Following its bankruptcy reorganization, CTI Records entered into a distribution arrangement with CBS Records (now Sony BMG). The music giant contracted to manufacture and distribute CTI records in exchange for ownership of CTI's master tape catalog. This meant that Columbia now owned some 130 of Creed Taylor's productions - not including the Grover Washington, Jr. masters owned by Motown and the Bob James sessions owned by the artist - in essence, the body of the CTI legacy since 1970.

This arrangement launched the 9000 series and one record that carried the CTI logo, but looked like a Columbia Records issue (Patti Austin's Body Language, which was probably chosen for the CBS look due to its potential for popular appeal). 

The remainder of the records in this series appeared to be independent of Columbia and several were exceptional artistic triumphs. An all-star studio meeting of Chet Baker, Jim Hall and Hubert Laws, released as Studio Trieste, in particular, is outstanding. And Pacific Fire , a compilation of outtakes from George Benson's 1975 Good King Bad sessions, is a high point too. One of the more unusual recordings in this series is Patti Austin's In My Life, a collection of the artist's CTI songs and vocals re-recorded with new musicians in arrangements that differ slightly from the originals.  

By 1981, Creed Taylor sought to repurchase the rights to his CTI masters from Columbia. A price of $400,000 was agreed upon. Although partial payment was made, CTI was unable to keep up with its financial obligations to CBS and the music major retained rights to the entire CTI catalog.

In the mid eighties, as the CD generation dawned, CBS began to release many of the old CTI albums on CD. By 1989, Creed Taylor sued the industry giant, claiming Columbia's earnings from the sale of CTI CDs far exceeded Taylor's outstanding obligation. To this day, Sony BMG retains the right to issue the majority of the CTI catalog, although its Legacy division (headed by former CTI publicist Didier Deutsch) gives only sporadic attention to its CTI holdings. 

Among the many oddities in the 9000 series is that eight of its titles were issued in the US between 1980 and 1983 (9000-9010), six of its titles - otherwise issued, for the most part, under the Greenestreet imprint in the US - were issued in Japan in 1984 (9011-9016) and the remaining titles in the series were issued in France by Musidisc in 1984 (9016-9032?).