Written In Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos (2024)
Blues Music Award, Historical Album of the Year: Bobby Rush, Chicken Heads: A 50-Year History Of Bobby Rush (2017) Blues Blast Music Award, Best Historical or Vintage Recording: Johnny Shines, The Blues Came Falling Down, Live 1973 (2020); Little Richard, Southern Child (2021)
Cheryl Pawelski (born April 11, 1966 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin)[1] is an American record producer and record-company executive. Since 2010, she has been one of the founder/owners of Omnivore Recordings, a Los Angeles-based record label specializing in historical releases, reissues and previously unissued vintage recordings, as well as select releases of new music.[4][5][6][7][8]
Early life
Pawelski is the oldest child of a family from Milwaukee. Her father worked in manufacturing and is a longtime musician who regularly volunteered as a piano player at a Milwaukee hospital.[1][9] Her grandmother worked at a local department store which sold records, and encouraged Pawelski to begin a music collection at an early age.[2] Another had pursued a career as a singer before working in banking, and also encouraged her to seek a musical career.[10]
Pawelski attended Pius XI High School in Milwaukee,[11] and graduated from Marquette University in 1989.[12] After college but before moving to Los Angeles to begin her career in the music industry, Pawelski worked at a Milwaukee record store, Radio Doctors, to learn about record labels and distribution.[13][14] A musician herself, Pawelski played in several bands.[1]
An inveterate collector of music and memorabilia, Pawelski holds a vast personal archive. A portion of her LP collection formed the core of the exhibit Spaced Out! The Final Frontier In Album Covers, which opened at Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington, and also showed at The Museum at Bethel Woods in New York. The exhibit featured 117 space-themed albums released from 1940 to 1969.[14][19][1][20]
Other work
Pawelski wrote the foreword for Derrick Bang's 2020 book Crime and Spy Jazz on Screen, 1950-1970: A History and Discography, published by McFarland.[21]
Pawelski won a 2017 Blues Music Award in the category of Historical Album of the Year, for producing the Bobby Rush box set Chicken Heads: A 50-Year History Of Bobby Rush.[24]
Pawelski won Blues Blast Magazine's Blues Blast Music Award for Best Historical or Vintage Recording in both 2020 and 2021, for, respectively, Johnny Shines' The Blues Came Falling Down, Live 1973[25] and Little Richard's Southern Child.[26]
In 2022, Pawelski was the recipient of the Diederich College of Communication's Professional Achievement Award, given annually to Marquette University alumni.[27]
