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For what I gather Jimmy’s relationship with the record company that owns the majority of his catalogue is not that great. Does anyone know what occurred exactly that made Jimmy leave MCA and form Mailboat. Does it have anything to do with the Compact Disc/Price CD issues? If their relationship was better, I’m sure those CDCP CDs would be long gone and their would be state of the art reissues out now.

What happened?

Parrot Monkey wrote:If their relationship was better, I’m sure those CDCP CDs would be long gone and their would be state of the art reissues out now.

C'mon man - that's just silly. The state of their relationship has nothing to do with it... whether Jimmy loves MCA or hates MCA is irrelevent to MCA - all they want to know is if they can make $$ or, more accurately, if there would be a return on investment to overhaul an existing product that already sells fine enough. But then that's been covered 1000 times.

Most likely Jimmy left because he didn't feel that MCA could properly market him. He doesn't need MTV or radio to sell records - he can get the music to his fan base on his own and make a larger share of the profit. Labels are great for breaking acts and throwing lots of money behind something, but Jimmy is a rare class of artist who has succeeded outside the mainstream distribution channels.

Mailboat was started with the idea of catering to acts like JB - he signs artists who have name recognition and a fan base but who don't need money thrown into advertising or to feed the hooker and blow habits of independet radio promoters.

I agree Lee. Bottom line, he left because he could afford to. Leaving a major and still enjoying success, is the dream of every recording artist that has ever been on a major label.