Gazell was founded in 1949 by John Engelbrekt, who from the following year also ran the jazz club Gazell Club at Österlånggatan 29 in Old Town in Stockholm. Already in 1953, the club had a new owner in Orkie Nyström, while in 1957 the record company was taken over by the then only 16-year-old Dag Häggqvist, who ran it together with the musician Rune Öfwerman. In 1960, Häggqvist also became a partner in the record company Sonet, with which Gazell had entered into a distribution agreement a few years earlier. However, since Sonet was bought out by PolyGram in 1993, Häggqvist and Öfverman returned to running Gazell on their own again.

Since its inception, Gazell has primarily focused on publishing jazz and folk (in the first years mainly local trad jazz bands from Stockholm), and among the company's artists are notable names in Swedish jazz such as Putte Wickman, Claes Janson, Monica Borrfors and Sofi Hellborg, but also Marie Bergman, Peps Blodsband and Peter Carlsson & Blå Gordorna.