P-Vine Records

History

In its early years P-Vine concentrated on blues and R&B, but later expanded into jazz, Latin, funk, j-pop, house music, and garage punk. While it has released some newly recorded material—such as Original Chicago Blues with Kansas City Red, Eddie Taylor, and Big John Wrencher, and Judy Roberts' Nights in Brazil—its primary activity has been reissuing vintage recordings. P-Vine has issued material originally on labels including Chess, Delmark, Modern/Kent, Black Top, and Alligator. It also released previously unreleased live and studio recordings by Parliament-Funkadelic, and transferred albums that had only appeared on vinyl to CD. Blues Interactions operated other labels, Substance and P-Vine NonStop, which were defunct as of 2021. The company also published the magazines Blues & Soul Records and Black Music Review; as of 2021 Blues & Soul Records had been transferred to Two Virgins, while Black Music Review suspended publication in November 2011. The current P-Vine, Inc. publishes books under its Ele-King brand. In 2015 P-Vine released a 17-CD boxed set titled B.B. King The Complete RPM-Kent Recording Box, The Life, Times and the Blues of B.B. in All His Glory, which included a comprehensive booklet, a vinyl record, and a Japanese translation of Charles Sawyer's The Arrival of B.B. King The Authorized Biography. From the late 1970s to the 1980s, P-Vine organized concerts such as the Blues Show, bringing Albert Collins, Eddie Vinson, and John Lee Hooker to Japan. Around 2007 Blues Interactions temporarily reactivated its concert promotion business, and in 2008 it staged the P-Vine Blues Festival in Tokyo featuring Willie Walker and others. Blues Interactions was independently owned by its two founders until November 2006, when Space Shower Networks, a cable-television music enterprise, acquired 49 percent of its stock. In November 2007 Blues Interactions became a wholly owned subsidiary of Space Shower Networks, and the founders withdrew from management. The new management stated that the P-Vine label and its name would be maintained.