At the start of the 1980s, SOLAR Records looked unstoppable. A decade later, the label was gone, its catalogue scattered across three different owners. This is the story of how it happened, told through a new subsidiary, two songwriters who would go on to reshape American R&B, and a lawsuit big enough to make headlines.
A New Subsidiary for a New Sound
In the early 1980s, Dick Griffey launched Constellation Records as a home for acts with a more contemporary edge than SOLAR's established roster. Klymaxx, an all female group Griffey signed in 1981 after hearing their demo, became one of the label's flagship acts, scoring with "Women on the Bass" and later "I Miss You". Carrie Lucas, SOLAR's first disco success and eventually Griffey's wife, also recorded for the subsidiary. In 1984, Griffey moved Constellation's distribution over to MCA Records, a decision that finally gave the imprint the commercial push it needed.
Constellation Records
Built to house more contemporary acts than SOLAR's core roster, Constellation's biggest success was Klymaxx. The label folded into MCA outright in 1987, with its artists transferred directly to the major.
Cincinnati Comes to Los Angeles
Around the same time, Griffey signed a young group out of Cincinnati called The Deele, built around Antonio "L.A." Reid on drums and songwriter Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds on guitar and vocals. Their 1983 single "Body Talk" became a genuine hit, climbing to number 3 on the R&B chart and even soundtracking a scene on Miami Vice. The Deele's "Eye of a Stranger" earned a gold certification, one more entry on SOLAR's growing wall of plaques.
What mattered more in the long run was who was in the room. Reid and Edmonds spent their SOLAR years absorbing everything Leon Sylvers III and, briefly, a young production team named Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis could teach them about building a record from the bassline up. Jam and Lewis themselves passed through SOLAR's orbit in the early 80s, cutting early production work on Klymaxx sessions before striking out on their own. Both pairs would go on to define the sound of R&B for the next fifteen years, one from Minneapolis, the other from a label they built themselves.
Nobody at SOLAR could have known it at the time, but the label's rehearsal rooms were quietly training the two production teams who would go on to run 1990s R&B from opposite ends of the genre.
The Lawsuit That Changed Everything
SOLAR's momentum started to crack in 1986, when a distribution dispute pushed Griffey into a legal fight that would consume the label's resources for years. Griffey filed a 386 million dollar lawsuit against Elektra, Capitol, and Warner Bros., alleging unfair competition and interference in SOLAR's contracts. Whatever the merits of the case, the fallout was immediate: promotional support for SOLAR's artists dried up at exactly the moment the label needed it most.
Shalamar's original lineup, including Jody Watley and Jeffrey Daniel, had already broken up in 1983 over royalty disputes with the label. Now the wider roster started to feel the same instability. Reid and Edmonds left in 1988 to found LaFace Records, taking their production talents with them. The Deele lost steam without its two biggest songwriters, eventually managing only a partial reunion album in 1993 without either man. Meanwhile, SOLAR leaned harder on its established smooth funk and R&B formula just as new jack swing, pioneered by Teddy Riley, was pulling the entire genre toward a harder, hip-hop influenced sound. SOLAR never made the turn.
The Last Hit and the Long Afterlife
SOLAR's final commercial moment came from an unlikely place: the soundtrack to the 1992 film "Deep Cover", featuring Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg years before either became a household name. It was a fitting, if accidental, handoff, the label that had helped seed the sound of West Coast R&B closing its books just as West Coast hip-hop was about to take over.
The Deele
Formed by Cincinnati high school friends, The Deele scored SOLAR's first hit of the decade with "Body Talk" in 1983. The group's real legacy is who passed through it: Reid and Edmonds left to found LaFace Records, going on to shape R&B and pop through the 1990s.
Griffey never confined himself to just the label. Over the years he built Griff-co Management for artist management, publishing arms Spectrum Seven and Hip Trip, a production company called Dick Griffey Productions, and even a racehorse stable named Solar Stables. He died in 2010 at 71, and the rights to SOLAR's catalogue passed to his family. By then the recordings themselves had already changed hands more than once: EMI acquired the SOLAR catalogue after the label's closure, reissuing much of it through its Right Stuff Records imprint for SOLAR's 20th anniversary in 1997. In 2009, Canadian label Unidisc Music picked up rights to the catalogue for the US, Canada, and South Africa, while BMG Rights Management holds the European rights today. In 2018, SOLAR was relaunched in the UK under new leadership, working with the Griffey family to bring the catalogue to a new generation of listeners.
A label built on a dance show theme song ended up owned by three different companies on two continents, and its music still gets played every day. Catalogues outlive the business fights that scatter them.
What started as a theme song for a dance show ended up training some of the most important producers in R&B history, and its records still fill dance floors on Diva Radio Funk today. Not bad for a label that almost did not get a name of its own.
