Founded in 1955 by Simon Waronker. Initially the label focussed on big band music, movie music, orchestral music and some jazz, but then began to take on rock and roll and R&B artists such as Eddie Cochran, the Drifters and Jackie Wilson and began to explore folk and country music genres.

The most consistent hit maker for Liberty in the early 1960s was Bobby Vee (Robert Velline). The Sunset label was formed as a budget subsidiary in 1966, and used to issue albums of previously released Liberty and Imperial material. It continued until the early 1970s.

In 1968, Transamerica Corporation, an insurance conglomerate, purchased Liberty and combined it with another of their record companies, United Artists. New artists from the 1968-71 period for Liberty included Canned Heat, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Ike and Tina Turner and Bobby Womack, but although these artists had modest success on Liberty, they all had bigger hits later with other labels. The company then rapidly declined until by early 1972 the Liberty name had disappeared.

Transamerica shifted all new singles and albums to the United Artists label, along with the Liberty artists. For all intents and purposes, it was over for Liberty, although the Liberty catalogue continued to be used for reissues well into the 1970s.

In 1978, the United Artists labels, including the Liberty masters, were sold to EMI, which hs owned the labels since that time. EMI/Capitol has since reactivated the Liberty name several times. In the late 1970s, it was used to reissue the Liberty and Imperial catalogues. In 1980, Capitol re-established the imprint as a country label, primarily featuring Kenny Rogers. When Rogers left EMI for RCA in 1983, Liberty was again discontinued.

In 1992, EMI announced that they were renaming their Capitol-Nashville division as Liberty Records! The biggest artist for the 1990s incarnation of Liberty was Garth Brooks.