Common Labels/rare Records.?

[Robbk]

<>

I have the Sherlocks, it's a pretty relentless record, love it. Rarest soul on the label would assume is Chuck Collins, that one's really tough.

How about Ronnie White on Brent - Out of breath, not a "known" 45 but screaming funky soul on a well-distributed label, lists low in any price guide I've seen it in but the promo with Beggin' you on both sides is the only one you see, that's ten a penny, have only ever seen 2 copies of the issue, have one and know where the other one is (and came from), none on popsike, it's been comped by Numero if you haven't heard it (artist listed as Ronnie Whitehead)

If you are referring to the red store stock, I have a third:

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Edited January 7, 2012 by RobbK

[boba]

I bet Robb K has a lot of records that are supposedly "two known copies" in the UK.

[Robbk]

I bet Robb K has a lot of records that are supposedly "two known copies" in the UK.

As I'm not in The U.K., there may well still be only 2 known copies in The U.K. -However, that does not mean that a third might not end up in The U.K. I have been known to swap rare NS records for rare Detroit Soul and/or rare Chicago Soul records.

[Pomonkey]

I bet he does, always impressed by his posts. In this case like said, that one is in old price guides as an issue so must have been around at some point, but then that's true of many these days that have all but disappeared. Oh, the 2 of this one I know of are both in Brooklyn, not uk, altho 1 lived in France for a while.

Liked your idea of deliberately mid-spelling titles btw, that finally explains why you always spell "Bob" wrong huh!

Edited January 7, 2012 by pomonkey

[Weingarden]

havent been looking very hard

I sold my copy to someone on here a few years ago, too.

[Louise]

Arctic is an interesting one.

I'd say the rarest (and I did collect the label and am, only missing one)

Cindy Gibson, agree Chalky

One of the Brockingtons ditto although I can't remember which one now cos it's not very good.

The one I didn't get (yet) is "Chains of love" which I believe is only on a test pressing and might not exist as a proper finished article.

Thanks for reminding me of the Darrow Fletcher issue

Here's a couple more Steve

Both were on Virtue acetates, one being Cindy Gibson which had the issued version of "Step By Step" on one side and a slilghtly different version of the same song on the flip instead of "Whisper you Love Me Boy" It was in very poor condition and I eventually sold it. So it's out there somewhere.

The other one is a one sided acetate of Kenny Gamble singing "Help Wanted" which is a longer version than the Volcanoes issued version and this one I kept.

Dave

Edited January 7, 2012 by Louise

[Weingarden]

Jeanette Nellis on Chess?

Yiddish Soul Brother Amnon on Chess?

Curtis King on Ronze (not a big label, 'tis true)

Tommy Dent on Cobblestone

[Steve G]

Here's a couple more Steve

Both were on Virtue acetates, one being Cindy Gibson which had the issued version of "Step By Step" on one side and a slilghtly different version of the same song on the flip instead of "Whisper you Love Me Boy" It was in very poor condition and I eventually sold it. So it's out there somewhere.

The other one is a one sided acetate of Kenny Gamble singing "Help Wanted" which is a longer version than the Volcanoes issued version and this one I kept.

Dave

Interesting Dave cos I have an acetate of "The Laws of Love" with just a singer and guitar. Quite nice it is too. Steve

[Robbk]

I have the Hy-tones on Bell, as well:

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[Louise]

Interesting Dave cos I have an acetate of "The Laws of Love" with just a singer and guitar. Quite nice it is too. Steve

Maybe either Gamble or Fisher ?

[Weingarden]

Rarest I know of on Virtue (not an acetate but an actual 45 release) is Little George and the Mixed Generation.

[Weingarden]

I got my copy of the rare Joe Hicks from a VERY well known U.K. dealer out of his catalogue for maybe £10 at the most 15 or so years ago.

[boba]

As I'm not in The U.K., there may well still be only 2 known copies in The U.K. -However, that does not mean that a third might not end up in The U.K. I have been known to swap rare NS records for rare Detroit Soul and/or rare Chicago Soul records.

I meant the people in the UK who think only two known copies exist in collections anywhere.

I have some rare chicago soul records that I would trade to you, I thought you previously told me you didn't trade out of your collection.

[boba]

Liked your idea of deliberately mid-spelling titles btw, that finally explains why you always spell "Bob" wrong huh!

At least they will see my post calling them a jerk.

I've been made fun of a couple times on different message boards for having "boba" as my handle, they are like "you are such a loser you named yourself after a star wars character." Actually I've never seen a star wars movie which is funny.

[Louise]

Mick Smith bought a instrumental version of "If You Can't Be True" on a virtue acetate off John Anderson at one of the Manchester record fairs it was the backing track to Marva Lee's cover version on Atco. It was o.k but would have been better if it had of got the wah,wah horns in it.

He covered it up as the Jimmy Bishop Trio. I suggested he covered it as the "Duo-Dynamics" to which he replied how am I gonna say that after a few Shandy's down the 100 club so the Jimmy Bishop Trio it became.

Dave

Edited January 7, 2012 by Louise

[Robbk]

I meant the people in the UK who think only two known copies exist in collections anywhere.

I have some rare chicago soul records that I would trade to you, I thought you previously told me you didn't trade out of your collection.

I don't trade most of my core collection, but I'm willing to trade records with songs that are not so well liked by me for expensive records I like a lot that I could never afford to buy (especially if the record I'm swapping is very valuable-and I can get several hard records I've wanted for long time, that I'd probably never get any other way). Know that generally, I value rare Motown more than off-Motown Detroit, and Detroit more than Chicago. But maybe we should continue through e-mail.

[Pomonkey]

Given my user ID I'm def in no position to make fun of anyone else's Bob! Thought that was an amusing comment though Are you aiming to be here Feb 2 for the Impressions/Dap-kings show??

Edited January 7, 2012 by pomonkey

[Garethx]

Not exactly a common label (far from it in fact) but what about Baby Washington on J-2?

[Ficklefingers]

Here's a couple more Steve

Both were on Virtue acetates, one being Cindy Gibson which had the issued version of "Step By Step" on one side and a slilghtly different version of the same song on the flip instead of "Whisper you Love Me Boy" It was in very poor condition and I eventually sold it. So it's out there somewhere.

The other one is a one sided acetate of Kenny Gamble singing "Help Wanted" which is a longer version than the Volcanoes issued version and this one I kept.

Dave

I had this acetate for a while, before passing it to Lou (MrsSoul) Woods a couple o' years back - I believe she still has it..

Really interesting thread, by the way - be nice to see it run for a good while..

Edited January 7, 2012 by FickleFingers

[boba]

Not exactly a common label (far from it in fact) but what about Baby Washington on J-2?

I had never seen that before until that Japanese seller had it on ebay recently. I don't think he got his $2000 that he was trying to sell it for initially.

Maybe it's equally as rare as the poets but lack of demand / knowledge about it makes it come up for sale less?

[George G]

Jeanette Nellis on Chess?

Yiddish Soul Brother Amnon on Chess?

Curtis King on Ronze (not a big label, 'tis true)

Tommy Dent on Cobblestone

Cobblestone is a weird label. There are some really common records and some really rare ones. Especially the later 45s with the brown 'large stone' label. A rare rock record on Cobblestone is the Grayps. Took me several years to get it. A companion label to Cobblestone is Team, which I think are all rock records although the Feathers (a common 45) is a mod spin.

Matt, are the Chess 45s you mention pre GRT or later? I have a couple Chess discogs, maybe I should look for myself!

An interesting sideline to Chess history is their short lived Abbey Group label (only 1 45). This was supposed to be their underground rock label featuring Ohio artists (it's a long story). It was terminated with the GRT sale and some planned 45s were cancelled. I wonder if that happened to some planned soul records.

Edited January 8, 2012 by George G

[George G]

Not exactly a common label (far from it in fact) but what about Baby Washington on J-2?

Nope, strictly a local label. BW must be a rare record though, it's outside of my area of knowledge There is a garage 45 on J-2 that has two different pressings with different artists credit. The Pebble Episode is the correct name but Vincent Oddo (the label owner, I believe) is on some copies. I wonder if they backed up the Poets?

Edited January 8, 2012 by George G

[boba]

Nope, strictly a local label. BW must be a rare record though, it's outside of my area of knowledge There is a garage 45 on J-2 that has two different pressings with different artists credit. The Pebble Episode is the correct name but Vincent Oddo (the label owner, I believe) is on some copies. I wonder if they backed up the Poets?

i thought j2 was a division of sue?

[boba]

Cobblestone is a weird label. There are some really common records and some really rare ones.

Barrons on cobblestone is rare

George, there's a problem if you look at chess discographies because a lot of the titles don't exis or don't exist on Chess (the one matt mentioned does though).

[George G]

I bet Robb K has a lot of records that are supposedly "two known copies" in the UK.

Of course, and there are other collectors in the US who have some very rare soul 45s. The network of collecting in the US is a lot more scattered than in the UK where everyone seems to be no more than two degrees of freedom apart. Therefore, a lot easier to account for known copies. Just in the past six months I learned of copies of the Springers on Wale and the 2+2 on Velgo that were in US collections, for example. The people who have/had them know what they are.

[George G]

i thought j2 was a division of sue?

I dunno, you probably know more than I do, would explain Baby though. I don't think the Pebble Episode (which I have) mentions Sue. It's a solid blue label.

[George G]

Barrons on cobblestone is rare

George, there's a problem if you look at chess discographies because a lot of the titles don't exis or don't exist on Chess (the one matt mentioned does though).

Yes, I think we talked about this before - for example there are two garage 45s on Lakeside that use Chess numbers, the next number after those was the Wurds 45 I mentioned which is on Chess.

[Guest allnightandy]

think john Anderson found about 8-10 copies in the first instance.....then the odd ones turned up.....in total prob about 20max

Which brings in another record Dave Withers (record dealer @ DJ) in a radio interview was talking about Lou Pride , He said that back in the 1970's John Anderson found 200 copies but to that day Dave said he still had never seen one ! Edited January 8, 2012 by allnightandy

[Robbk]

I dunno, you probably know more than I do, would explain Baby though. I don't think the Pebble Episode (which I have) mentions Sue. It's a solid blue label.

As far as I know, J2 was a division of Sue Records (The later Sue, which had a solid background -Wilbert Harrison, The Superiors, etc. (the 1-15 series). The J in J-2 stands for Juggy (Juggy Murry). J-2 had a solid blue background and a solid black background. I think that this was the 2nd incarnation of Sue Records (maybe after the first one went bust?).

[Robbk]

Of course, and there are other collectors in the US who have some very rare soul 45s. The network of collecting in the US is a lot more scattered than in the UK where everyone seems to be no more than two degrees of freedom apart. Therefore, a lot easier to account for known copies. Just in the past six months I learned of copies of the Springers on Wale and the 2+2 on Velgo that were in US collections, for example. The people who have/had them know what they are.

That Velgo record is in more than one US collection. There are a a lot of US collectors from back in the day that don't buy records anymore and don't frequent the Soul/R&B forums (fora). A lot of us bought a lot of Soul records when they were out and not only hit the record shops, but also distributors and the record companies, themselves. You might be surprised at what you would find (I guess many of you hear about them when they die, and their records are auctioned off). I wonder if some of them die with no heirs, and their old records are just thrown away into a landfil,l because the people that end up having to deal with them don't know what they are?

[boba]

That Velgo record is in more than one US collection. There are a a lot of US collectors from back in the day that don't buy records anymore and don't frequent the Soul/R&B forums (fora). A lot of us bought a lot of Soul records when they were out and not only hit the record shops, but also distributors and the record companies, themselves. You might be surprised at what you would find (I guess many of you hear about them when they die, and their records are auctioned off). I wonder if some of them die with no heirs, and their old records are just thrown away into a landfil,l because the people that end up having to deal with them don't know what they are?

they don't go into a landfill, they get grabbed by one of their few record collector friends for pennies and resold or merged into another collection of someone who is going to die with a lot of records. i have seen this happen several times.

[Dave Pinch]

As far as I know, J2 was a division of Sue Records (The later Sue, which had a solid background -Wilbert Harrison, The Superiors, etc. (the 1-15 series). The J in J-2 stands for Juggy (Juggy Murry). J-2 had a solid blue background and a solid black background. I think that this was the 2nd incarnation of Sue Records (maybe after the first one went bust?).

i think this is correct robb probably around 1968 or 69

[Steve G]

J2 def a Juggy Murray label, and George I believe that one you mentioned (Pebble Episode) is a different label. Thought and I'd need to check this Juggy Murray's was a Brooklyn label.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Steve G

[Steve G]

Here's a question.

Re 70s issues that are 'scarce' one thing that I've noticed and it doesn't matter whether it's Atco, Epic, Columbia, Mercury, RCA, 20th Century, Polydor etc. The rarer issues are normally on styrene whereas the demos are on vinyl. Originally I thought this was because they were using the Columbia pressing plant or released only on the west coast, but as I've got more and more of them I wonder whether it was a deliberate policy to make the demo's more longer lasting / robust?

Edited January 8, 2012 by Steve G

[Garethx]

That's a very pertinent question Steve.

Like any industry the music business evolved over time and the seventies was certainly a time of huge structural change. I think the seventies can be characterised as a time when the huge corporations tried to sew up and screw down the music industry. The idea of giving radio deejays the choice of which side to promote went out the window. In the 50s and 60s record arms of companies were sidelines to other areas of enterprise: RCA with recording and broadcast hardware, Warners with film production and distribution, Columbia with television etc. In many ways The Beatles changed everything and the large corporations saw how recorded music could be a huge entity quite in and by itself.

The corporations became different types of organisation. Where once it was possible for 'record men' to come from the creative side, it now became the case that more and more important positions within record companies came to be filled with people from a finance background. A lot of decisions ceased to be taken on broadly creative grounds and became questions of simple economics, purely driven by the imperative for profit.

In the 1960s a 'large independent' like Motown, Laurie, Jubilee or Scepter could still have hits. By the mid '70s these types of companies could no longer exist in the same way. Even Motown was floundering commercially by the middle of the decade under the strain of distributing its own product in the face of competition from larger entities, despite still having hits.

RCA, Columbia and Capitol came to be run like small despotic governments and a huge number of bewildering decisions were taken with the apparatus of production. Pressing plants were rationalised, distribution became monolithic and less regional, and promotional budgets came to dwarf every other cost. A select few artists became obscenely rich but the character of the industry had changed forever.

Edited January 8, 2012 by garethx

[boba]

related to what garethx said, chicago was one of the most tightly controlled radio markets. The control went down to the actual stores where obscure records weren't even stocked. People would produce and press a record, and then find out they had no "in" into the market (most often no money to pay off the DJs) and nothing would happen. Additionally, the programming became more and more controlled by the program director rather than the choice of the DJ. Nowadays DJs don't do anything except play what they're supposed to play in the correct order off of a hard drive system (e.g. they're just dialing up track numbers).

[pikeys dog]

I think the seventies can be characterised as a time when the huge corporations tried to sew up and screw down the music industry. The idea of giving radio deejays the choice of which side to promote went out the window.

The single sided Mono/Stereo demo became prominent due to the switch from AM to FM radio - hence one side Mono (AM) and the other side Stereo (FM).

Black music tended to be made with Mono/Stereo sides because the Black radio stations were a lot slower at changing over to FM than the Rock orientated White and College Radio Stations.

[Steve G]

...but why were the 'scarcer' issues nearly always styrene?

Edited January 8, 2012 by Steve G

[Garethx]

...but why were the 'scarcer' issues nearly always styrene?

I don't know that one can make this a rule of thumb, although I can concede that Columbia for example continued to press vinyl promo copies of titles which never seemed to see the light of day on anything other than styrene. RCA too. Warners and MCA continued to order vinyl for release copies (alongside styrene) for as long as they sold 45s.

At least half of Columbia's plants had the capability to produce both styrene and vinyl 45s well into the late 1980s and maybe beyond. Certainly one thing that changed was the number of plants. Columbia de-commissioned or sold a great many of their record manufacturing facilities by 1990.

Promos for major labels would generally have been pressed at a far higher unit cost than issue copies and we can make an educated guess that styrene was far cheaper to manufacture than vinyl. I've mentioned on here before the example of Motown production staff stating the company policy of getting promos pressed in very high quality for radio (at RCA typically) and then the copies sold in shops would be costed at a fraction of that (at far cheaper facilities like Monarch and ARP). Bottom line is that the companies cared enough that the media used by radio stations should sound as good as possible but quality for consumption in the home was not as important as cost.

Edited January 8, 2012 by garethx

[Steve G]

Yes that's what I thought. Good examples would include Carl Hall - issues styrene, Bill Coday Epic - issues styene, Beloyd - issues styrene etc.

I suspected it was done because it was cheaper.

[pikeys dog]

i think it's an economy of scale - vinyl stampers are cheaper to produce small runs of 45s, whereas the tooling involved makes it too expensive to do so with styrene.

It's only when you press high numbers of Styrene that they become much cheaper to produce.

[Sebastian]

As far as scarce records on Sue goes. How about The Notations? Very seldom turns up for sale.

[Garethx]

i think it's an economy of scale - vinyl stampers are cheaper to produce small runs of 45s, whereas the tooling involved makes it too expensive to do so with styrene.

It's only when you press high numbers of Styrene that they become much cheaper to produce.

I think that makes sense, but also bear in mind that some manufacturers were just cheaper regardless of which process they used. Two I quoted above worked almost exclusively in one method: Monarch almost exclusively in styrene and ARP exclusively in vinyl. Both could produce a product to a notoriously low price.

This is all probably a tangent to the main discussion but probably goes some way to answering one of the questions as to why some records seem to be far less common than others.

As another aside I may be one of the only people who actually doesn't mind styrene records. They very rarely warp like vinyl and largely avoid my pet record-collecting hate: off-centre pressings. Fidelity on Columbia-pressed styrene could be brilliant (same for Bestway too). The really shit styrene seems to be that produced by Mercury-Philips: almost always shocking for issue copies throughout the 60s and 70s. Their styrene demos, conversely, are often fine. I wonder if a higher grade compound went into the moulds for these?

[Steve G]

I agree Gareth with Mercury Philips, shocking stuff, five plays and you are lucky if they don't have needle burn And that's before any northern DJ has back cued them

I think my aversion to styrene is they are more brittle and thus easier to break. Plus often the sound doesn't sound as 'rich'.

Sebastian, Notations oN Sue does turn up, but if we're including Willie Hutch and Sam Williams then it's probably fair to include this.

I've also added T99 on Hi which I put on Mr H's "Tips for 2012" (the B side), which was probably in soul packs once upon a time, but doesn't seem to show up too much these days.....so would be 'scarce'.

[boba]

I do have some badly warped styrene, but I agree it's rarer than vinyl. I also know that unplayed styrene can sound great.

The more specific problem I have with the distortion is that it's a specific type of distortion that sounds much worse than, say, a trashed vinyl record. The high end distortion just sounds so bad. You can tune out constant white noise or even crackle but every time the styrene distortion hits it's painful.

The other thing that's bad about distorted styrene is that there's often no visual evidence of it. A good looking vinyl record will generally play well (at least after cleaning it, obviously with some rare exceptions). A perfectly looking styrene record can be burnt and distorted and there's just no way to tell until after you get it and play it and hear the painful distortion.

I agree about styrene being easier to crack. But one thing that really pisses me off are the stress lines that I guess are not cracks on styrene records. Someone here once said that they are a product of the cooling process or something. I hate cracks and those stress lines are like something in the middle between cracked and uncracked. It's some weird record collector OCD thing, but I hate those. I even used to send records back when they had those but I gave up because they're so common.

[Weingarden]

The other thing that's bad about distorted styrene is that there's often no visual evidence of it. A good looking vinyl record will generally play well (at least after cleaning it, obviously with some rare exceptions). A perfectly looking styrene record can be burnt and distorted and there's just no way to tell until after you get it and play it and hear the painful distortion.

Of course, we all know that the opposite is true, too: A completely trashed-looking styrene record will often play nearly perfectly, while a brand-new vinyl record will have crackle and hiss. I find that Stax vinyl records, to cite but one example, often have this problem.

Also: I've heard cue-burned, distorted styrene records play just fine after the stereo needle was swapped out for a mono one, which rides the grooves in a different place.

[boba]

Of course, we all know that the opposite is true, too: A completely trashed-looking styrene record will often play nearly perfectly, while a brand-new vinyl record will have crackle and hiss. I find that Stax vinyl records, to cite but one example, often have this problem.

this is true, but lots of times you have to buy records on sight, not after playing them

[Guest allnightandy]

this is true, but lots of times you have to buy records on sight, not after playing them

now i have always found the opposite to be the case some records that look mint on styrene can hiss and crackle where as vinyl seems better

there are of course different qualities of styrene if you take harold melvin on Landa i don't think i have ever heard one what didn't hiss regardless of condition same with most MGM records Dottie Cambridge, April Stevens, Spider Turner etc all seem to be on inferior styrene compaired to Okeh quality

just an observation !

[Garethx]

Another long-standing deep soul rarity is Eugene Evans "Too Much Pain" on Hollywood, a label where not much else seems to fall into the rare or scarce category.

I wonder what the consensus is on its rarity? One mint copy went through ebay last summer which I somehow missed. it was listed for the other side, which is also great and a reminder to use both titles in a saved search. That's one copy I've seen for open sale in practically twenty years of looking and begging for a copy.

I would be interested to know who amongst us owns this 45.

[Weingarden]

I amongst us own this 45! It has to be in my top 5 deep soul records. Spine-tingling. I think No. 1 is the aforementioned Curtis King. Who amongst us owns THAT?

Edited January 8, 2012 by weingarden