The founder of Fraternity Records was Harry Carlson. Harry was born in Funk, Nebraska, December 28, 1904. He was a songwriter and a veteran of dance bands of the 1930's.

After having traveled all over the country, Harry settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he became one of Cincinnati's top society photographers. Harry met up with a young vocalist by the name of Dick Noel. Dick was a regular on one of America's most popular network radio programs out of Chicago, The Breakfast Club, hosted by the famous announcer, Don McNeill.

I was fortunate to meet Harry Carlson when I came to Cincinnati to work at WCPO as one-half of the "Shad and Mike Show". A few weeks after arriving, Harry called me and from then on we became fast friends. Harry always touted his records as "an absolute monster smash." He was, indeed, one of the most charming and unforgettable characters I have ever met.

Harry operated Fraternity Records out of room #105, from the Sheraton-Gibson Hotel, where he and his wife Louise lived for many years. It was from this small room that he ran the label. He called the musicians, set up the recording session, rented the recording studio and engineer. After the session, Harry brought the master tapes back to his hotel room, wrote a letter (in cursive) to the RCA-Victor plant in Indianapolis, Indiana. Within a few weeks, a thousand records would be delivered to Room #105 at the Sheraton-Gibson Hotel. Harry would then sit down and write hundreds of personal letters to radio personalities all over America. With the letter, he would send a copy of his latest Fraternity record, reminding everyone that here was another "Absolute Monster Smash." Harry used to use terms when promoting his records like "They're screaming in the streets for this one!" Another one was, "This has to be one of the biggest monsters in the history of the record business!"

Harry was not only colorful, he was indeed the gentleman supreme. He was known for his honesty and integrity. He was a soft-spoken man with a great sense of humor. I never heard Harry say anything bad about anybody. On several occasions, in fact, where people had taken advantage of him, and screwed him over, big time money-wise, he still could not bring himself to say anything bad. He would just sluff it off with something like, "Well, I guess he was having a bad day," or "You know there's two sides to every story, and maybe he just didn't understand our business arrangement."

I was fortunate to know Harry for seventeen years. We were very close. He put out a lot of records on Fraternity that I produced at my studio in Cincinnati. One day I asked Harry how the name Fraternity came about. He explained it this way. He was given the job of setting up a formal dinner for a large fraternity. Many of the members were clients or relatives of his clients here in Cincinnati. He was, after all, the best known and loved photographer in the city. He and Dick Noel put their ideas together and instead of putting a name card at each place-setting, they came up with the idea of making a record, and Harry asked Dick if he would sing it. Dick agreed. Instead of a name card they put a record at each place setting, so that the people could take home a souvenir. The recording was Dream Girl of Phi Beta Alpha. Thus, Harry decided to call the record label Fraternity. He had records pressed, and when the big event took place, there was a Fraternity record at each place-setting instead of a name card. This is how the humble label started back in 1954.

Harry issued records for a couple of years, but with no major success. However, in March 1956, singer Cathy Carr recorded the Tin Pan Alley song, "Ivory Tower." The record was, in Harry's words, "An absolute monster". It shot straight to Number 2.

Harry Carlson's first love was Big Band music, and even though that type of music had fallen off the charts years before, Harry didn't care. He signed band leader Jimmy Dorsey to the Fraternity Label. Dorsey was not in the best of health, but Carlson, a Dorsey admirer, wanted to get him one more hit record. Harry accomplished that in January, 1957 with "So Rare." Dorsey died in June of that year. His mother was presented with the gold record from RCA Victor, who had pressed the single.

Several more singles were released but without much success. In December of 1958, Fraternity scored its third Number 2 record with one of the biggest novelty hits in the history of the record business. "All American Boy" by Bobby Bare, who would later join RCA Victor had a successful country career for over two decades. Bobby had over a dozen Number 1 records. It all started on Fraternity.

I remember, as a radio personality at KJAX in Santa Rosa, in 1958, the record was so huge that months after it had dropped off the national charts, people were still requesting it, mostly kids. It was a novelty record about Elvis, who had just joined the Army. It was, in my opinion, one of the top ten great novelty records in recording history. In my particular instance, about an hour before I got off the air, the owner of the radio station, Lou Gamble, drove out to the transmitter tower where we were broadcasting. He walked into the control room and said to me, "Shad, where is that 'All American Boy' record?". Not knowing what was about the happen, I picked it out of the bin and handed it to him. He looked at me, broke it up in as many small pieces as he could, threw it on the floor and said, 'I don't ever want to hear this damn record played on this radio station again. Enough is enough!'"

After several more years of releasing records that went nowhere, in 1963, a local boy from Indiana, by the name of Lonnie McIntosh, had his band in the King Recording Studio, backing another artist. There was some studio time left, and the band decided to record an instrumental version of what, at the time, was a fairly obscure song, Chuck Berry's "Memphis," which had been recorded several times over, but without any success. Lonnie added some slick guitar licks, upped the tempo, and the song shot straight to Number 2 nation-wide... Again on Fraternity!

I moved on to St. Louis. When I got there, at WIL, "Memphis" was Number 2 and one of the biggest instrumentals in recording history. Lonnie McIntosh followed "Memphis" with a half-dozen great records that are still being played on radio today.

In 1967, Carlson recorded a nine-member group from Cincinnati called The Casinos, led by Gene Hughes. This group used to do record hops for most of the top radio disk-jockeys in the area. We all knew Gene Hughes and the great band called The Casinos. Harry decided to record them using John D. Loudermilk's "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye." It was the third try for that song. Loudermilk had previously released versions several years earlier with no success. This time, the sound and the timing were right. It was a smash. Fraternity was on top of the world again.

Many hits followed The Casinos' success including "Walk Tall" by The 2 of Clubs. I had no idea as I played "All American Boy" that I would one day own this legendary property. Harry and I were very good friends and had worked together for many years prior to his retirement. Dozens of people wanted to buy the record label. Fraternity was Harry's baby. He nourished it, brought it to life and made it one of the most respected independent labels in music history. I felt very honored that before he considered other offers, he would ask me if I wanted to buy the record label.

Fortunately for me, I had a friend in the automobile business who was also interested in the record business, so he loaned me $25,000 to buy the label. The deal was consummated at the world famous Maisonette Restaurant in downtown Cincinnati, with Harry, his wife, and about a dozen other friends. We handed Harry a check for $25,000 and it was stipulated that we wanted to buy the name only. A lot of people thought we were nuts because we didn't want to buy all of the old masters and publishing rights, and other assets of the company. The reason we wanted to buy the name only was that a lot of paper work had been lost, a lot of master recordings had been lost, some of the masters were scattered all over the world, and we had no way of knowing that we could keep our finger on every deal and every aspect of every deal that was made by Harry in the past. The last thing we wanted was for attorneys to be coming out of the woodwork and filing suits against us by people who claimed that possibly they had not received royalties, etc. So, we made the stipulation that we were buying the name Fraternity Records only, so that we would continue the legend.

So many recording artists and talented songwriters started on Fraternity and then went on to major labels, motion pictures, national television, etc. Carl Dobkins, Jr. was on Fraternity. He had a #1 song called "My Heart is an Open Book." Bobby Bare started his career on Fraternity with "The All American Boy," "The Brooklyn Bridge," and others, before he went on to RCA Victor. Jackie DeShannon was on Fraternity. Later, she would record "What the World Needs Now is Love," and at this writing, that song is now being used in a national television commercial for a world-famous automobile company. Richard Turley started on Fraternity, went over to 20th Century Fox where he spent a decade with great success. Another famous star, John Gary started on Fraternity and went to RCA Victor, and from there to a weekly national television show for three years on the networks. Cathy Carr had one of the biggest records, "Ivory Tower", in pop history. Lonnie Mack, of course, had "Memphis," "Down in the Dumps," "Wham", and many more. He went on to Electra and Alligator and several other major and independent labels. The Casinos, with Gene Hughes' "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye," still play the oldies all over the world. Their records are still played every day on all of the oldies' stations. Charlie Daniels, another one who recorded with me, had several medium chart hits before going on to major-label success with his monster (sounds like I'm Harry Carlson, now) smash hit of "Uneasy Rider." From there he became one of the most successful country and gospel artists in the world. Mike Reid, winner of almost a dozen Grammies and songwriter for some of the greatest stars in the world, started on the Fraternity Label. In addition to that, yours truly, was fortunate enough to have five #1 local records on Fraternity over the years. A couple of them dealing with the Bengals and their attempt at Superbowl stardom, one of them commemorating the retirement of Johnny Bench. Another, commemorating "Charlie Hustle," our very favorite Cincinnati Red, Pete Rose. There were dozens of others who got their start on the Fraternity Label.

Since 1975, more than fifty recording artists have started on this world famous "little independent record label," still headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Something interesting to note - in 1975 a young man from Lexington came to me, Manzel Bush, who like most struggling artists and songwriters had little money but great talent. We recorded ten songs - all of them instrumentals. Among them "Space Funk," "Midnight Theme," and "Jump Street." These three singles are probably the most sampled records in the world for hip-hop and rap groups. Over twenty major rappers and hip-hop groups have used the sampling directly from our Fraternity disks that were put out in 1975. The sales alone, from sampled material, using the Manzel masters, is over forty million records and CD's. These masters have been boot-legged, pirated, and sampled all over the world. There are over 100 unauthorized compilations that have been on major and independent record labels. Hopefully, our attorneys will be contacting them to "invite them to lunch!"

Harry Carlson, founder of Fraternity Records, died Sunday, March 16, 1986, in Pompano Beach, Florida. He was a Cincinnati record business institution. As a songwriter and record company president, he knew anybody who was worth knowing in the music business. He was loved by his colleagues and artists alike. Singer Bobby Bare, a former Fraternity artist, said of Carlson, "If, at the end of your life you can say that you've made so many friends, then you have been a success."

It has been an exciting twenty-five years, starting new talent on their way to stardom with other labels and venues. The Fraternity label still stands with great respect all over the world. Harry left us in 1986. He passed away in Florida one month before my first book, "Just For the Record" hit the bookstores. In "Just for the Record", there is a chapter titled, "Harry and Sid in Cincinnati." It is a colorful portrayal of my good friend, Harry Carlson, always resplendent in a striped suit, starched white shirt, tasteful tie, and of course, his cufflinks (which at times I believe he wore to bed).

Harry would be proud of Fraternity records and what we have accomplished in the second twenty-five years of its history. Several people in Cincinnati in 1975 felt I should not run the label. These people were locals who knew Harry, most of them musicians and producers, who felt that the label should have been given to them. I remember at a social function for musicians, a few months after we paid Harry $25,000, one of them came up to me in a group of friends and said, "You know, Fraternity is a great little label, Shad, but you've got to be nuts to pay that kind of money just for the name 'Fraternity Records'!" I looked at him and said, "Carl... you don't buy a legend for $1.98".

So there you have it. The story of one of America's great record labels, Fraternity. You can see now why it is important to be on a label that has tremendous credentials and a lot of clout with industry people. The use of the Fraternity label is available if the product is commensurate with the quality and the art demanded by the music business, to compete today.