At Prestige's peak Weinstock recorded an average of 75 sessions per year, typically setting up sessions with little or no rehearsal time. While the label's output suffered in some respects, there's no doubt the approach captures an uncommon vitality that a more conventional approach to recording would have eroded. And there was no doubting Weinstock's ear for emerging talent -- he cut pivotal sides by J.J. Johnson and Wardell Gray, and in 1956 issued Two Tenors, Coltrane's debut as a leader. Prestige's most legendary recordings remain its sessions led by Miles Davis, beginning with 1951's Blue Period. Under Weinstock's eye he emerged as the most creative musician of his generation, cutting a series of seminal dates before exiting the label in 1956. The terms of Davis' departure from Prestige demanded he cut a stockpile of new material for subsequent release, and over two daylong sessions he and Weinstock recorded no fewer than four LPs, among them the classic Cookin' With the Miles Davis Quintet and its companion volumes Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin'. Still, few if any of the major artists signed to Prestige did their finest work for the label. Only Sonny Rollins could claim to reach to his creative apex under Weinstock, cutting his masterpiece Saxophone Colossus in 1956. The label instead contented itself with a series of jukebox hits, including smashes from Stan Getz and Sonny Stitt.

While Weinstock served as producer of Prestige's earlier sessions, by the mid-'50s he was distancing himself from the studio to focus on the label's executive operations, establishing new distribution and promotion systems while turning over recording responsibilities to staff producers including Ira Gitler and Ozzie Cadena. Their input altered Prestige's direction, and by the following decade the company's calling card was soul-jazz, spearheaded by acts including Jack McDuff, Richard "Groove" Holmes, and Shirley Scott. Producer Bob Porter encouraged his artists to further embrace commercial sensibilities, yielding jazz-funk classics from Charles Earland and Houston Person. Prestige also branched out into folk and spoken word releases via short-lived subsidiaries like Bluesville, Swingsville, and Moodsville. But with the dominance of rock & roll growing more and more pronounced, Weinstock found it increasingly difficult to remain competitive, and in 1971 he sold Prestige to the Fantasy label and retired to Florida. The label's output dribbled to a minimum in the years to follow, although in the late-'80s Fantasy began reissuing landmark Prestige dates on CD under the "Original Jazz Classics" banner. Weinstock even returned to Fantasy during the 1990s as an executive producer, helming sessions from his Deerfield Beach, FL, home. He died of complications from diabetes at a Boca Raton hospice on January 14, 2006.