US record label from Massachusetts which released drum & bugle corps albums, sports albums, and auto racing sounds albums, among other niche material. Associated company entity is Fleetwood Communications, and associated studio is Fleetwood Recording Studio.
In 1958, from a converted supermarket in Revere, MA, Fleetwood Recording Co. was born. Richard I. Blake, the future editor of Drum Corps News walked in to his cousin, Raymond G. Samora’s supermarket with an idea for recording Drum and Bugle Corps competitions. From that day on Fleetwood traveled throughout the U.S. and Canada every summer for 20 years producing over 300 albums in the 1960s and early 1970s. Along the way they began publishing Drum Corps News and ran their own major competition, the “World Open Championships” and a favorite winter escape, the exhibitions called “An Evening with the Corps” at Carnegie and Symphony Halls. Fleetwood Records was a major force in developing the popularity of Drum and Bugle Corps in those early days.
A fire in 1975 destroyed all of the original masters, along with artwork. Fleetwood took the original albums and combined them with modern technology, take the old Fleetwood Recording Co. technology of the 60’s and incorporate the new Fleetwood digital technology of today to produce a CD that faithfully re-creates the original album right down to the cover and liner notes, only with better quality.
The origin of the name "Fleetwood"? Richard I. Blake stopped in the small village of Fleetwood, NY, right after he purchased his first tape recorder. They actually issued the first drum corps album, featuring the Lt. Norman Prince Drum & Bugle Corps from Malden, MA, in 1958.
