American, an offshoot of Creed Taylor's CTI label (q.v.). Kudu received its first 'Billboard' mention in the issue of the 31st of July 1971. According to the article it had been formed to provide a showcase for CTI's more commercial artists and would handle 'Blues Jazz' and 'Soul Jazz' - a funkier, more danceable kind of music than CTI's norm - leaving CTI as an outlet for 'more experimental and universal' material. Its history was naturally closely associated with that of its parent label, an account of which is given on the appropriate page. It enjoyed success in the States with records by the likes of Esther Phillips and Grover Washington Jr., but Washington departed for Motown in 1977 as part of a separation agreement reached between the two companies - Motown was distributing CTI's records at that time. CTI hit financial difficulties in 1977, and was declared bankrupt on the 8th of December 1978. The CTI label continued to function into the early 1980s, but Kudu was effectively shelved, its last regular releases coming out in that same year.
In Britain, CTI and Kudu debuted as labels in May 1972 under a three-year agreement with Pye ('Music Week', 29th April). Kudu singles from this period had paper labels and were numbered in the KUS-4000s (1). There were not many of them, as LPs were always CTI's priority. When the deal came to an end Pye did not renew it - CTI and Kudu releases had covered their costs but with Britain being less Jazz-friendly than America there had been no big successes ('MW', 12th April 1975). A few months later the two labels moved to Polydor under a licensing agreement ('MW', 19th July), and the paper labels were replaced with injection moulded ones (2). As part of the agreement it was stipulated that both CTI and Kudu should have catalogue numbers with alphabetical prefixes, rather than Polydor's usual all-numerical ones. During the Polydor years the numbers used were the same as those which were used in the USA, and were thus in a KUDU-900 series, but not everything that was issued over there came out over here. After the move Kudu presented its parent with its highest placing (out of five) in the Singles Chart, Esther Phillips's 'What A Difference A Day Made' b/w 'Turn Around, Look At Me' (KUDU-925; 9/75) reaching the No.6 position. The penultimate Kudu single, 'Could Heaven Ever Be Like This' b/w 'Turn This Mutha Out' by Idris Muhammad (KUDU-935; 8/77), was the only other to enter the charts, but it got no higher than No.42. The only slight change in the label design during the time with Polydor came at the start of 1976: the small 'A on the appropriate side became a large one, and the publisher credit and catalogue number moved down slightly to allow for that (3) - thanks to John Timmis for the scan. There were promo labels during the Pye years: those of all three singles carried the usual Pye wording, albeit in a smaller font than the normal one (4), but for some reason the first two lacked the large hollow red 'A' that usually accompanied it.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.