Heads Up International
record label

Heads Up International is a jazz record label that was formed in Cleveland, Ohio. It was bought by the Concord Music Group in 2005 who would later merge with BMG Rights Management.
History
The label got its name from a jazz group that Dave Love formed while attending North Texas State University. After college, Love became musical director for Donald Byrd. Later, he recorded an album with his band and soprano saxophonist Dave Liebman.
While trying to sell the album to record labels, he took a position as National Director of Sales & Marketing for Oxymoron P&D, where executives convinced him to start his own label with his album. Using Oxymoron for distribution, Love began Heads Up International in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. The label's first album was The Energy of the Chance by Dave Liebman. In 2000, Heads Up International merged with Telarc International Corporation.
In 2005 the two companies were acquired by the Concord Music Group.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Heads Up International” as record label. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q745362. VIAF identifies the subject as 132741240. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2005, 1990 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Heads Up International” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.