From the outside, the story of the Wellesley Hills–based Tone-Cool Records seems like something Horatio Alger could have penned. The simple version goes like this: a blues harmonica player who’s been through the trenches takes a cue from the DIY punks and puts out his own band’s LP. Over the next 17 years — and nearly 50 albums — his tiny label grows into a full-blown music-biz success with its own small office building, a smart staff, and two artists on this year’s Grammy ballot.

Actually, the Tone-Cool story looks that way from the inside, too. "I’ve never been a businessman," says Richard "Rosy" Rosenblatt, the company CEO and founder. "I’ve always been the harmonica player behind the desk." Rosenblatt is being modest. The label — which celebrates its history this month via the release of the two-disc compilation The Story of Tone-Cool, Vol. 1 — was already making a name for itself in the blues world when it was based on the dining-room table of his Newton home. But behind every good harmonica player — at least every good harmonica player who runs a successful record label — there’s a bright, reliable business partner. And that’s David Bartlett, who signed on as the company’s entire staff in 1995.

"After a record was finished, Rosy would say, ‘Here ya go,’ and I would take it from there," Bartlett says of his early days at Tone-Cool. "I was coming up with marketing plans. I was the publicist, the radio promoter. I coordinated the booking of ads and coordinated with some of the artists, and then I began going out and signing artists and coordinating studio schedules. I pushed myself brutally." But it paid off. Today Bartlett is the label’s president, and Tone-Cool is not only a blues powerhouse but a rising force in rock, thanks to its artists Susan Tedeschi and the North Mississippi All Stars.

The company’s offices, next to a medical building, are indie-label funky. Bartlett’s friendly chocolate Lab retriever Otis greets me, snuffling for a handout, as I enter the glass door. CDs rest along many of the poster-decorated walls and rise up from the floors. The rapport among the Tone-Coolers seems as congenial as it was in the dressing room of the defunct Cambridge club Nightstage, where I first met Rosenblatt and his friends in the 11th Hour Band in 1985. Back then he’d just put out the group’s debut, Hot Time in the City Night, that first Tone-Cool release. It was a set of rockin’ blues just like the ones the bandmates had been delivering in New England clubs for years.

Rosenblatt is loath to admit it now, but he once made the mistake of telling me that he coined the label’s name from the French phrase "ton cul," which translates to "your ass." (I’m sure that someday he’ll get something on me that I’ll consider equally embarrassing, and he’ll trot that out occasionally. It would be only fair.) Maybe that reflects the attitude that enabled Tone-Cool to survive against the odds at the beginning.

The label soon followed Hot Time in the City Tonight with its first distribution deal, through Rounder, and two more albums: a blues-rock set by T-Blade and the Esquires and an LP by Boston rock outfit Push Push fronted by the talented songwriter Dennis Brennan. It was the next release, Tone-Cool’s first CD, that put the label on the national map. The accomplished Cambridge singer-guitarist Paul Rishell’s solo debut Blues on Holiday was embraced by radio and press, and the blues industry took notice.

Five years later, Tone-Cool first registered with the mainstream. In 1995, shortly after Bartlett arrived, Rosenblatt signed the then-16-year-old Boston blues guitar prodigy Mike Welch. The young player’s debut, These Blues Are Mine, followed his high-profile musical coming-out party. Welch was a featured artist at the opening of the House of Blues club in Harvard Square, and he was tagged "Monster Mike" by the chain’s co-owner, Dan Aykroyd.

As a music-biz innocent, Bartlett had no idea that People, National Public Radio, and other major media outlets rarely gave indie-label artists attention in those days. So he called them and got lucky, and they spread word of the young guitar hotshot around the world.

"That’s when I knew that this could really be a business, rather than a part-time label," says Rosenblatt. Indeed, after that, established national artists including the West Coast harmonica kingpin and Mighty Flyers bandleader Rod Piazza, harp blower Mark Hummel, and the young zydeco torchbearer Terrance Simien were happy to seek a home on Tone-Cool. They joined a roster that included New England–based performers Toni Lynn Washington, "Earring" George Mayweather, James Montgomery, Tony Z., the Love Dogs, and David Maxwell. Tone-Cool also put out a compilation, Boston Blues Blast, Vol. 1, that serves as a snapshot of what was happening in the area’s blues clubs during the early ’90s.

Although many of those artists possess an edge, an energy, and a sound that has ties to rock and roll, Tone-Cool had yet to expand beyond the scope of a blues label — albeit by then one of the most respected. That changed with the release of singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi’s Just Won’t Burn.

Tedeschi grew up on the South Shore and attended Berklee College of Music. She entered the local blues scene via jam sessions and formed an early version of her band that featured Annie Raines on harmonica and guitarist Adrian Hayes. This female triple-threat front line helped propel the group to Memphis, where Rosenblatt saw them slay the audience at the Blues Foundation’s annual national battle of the bands.

"She was so unique and soulful I knew there would eventually be no denying her talent," he says. Other labels courted Tedeschi, but she wasn’t interested. In his typically low-key fashion, Rosenblatt had Tone-Cool finance the recording of her national debut "with the idea that if she decided somebody else should put it out, we’d work out something later."

Tedeschi toured relentlessly after the disc’s release and made scores of promotional appearances. "It Hurt So Bad" and "Rock Me Right" became radio staples. Soon her fan base moved beyond the blues audience. Her hard work, and Tone-Cool’s, was rewarded with a "Best New Artist Grammy" nomination in 2000. Christina Aguilera took the award, but with more than 600,000 copies sold and enough career thrust to put her at the top of the blues world and into the rock mainstream, Tedeschi and Tone-Cool were victors too.

In 2001, Tone-Cool scored its second Grammy nod after Bartlett signed the North Mississippi All Stars, a group led by the sons of Memphis music legend Jim Dickinson. Their sound is an amped-up version of the hard-edged blues played in Mississippi hill country by the likes of R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Othar Turner, and, before them, Fred McDowell. The sound of their Shake Hands with Shorty was traditional enough to garner a nomination in the "Best Contemporary Blues Album" category. Building on that sound through their improv-heavy live performances, the All Stars collected an ardent audience of jam-band and rock fans that continues to grow.

This year, both Tedeschi and the All Stars were nominated again. The All Stars were once more up for "Best Contemporary Blues Album" for 51 Phantom (Solomon Burke won for his Fat Possum release Don’t Give Up on Me). And thanks to some smart thinking, Tedeschi was in the "Best Rock Vocal Performance" category for the song "Alone," from her November-issued Wait for Me (Sheryl Crow wound up winning for "Steve McQueen").

"We just submitted the song this year, so she could be up for contemporary blues album next year," Bartlett explains. "That’s what U2 did two years ago, which is why their album All That You Can’t Leave Behind had so much life for two years. You actually have to have the song you’re nominating be on sale, and we knew we couldn’t rush Susan’s album out, so we offered ‘Alone’ for sale by download. The fact that she had been nominated in 2000 for ‘Best New Artist’ means people who vote for the Grammys love Susan."

Just the title of Tone-Cool’s Boston Blues Blast Vol. 1 made it plain that Rosenblatt was planning to release a sequel. With the label now reaching so far beyond the limits of this region and the blues genre, that’s not going to happen. But it’s obvious from the two-disc overview of The Story of Tone-Cool, Volume 1 that a new chapter for the company is being written by Rosenblatt and Bartlett. The compilation features more than the label’s hardcore blues roster and leading artists Tedeschi and the North Mississippi All Stars. Mod Southern jam-rockers Hobex, singer-songwriter Todd Thibaud, and the trip-hop infused blues of Rick Holmstrom are part of its mix. For the record: I wrote the liner notes — which seemed reasonable, because I’ve watched the label grow since reviewing Hot Time in the City Tonight for the Boston Globe when it was released.

In January, Bartlett signed Garage a Toir, a quartet featuring guitarist Charlie Hunter and Galactic’s Stanton Moore that straddles trip-hop, free jazz, and New Orleans funk. A double-disc career retrospective for Piazza is in the works. Paul Rishell and Annie Raines, who won a Handy Award, the blues equivalent of a Grammy, for their 2000 album Moving to the Country, are finishing a new CD. And a live album of performances from Handy Awards ceremonies featuring Bonnie Raitt, Rufus Thomas, Bobby Rush, Piazza, Tedeschi, Luther Allison, Bernard Allison, David Maxwell, Rishell and Raines, Deborah Coleman, and others is in the works. The label also just won the Blues Foundation’s prestigious "Keeping the Blues Alive" award.

"Everything we’ve done so far amounts to a kind of launching pad," Bartlett explains. "We want to respect the blues tradition, but we want to keep expanding our music in new and different directions."

"But it has to move us on a basic level — musically and emotionally," Rosenblatt adds.

In Rosenblatt’s case, music is also about to move him physically once more. The harmonica player will be stepping out from behind his desk next Thursday, March 6, when he reassembles the 11th Hour Band at Johnny D’s to play more gritty, honest rock and blues. I’m looking forward to that gig. If every record-label chief had a band he could return to now and then, maybe music fans and the entire industry would be better off.