Morgan Khan

Morgan Khan is a British music entrepreneur, best known for his work in the UK during the 1980s, and as founder of the StreetSounds record label.

Early life

Born in Hong Kong and of Anglo-Indian parentage, Khan moved to London, England in 1969. His father Capt. Richard Khan (1926 – 1995) was an airline pilot and his mother a retired Air Hostess. Khan has an older brother, Richard and his other elder brother Henry, who died in 2008.

Career

Khan has worked in the recording industry since 1978 in various capacities including A&R, promotions & marketing, producing, publishing, artist management, concert promoting and executive company management in addition to his record label. During his early career he worked for PRT Distribution (a division of Pye Records) and R&B Records, the record label of the band Imagination.

Artists and groups he has worked with have included Jamiroquai, Dina Carroll, Humanoid, Barry White, Edwin Starr, Rose Royce, Gladys Knight, Al Green, Donna Summer and Boogie Down Productions.

Khan's StreetSounds label produced a compilation series, which originally grew out of his own Streetwave record label.^[1] StreetSounds covered soul, funk, boogie and jazz,^[2] and is credited with helping electro and hip hop cross over to the mainstream in the UK, and he organised and promoted "UK Fresh",^[3] the first hip hop festival in Britain. He also founded Westside Records, an album-focused label which aimed to be less overtly commercial or trendy than StreetSounds, and which released mainly jacking and early acid house.^[4]

Khan licensed US import tracks to his UK StreetSounds and Streetwave record labels. At the time, imported vinyl recordings of urban and club music tended to be expensive and had limited availability. Before StreetSounds, US dance music releases often took a long time to be licensed and released in the British (and European) market, and sometimes didn't appear at all. Khan's compilations and single releases influenced the demand for black club music, soul, jazz-funk, electro, hip hop, house and Hi-NRG as these mostly US-based genres gained popularity during the relative post-punk decline of rock and pop amongst style-conscious young adults in British cities.

The StreetSounds label went into insolvency in 1988, as a result of losses incurred by StreetScene, Khan's club music magazine.^[5]

Khan's recent major projects have included the Universal Music black music retrospective "Back To Black - 100 years of Black Music" 10-CD box set.

References