Fabor Records

In 1953, Abbott Records was doing well enough that Fabor Robison was able to buy out the share of his partner, Sid Abbott. In order to diversify the label's offerings, Robison founded the Fabor Record Company an imprint as a subsidiary of Abbott, though at first these records carried the same artist pool—drawn from the Louisiana Hayride—as featured on the parent. These artists included pianist Floyd Cramer, The Browns, Smiley Burnette, Dorsey Burnette and Mitchell Torok, whose "Caribbean" was Abbott's next chart hit in 1953. Many of these recordings featured members of the Louisiana Hayride house band as accompanists and were recorded at KWKH studios in Shreveport. However, Robison also used the Sun Studio in Memphis on occasion, in addition to continuing to record in Los Angeles; in one instance he is known to have accepted a master submitted through the mail directly from an artist. Early Abbott issues bear an address in Malibu, and by the mid-1950s the label is listed as located in Hollywood, but the later Fabor Records releases revert to a Malibu address.

In 1955, Jim Reeves broke with Fabor Robison and signed with RCA Victor. The previous year, Robison had signed The Decastro Sisters whom to that point had largely functioned as the Cuban response to The Andrews Sisters To facilitate the change of genre, Robison created a 3000 series within Abbott to cover popular, non-country music acts, and the DeCastros quickly delivered Abbott's biggest ever hit, "Teach Me Tonight," which went to Number Two on the Billboard pop charts. However, the incursion of rock n' roll into the music business was swiftly becoming unavoidable, and around 1958 Robison dropped both the Abbott and Fabor imprints and founded Radio Records, exclusively a rock n' roll label, with only Billy Barton held over from the previous Abbott and Fabor rosters. Radio was not a success and folded after just 25 releases in 1959.
Fabor Robison revived the Fabor imprint once more in 1962 to record Ned Miller's hit "From a Jack to a King." He kept this second Fabor label going until 1966. Robison's record companies were strictly singles-only outfits; the only LP released by any of these companies was Jim Reeves Sings, issued in 1955 as Abbott 15001.