Flying Dutchman Records was an American jazz label, founded in 1969 by producer and songwriter Bob Thiele. Thiele had just emerged from eight years as the head of Impulse, where he made a name for himself as the producer of John Coltrane. Most of Flying Dutchman' early albums were by progressive jazz musicians such as Leon Thomas, Lonnie Liston Smith and Gato Barbieri, but the breakout star of the label was Gil Scott-Heron.
In the beginning, the label was distributed by Atlantic Records' Atco subsidiary. Then distribution was moved to Mainstream for about two years. Starting in 1974, Flying Dutchman hooked up with RCA Records for distribution and used their numbering system.
In 1970, Bob Thiele set up a subsidiary label, Amsterdam, where he recorded a few albums of his wife Teresa Brewer, amongst others. Another yet short-lived subsidiary was BluesTime, active in the Atco and Mainstream years from 1969 to 1972. Flying Dutchman stopped releasing new material at the end of 1976, but it survived as a label until the mid-1980s.