Set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York. It started as a classical and jazz label, but shifted direction in the mid-1950s by challenging the blacklist and signing blacklisted performers Paul Robeson and the Weavers. Their new emphasis on folk music and later rock music was enhanced by signing Joan Baez, Buddy Guy, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Country Joe and the Fish, Ian and Sylvia, Mimi and Richard Fariña and others over the years.

The label stayed dormant for most of the mid to late 1970s, re-emerged briefly with some disco releases in the 1980s and was finally sold to the Welk Music Group in 1985.

The Welk Group sold the classical music catalogue back to Seymour Solomon, so there are now two active record labels bearing the Vanguard name. Welk Music Group revitalised the label, reissuing much of its extensive folk and popular music back catalogue (a good deal of which had been out of print for several years), as well as signing a number of new artists.

Vanguard Classics Records is today owned by Artemis Records and also releases new material as well as its back catalogue of classical music.