History
Jack White founded Third Man Records in Detroit, Michigan, in 2001. Third Man established its first physical location in Nashville, Tennessee on March 11, 2009. The Nashville location serves as a record store and a complete production office. It includes a recording studio, rehearsal stage, photo studio, darkroom, and storage facility for master recording tapes. To commemorate the event, White debuted his new project, The Dead Weather, performing a short set for the 150 invited guests.

The label's name features the number three due to White's known fondness of it, as mentioned in several interviews. It refers to Carol Reed's The Third Man starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. His old upholstering company was named Third Man Upholstery. White also refers to himself as a woman's "third man" in the song "Ball and Biscuit" on The White Stripes' album Elephant.

All six studio albums of The White Stripes appear with the Third Man logo. Both albums of The Raconteurs (Broken Boy Soldiers and Consolers of the Lonely) carry the label's logo. For The Raconteurs' tour of the United Kingdom in October 2006, 1,000 live albums were pressed and sold for each show, all of which display a Third Man logo. Other artists under the Third Man label include The Dead Weather, Whirlwind Heat, Dan Sartain, and The Muldoons.

Third Man Rolling Record Store
On March 9, 2011, Third Man Records announced its newest creation, the Third Man Rolling Record Store. The store, a yellow step van outfitted with a sound system and Third Man Records inventory, was built by C Cook Enterprises in Erlanger, Kentucky. It made its first appearance in Austin, Texas, at SXSW 2011. Third Man has since brought the mobile store to concerts, festivals, and other events with anywhere from weeks to only a few hours notice.

Discography
Third Man releases some music on compact disc and via electronic release on iTunes, but vinyl records are its primary format.

In addition to pressing titles on regular black vinyl, some releases have been issued on colored and multicolor vinyl. Beginning with TMR-003, a limited edition handmade batch of 100 tri-colored 7" vinyl, in equal parts black, yellow, and white, were produced for exclusive distribution at Third Man's Nashville location. Beginning with TMR-009, an additional 50 tri-colored vinyl have been pressed for random distribution in Third Man mail orders. Certain single releases have been sold on tri-colored vinyl available at record stores in the artist's hometown instead of at the Nashville store. An additional 50 are still randomly distributed in mail orders. The first double LP issued in the Third Man catalog, The Dead Weather's Horehound (TMR-008), consisted of one regular black vinyl and one half white/half yellow vinyl. A portion of these were sold at the Nashville location, but the majority were sold at Third Man Records and Novelties East, a temporary store in New York City.

In conjunction with The Dead Weather's August 25–26, 2009, concerts in Los Angeles, "Bizarro" versions of previously-released Third Man material (up to TMR-013; excluding TMR-008) were made available at Third Man Records and Novelties West, a temporary store in Los Angeles. The picture sleeves featured reversed or alternate images, and the vinyl had backwards labels without center holes. A temporary store was open in London on October 30–31, 2009, which sold glow-in-the-dark copies of every regular 7" record up to TMR-016; each was limited to 100 copies.

On February 4, 2010, Third Man hosted the first in a series of live concerts at the Nashville location. The concerts are recorded directly to analog reel to reel tape and pressed on vinyl for purchase through Third Man. Approximately three hundred half black/half blue LP's are pressed and made available only for purchase by concert attendees. Beginning with TMR-039 (The Racontwoers), each LP jacket is sealed with a concert-specific label on which the purchaser's name is written. A pop-up store, Third Man Records at SXSW, which was open from March 17–20, 2010, during the SXSW festival, featured limited edition "Texas-Sized" 8-inch singles and 13-inch albums.