October 29, 2001

Record Label Specializing in Patriotic Music Surges after Sept. 11

By JIM PATTERSON
Associated Press Writer

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. (AP)  Like many people, Al McCree says things changed for him on Sept. 11. But the 54-year-old Vietnam War veteran is sorting through more complicated feelings than some. The co-owner of the tiny Altissimo! record label says his business has doubled since the terrorist attacks. Altissimo! sells patriotic music recorded by military bands.

"People want to wrap this music around them like they want to wave a flag," McCree said. "But I would give it all back to save one life."

Others are benefitting from the run on patriotic music. "God Bless America" (a compilation album on Columbia featuring Celine Dion, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and others) is the top-selling album in the United States. Country singer Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" has returned to the charts 17 years after it was first a hit, and Whitney Houston has a hit with "The Star Spangled Banner."

But Altissimo!, based at McCree's home south of Nashville, is experiencing never-imagined growth. The company grossed $310,000 in 2000, and was expected to grow by 20 or 30 percent this year.

"The week after nine-eleven, we took orders for $117,000," McCree said. "We're on track now to double what we did last year."

Altissimo!, an Italian musical term meaning the highest note in a piece of music, has a catalog of 21 CDs, all music licensed from the U.S. armed forces. Mostly it's brass concert bands performing patriotic and military standards, though there is one album of bluegrass by the Country Currrent, a Navy ensemble.

Altissimo! CDs are distributed in gifts shops of historical sites and military museums. Borders bookstores also carries the CDs, and Best Buy started stocking them after Sept. 11.

"The volume of orders is just exploding," said Mark Mayo of Rock Bottom Distributors in Atlanta, which distributes Altissimo! CDs to retailers. "At first we were leery to push it too hard after Sept. 11, because you don't want to be seen as capitalizing on the misfortune of others. But (the retailers) didn't seem to feel that way. They felt a demand for patriotic symbols and music."

The label's best seller has been "Sousa's Greatest Hits," recordings of marching band music like "The Stars and Stripes Forever." Since the attacks, the hot item has been "A Patriotic Salute to the Military Family," which Billboard magazine currently lists as one of the top 10-selling classical music albums in the country.

Altissimo! was founded a decade ago by McCree and Ron Coker, a record distribution veteran. Near the end of a two decade-career in the Air Force, during which he flew 196 missions in Vietnam and won the Distinguished Flying Cross, McCree was asked by a general to write a song in honor of Air Force families.

The song, "We are all a Family," was recorded by McCree with an Air Force band and named the official theme song for Air Force families. He began investigating who owned recordings by military bands, and how they were released. He found the government owned the recordings, but rarely had they been licensed for commercial release.

"What I discovered was a vast treasure chest of music that was out there that had never been commercially available," he said. "I found out that I could obtain the rights to the recordings, and I could release them."  He retired from the Air Force in 1989 and moved to the Nashville area. The first Altissimo! album was released in 1991.

This is not music business at the superstar level. Altissimo! considers sales of 3,000 a success. "Sousa's Greatest Hits" has sold about 10,000, making it Altissimo's "Thriller" or "Saturday Night Fever."  If Michael Jackson sold only 10,000 copies of his next CD, it would rank as an all-time music business disaster.

McCree admits his success is bittersweet. "It's a terrible thing to say, but if we had another event occur that triggered the same kind of emotional patriotic feeling, then we could very well see an increase in sales. I pray that that is not the result of another attack on our country."

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