An American-based jazz record label, originally launched in 1960 by Creed Taylor as a subsidiary of ABC-Paramount Records in New York City.
John Coltrane was Impulse!'s first major signing. The company is perhaps best known as a free jazz label, releasing works by Albert Ayler, Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and others, but has also recorded more mainstream musicians. At one time or another during the 1960s, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Sonny Rollins, Quincy Jones and Ray Charles all recorded for the label. Keith Jarrett's American Quartet, with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, Paul Motian and Gato Barbieri, recorded a sequence of albums for the label in the mid 1970s.
New recordings from the label ceased in the late 1970s, but ABC-Paramount Records kept putting out reissues of classic albums until the company was sold to MCA Records in 1979.
The label name has since been revived for new recordings only for short periods. Impulse! is now part of Universal Music Group's jazz holdings, the Verve Music Group, and has been relegated to a reissue-only label. Recently, however, Impulse! has released new recordings from those who had historic ties to the label (especially from McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane's widow Alice).