interest to the big labels in the 1960s. The label may be best known for the dozens of budget-priced compilation albums it released featuring artists on or at one time on the label. Starday's most successful artist was perhaps Red Sovine, who scored a number of hits in the 1960s on the label. Starday also produced a series of classic anthologies of trucker records by various artists including Copas, Bond, Sovine, The Willis Brothers and bluegrass acts including Moore & Napier and Reno & Smiley. These LPs were renowned for their color covers shot at Nashville area truck stops with real rigs and shapely female models dressed as waitresses. Starday-King Records When Syd Nathan died in 1968, his label King Records was acquired by Hal Neely's Starday Company. Neely relaunched the label as Starday-King Records. The label was sold to LIN Broadcasting (sale consummated in 1970), which in turn sold it to Tennessee Recording and Publishing Company, owned by Freddy Bienstock, Hal Neely, Jerry Leiber, and Mike Stoller, who sold it in 1974 to Gusto Records. By the end of the 1960s, Starday's new product was limited and most of its recordings were reissues, many of them originally recorded or released on other small labels. The Starday label briefly made a strong comeback in the mid-1970s when Gusto Records' Red Sovine took his recitation song record "Teddy Bear" to number one on the Billboard country chart in 1976 using the Starday label, and even made the back of the pop chart. This record rose to No. 1 in seven weeks, the fastest rise to the No. 1 position for any 45 rpm record released before or since. University Press of Mississippi published The Starday Story: The House That Country Music Built, written by Nathan D. Gibson with Starday president Don Pierce, in January 2011. The book retraces the label's origins in 1953 through 1968 and the Starday-King merger. Starday hits See also List of Starday Records artists Lists of record labels References Further reading External links Starday Records at Discogs American country music record labels Record labels based in Texas Companies based in Beaumont, Texas 1952 establishments in Texas