Gareth Murphy meets Andrew Rossiter, boss of ORG Music – the Californian indie reissues label curating, re-releasing and restoring lost masterpieces back to their rightful place in the spotlight…

ORG Music has worked on reissues from the likes of Nirvana, Johnny Cash and many others

Ask any record shop owner and they’ll probably have noticed this intriguing success story. It’s called ORG Music, a red-hot reissues label that’s got the music business asking the obvious question: how come a young indie is reissuing so many deliciously packaged and remastered classics from major-signed giants such as Miles Davis, Nirvana, John Coltrane, Johnny Cash, Sun Ra, Thelonious Monk, Weather Report, Sly And The Family Stone, Carole King, Sonic Youth, Chet Baker, Roy Orbison, Sonny Rollins, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Buzzcocks, Porno For Pyros and many others?

Yes indeed, if you’re looking for a small business that encapsulates both the opportunities and the extraordinary contradictions of today’s vinyl revival, you’d be hardpressed (excuse the pun) to find a better case study than ORG Music. Based in Los Angeles, it’s become the labour of love of a 29-yearold, Andrew Rossiter, who, like most successful label bosses, threw himself into the business before he was old enough to think twice.

Originally a musician from Ohio, Rossiter started out promoting punk gigs as a teenager then, at 19, got a part-time job with WEA, plugging Atlantic, Elektra and Warner records around Chicago’s college circuits. Having lived brieffly in New York, he moved to Los Angeles at the age of 22 and landed a full-time job at Warner Bros. Records. It was there that two years later, in 2011, he was invited to manage ORG Music.

The imprint began in 2009, at first as an abbreviated off shoot of Original Recordings Group, and was handled largely by Warner’s former vinyl chief, Jeff Bowers, the man who hired Rossiter. It had been Bowers who set up much of ORG Music’s early framework – dazzling titles from Nirvana and Sonic Youth, and also the original distribution deal with WEA. When the 23-year-old Andrew Rossiter was handed the baby, nobody was expecting what was to follow. But the combination of Rossiter’s youthful perfectionism and the fluke of getting his break just as the vinyl market was poised for unexpected growth, provided the happy accident that destinies are so off en made of.