Oh Boy Records Vinyl, CDs & Cassettes

John Prine started Oh Boy Records in 1981 after finishing his contract with Asylum and deciding he'd rather own his music than sign with another label that didn't. He and his manager, Al Bunetta, set up shop in Nashville, put out a red vinyl Christmas single as their first release, and built from there. The first full-length Aimless Love, in 1984, was fan-funded before anyone had a name for it, and it worked. Forty-plus years later, Oh Boy is still independent, still run by the Prine family, and still the second-oldest artist-run label in the country.

The catalog is anchored by Prine's own records, some of the plainspoken and quietly devastating songwriting American music has produced. Fair and Square won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 2005. The later records, Tree of Forgiveness in particular, showed a songwriter in his seventies who hadn't lost a step. But Oh Boy was always more than a vanity label. Todd Snider found a home here. So did Kris Kristofferson, Kelsey Waldon, Arlo McKinley, and a generation of writers who fit the label's unspoken standard: say something real, say it simply, don't waste a word.

The label won A2IM's Label of the Year for small labels in 2022 and the Folk Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023, which are the kinds of honors that go to institutions rather than operations. Oh Boy has earned both.