Check out this amazing page from the 1976 Cash Box Magazine special feature on Henry Stone and TK Records. Underneath the article about Henry Stone, there is even a paid advertisement from James Brown thanking Henry Stone as a brother. That’s how close they were. See, back in the old days, record men used to exchange messages to each other through advertisements in trade publications. As they all knew that they would be reading the charts, news, and gossip, it became a highly specialized form of coded public messaging. Make sure to click the PDF and read the whole article.
ARTICLE SUMMARY: “I don’t think I’m going to build this thing to sell it. I would like to build this thing to have, like an A&M Records, or a Motown – all self-contained. “This is my feeling and those are my goals. “I mean, I have to work.” Thus Henry Stone, head of T.K. Productions and manufacturer of what is being called the Miami sound, the sound of Betty Wright, KC and the Sunshine Band, George and Gwen McCrae, Little Beaver, Latimore, Clarence Reid and others. Henry Stone, who was a distributor (“I was a good distributor. Nobody transshipped any records into Florida. I didn’t give them a chance, man.”) turned manufacturer and owner of a complex record business organization with his own labels, studios, distributed – label, publishing, publicity arm, and international operation.
PUBLICATION: Cash Box Magazine
DATE: March 27, 1976
From 1946 to 2014, Henry Stone ruled the Florida music industry with an iron fist, a brick of cash, and a warehouse full of vinyl. HSM is the last of over one hundred record labels he personally founded. This record label includes works from every decade in his sixty-five year career right up until today. Licensing available for film, samples, advertising, movies, video games, and more. Family owned and operated.