P-Vine Records

P-Vine Records is an independent record label started by Blues Interactions, a firm in Tokyo, Japan. The label was established in 1975 by Yasufumi Higurashi and Akira Kochi. It started specializing in blues but expanded to cover jazz, Latin, funk, j-pop, house music, and garage punk.

The label has released some newly recorded materials, including the album Original Chicago Blues with Kansas City Red, Eddie Taylor, and Big John Wrencher.[1] But its focus has been on reissuing vintage recordings. P-Vine has released materials from labels such as Chess, Delmark, Modern/Kent, Black Top, and Alligator. It was also responsible for releasing previously unreleased live and studio recordings by Parliament-Funkadelic, as well for releasing albums on CD that were previously only released on vinyl.

Apart from the P-Vine label, Blues Interactions runs other labels, such as Substance and P-Vine NonStop, and publishes magazines (Blues & Soul Records and Black Music Review) and books.

In 2015 P-Vine released B.B. King The Complete RPM-Kent Recording Box, The Life, Times and the Blues of B.B. in All His Glory, a boxed set of 17 CDs, with comprehensive booklet, vinyl record and Japanese translation of The Arrival of B.B. King The Authorized Biography by Charles Sawyer.

From late 1970s to the 1980s, P-Vine organized concerts such as the Blues Show with Albert Collins, Eddie Vinson, and John Lee Hooker traveling to Japan. Around 2007, Blues Interactions reactivated its concert promoter business. In 2008, it organized the first P-Vine Blues Festival in Tokyo with Willie Walker and others on the bill.

Blues Interactions had been independently owned by the two founders until November 2006 when Space Shower Networks, a cable-television enterprise focusing on music, acquired 49% of its stock. In November 2007, Blues Interactions became a wholly owned subsidiary of Space Shower, and the two founders withdrew from management. The new management announced that the company would maintain the P-Vine label and its name.