MusicMasters was founded in the late 1970s by Albert Nissim and his sons Robert and Jeffrey, who owned the Musical Heritage Society, which had previously only licensed European recordings for sale via mail-order.
[1] MusicMasters produced recordings from 1981 until 1999, which were sold by mail-order and retail by the Music Heritage Society.
[citation needed] Initially, MusicMasters produced classical records, but began releasing jazz in 1985, when they obtained the rights to previously unreleased Yale University Library recordings by Benny Goodman.
[2] In 2008, arrangements were made to make MusicMasters recordings available via the Orchard, a global distributor of digital audio and video.
Benny Carter won two individual Grammy Awards for MusicMasters recordings.