Elektra Records was founded by Jac Holzman and Paul Rickolt in December of 1950 in New York City. Jac Holzman was born in 1931 on the Upper East Side of New York into an upper middle class family. Seeing as his father was a doctor and his family was the stereotypical wealthy American family, Jac often rebelled against his parents. He often ran away from home but was eventually always brought back to New York City with his family. He began a career in music by becoming interested in his parent’s state-of-the-art phonograph equipment. Jac then began involving his time in music and radio. Jac’s grandmother did political commentary on the radio station WZXR as head of the National Council of Jewish Women. Jac would often go with his grandmother to these radio station broadcast which is…show more content… He used this disc recorder for bar mitzvahs and weddings. Jac graduated high school at the age of sixteen and then went on to attend St. Johns College in Annapolis, Maryland. Jac did not have as much interest in schoolwork as he did in electronics. He missed classes and failed to complete a lot of work. Instead, he would occupy his time in the electronics lab where he would work and experiment with equipment. He attended a recital put on by his school and enjoyed the music so much he felt that it should be recorded, so he set out to do it himself. Elektra records was created in Holzman’s college dorm room with Paul Rickolt. Each of them put $300 into the record company. The name Elektra was inspired by Electra, one of the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione in Greek mythology. Holzman thought the “C” in Electra was too soft so he added a “K” in its place for a more solid sound. John Gruen, one of the performers from the recital, was recorded in one three-hour session at Peter Bartok’s recording studio in New York
