I.T.P. Records

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ITP Records was formed in 1996 by Alan Beck. Realizing that record companies across the nation had ignored the majority of the top urban/R&B soul groups and individual artists who recorded between 1960 and 1984, Beck set out to change this unhealthy trend. After establishing the Pacific Concert Group in 1992 as a company to promote R&B classic soul concerts, Beck began to meet, book and interact with many of the legendary recording artists. There was a mutual desire shared by all the artists to record new music and to see that their old music was still being released to the public. After seeing and hearing many of these acts up close on his shows, Beck realized that the majority of the artists still had their vocal skills and abilities, and in many cases sounded just as good, if not better, then they did in the 1960's and 1970's. “There was another side of the concerts made obvious to me,” Beck remembers. “I knew that when you have 8-10,000 many people at a concert, they will want to leave with music from the artists they are seeing perform. Initially I would go out and purchase album compilations, buying music from other lables to sell at the venues. I hired Chicano artists to do T-shirts. At my shows all the fans that came up to the merchandise booths would ask, ‘do you have any new and old recordings available?’” As a result of promoting live 'R&B Oldies concerts , Alan soon realized that this era of music was being ignored in the recording studios and many of the rare 'original musical recordings' of these 60's, 70's and even 80's artists was sitting on the shelves and in tape vaults and not being marketed directly to the public. The common songs were readily available by these artists but all of them had a “B” side catalogue that was of great interest to me and the collectors. “It was obvious that a record label needed to be a part of my organization. Even the biggest labels were ignoring these “B” sides which I trademarked , Underground Oldies. So I started researching and started licensing masters from labels and also purchased masters from the smaller labels who saw little value of these more rare oldies. At the same time I wanted to start recording and capturing the history of the groups in the studio so I made offers to performers like Barbara Lynn ,Bloodstone, and Sly Slick and Wicked and others to start recording again!. It was important to me to own the recordings and not just license masters from existing record labels. When we recorded, we used live musicians and we tried to keep the sound true to the oldies. In addition we allowed the artists to put one or tow new tunes to test the waters.” One of the most often questions asked of this label is what do the initials I.T.P. stand for? Back in the day, during the 1950's and 60s musicians used to listen to music and come up with one of two conclusions. Either the music was "In The Pocket" meaning that the music sounded right, or the music was "Out Of Pocket" and the music sounded wrong. If it was "right" the session was completed and pressed to vinyl. If it was "wrong" the entire 'take' was re-recorded.

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