James, Bukka White, and other figures where primary-source 78s were previously scarce. Collectors and independent labels building on Perls’ model included operators linked to Document Records, Rev-Ola Records, Honest Jon's, and Wolf Records, while university courses and museum exhibits curated by institutions like the Smithsonian Institution and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum echoed the archival standards Perls championed.
Perls lived much of his adult life in New York, maintaining a private collection visited by collectors, journalists, and musicians, and participating in collector conventions and specialized auctions alongside figures connected to Christie’s, Sotheby's, and private dealers in Chicago and London. In later years he faced health challenges and continued to oversee reissue projects and label operations until his death in 1987. His collections and catalogues influenced subsequent reissue programs and private archives; elements of his archive and discographical work have been cited in institutional collections and by historians affiliated with Oxford University Press publications and liner-note scholarship. Perls’ legacy persists through the continued availability of Yazoo and Blue Goose titles and the archival practices he promoted among collectors, archivists, and independent labels.
Category:Record producers Category:American archivists Category:Blues scholars