Studio musician and composer David Chesky founded Chesky Records with his brother Norman in 1978. They began the label to preserve the sound of live-in-the studio recordings, without overdubbing original records. In 1990, they switched from recording in studios to recording in churches. One of the company's first attempts at improving sound quality was the re-issue of classical pianist Earl Wild's recordings of Rachmaninoff for Reader's Digest. In 1990, Chesky Records released its Jazz Sampler & Audiophile Test Compact Disc, with the first nine tracks devoted to music and the remaining twenty devoted to listening and technical tests for headphones and loud speakers. Other test discs include Dr. Chesky's Sensational, Fantastic, and Simply Amazing Binaural Sound Show and the Ultimate Demo Disc. In 2007, David and Norman Chesky also started an audiophile music download website called HDtracks. HDtracks allows customers to download high-resolution versions of albums in numerous formats. The site contains many varied artists and labels. In 2012, Crosby, Stills, and Nash announced that they would be releasing HD versions of its first three albums through HDtracks, and the company also released remastered titles from the Blue Note label, including John Coltrane's Blue Train, Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch, Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil, Horace Silver's Song for My Father and Larry Young's Unity. Other notable artists include Carole King, Janis Joplin, Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. In 2011, Chesky Records incorporated High Resolution Technology in their label and introduced binaural recordings. The Binaural+ masters are captured in high-resolution sound using a binaural dummy head nicknamed "Lars". David Chesky collaborated with Princeton professor Edgar Y. Choueiri to begin producing binaural recordings. The purpose of the technology is to capture three-dimensional sound and imaging. In 2016, Chesky Records released the critically acclaimed jazz debut of Macy Gray, Stripped, which debuted No. 3 on the Billboard Jazz Charts. The label also released the debut album from City of the Sun, which debuted No. 12 on the Billboard Jazz Charts, would go on to garner over 17 million album streams on Spotify and peak at No. 2 on the Spotify US Viral 50. In 2018, Casey Abrams and Meiko signed with Chesky Records. Abrams' debut album for the label, Put a Spell on You, hit #5 on the Billboard Jazz Charts, and Meiko hit #23 on the Billboard Folk Charts with Playing Favorites. In 2019, Anna Nalick signed with Chesky Records and released her label debut The Blackest Crow that December. Chesky Records uses custom recording equipment and experiments with recording techniques and formats.
