Oldies Unlimited, Telford -- TK haul.

[Roburt]

Back in the late 70's & thru the 80's, much of the TK catalogue was largely ignored by many UK soul fans (too disco-y).

But if you check TK label 45's now you find that many are now going for really good prices -- to NS, Modern Soul, funk, boogie & disco fans.

Back then, the best place to buy packs of soul 45's was always Soul Bowl, but other places were also worth a look. 

Oldies Unlimited of Telford used to buy in bulk from UK, US & European record companies, distributors, warehouses. Many times, they'd buy up 1000's of UK singles and end up packaging many of them up & trading them for similar sized packages with their US & European counterparts. I guess this is how they ended up with literally thousand upon thousands of old TK 70's 45s.

However they came by them, their staff would package them up & sell them off in soul packs -- 100 for £10 (plus in smaller pack numbers too). An Oldies pack was always worth a punt, though at the time a lot of the TK singles weren't too well received. But times changed and many of them are now highly collectable.

I used to buy their packs (a couple of times a year at least), but as time passed you'd end up getting many of the same TK 45's as you'd received in earlier packs. I got up the courage to ring the owner up a couple of times to ask if his current 'soul packs' were now formed with newer bought 45's, rather than the same old stuff. He must have got irritated with me as one time he said .. LOOK, the girls just pick up stuff off the table in front of them till they've got 100 and then ram em into a pack to send out. If you want, come down here & I'll lock you in the chapel where all the old stock is dumped. So off I went (with a mate in tow) and we spent all day locked in, sorting thru 1000's of 45's and picking out the stuff we liked or that looked promising. He then let us out, looked at what we'd picked out & charged us a reasonable sum.

I recall opening multiple boxes of 25 singles, all the same record and throwing them back or pulling a couple out to add to my pile. Lots proved to be real disappointments (we found loads of boxes of Mary Loves "Turn Me, Turn Me, Turn Me" and took a couple each). But lots proved to be decent buys and I just wish I'd asked to repeat the experience in one of his other old buildings.   

Is their a list anywhere (without going right thru one of the soul single valuation guides) of current TK label singles that are now collectable ?  -- not just the obvious stuff but 45's from the likes of Raw Soul Express, Jimmy Bo Horne, Facts of Life, Controllers, Greg Diamond, David Hudson, Timmy Thomas, Joe Thomas, Clarence Reid, J P Robinson, etc.

 

Edited March 12, 2023 by Roburt

[Roburt]

An old ITV News piece on Oldies, showing the ladies making up their 45 packs ... 

piece says they had stock in 1981 of 2.5 million records in 4 separate warehouses ... 

I think his main office area was in an old working men's club he'd taken over.

ATV Today: 30.11.1981: Oldies Unlimited | MACE Archive

www.macearchive.org/films/atv-today-30111981-oldies-unlimited

Edited March 12, 2023 by Roburt

[Steviehay]

i collected this label due to that many RITZ sounds being on them i spent a whole day in tony just's back record store sifting them all out demo,label differentials etc as you stated a lot now collectable .jimmy bo, charles johnson just to name a couple incidentlly my first purchase on this label was peter browns do yo wanna on a 12 from none other than Rod Shard at the record bar in wigan it was his missus record !!

 

Just remembered global in Manchester used to have loads too

Edited March 13, 2023 by Steviehay

[Rick Cooper]

Oldies Unlimited seemed to be very active around the 1970s as a seller of pop oldies but never tried to compete in the rare soul market. Selecta Disc had the mass market and Soul Bowl for rarities. I think the owner was Anthony Lewis and definitely not the guy in the above photo. I think he would have been in his thirties and looked like an accountant or Geography teacher. He was straight to the point and blunt but in a nice way. He was probably fed up with us lot spending all day messing up his stock and then only buying less than 100 records. 

I got to go sometime around 74 or 75 with Terry Thomas from Kidderminster. He was selling records at The Mecca and his shop so could buy in quantity. We were shown a small back room with loads of boxes which he said we could take whatever we wanted for a fixed price. There weren't any TK titles so they must have come later but a lot of smallish indie labels from Philly and NY such as Today/Perception and Jay Walking. There was quantity of Andre Maurice- You're The Cream Of The Crop, which was a new spin for Ian Levine. We also found some Canadian records mixed up with the US stock, three Precisions titles , Eddie Parker- Love You Baby and Timmy Willis on Stone in small quantities. The best finds were one copy of Ben Aiken -Satisfied on Warners and Billy Butler- I'll Bet You . 

I don't know where he got his stock from, maybe Soul Bowls excess or containers from The House of Sounds in Philly after John Anderson had taken his pick. Oldies Unlimited wasn't a major supplier of rarities but did sell some great stuff that is now fetching good prices.

[Roburt]

Oldies Unlimited had many contacts in the record biz but I don't believe Soul Bowl was ever one of them.

As I stated earlier, they bought up 100,000's of deleted UK 45's, bundled many of the 'excess copy' items up in batches & swopped them with US and European counterparts.

You could always get loads of great Italian / Spanish pressed soul 45's from them and these had the added advantage of coming in picture sleeves.

They were also the main (only in some cases) source for copies of UK based indie label soul. I believe I'm correct in saying that just about every copy of Donnie Elberts "Are You Ready, Willing & Able" on UK Echo that's now doing the rounds came from Oldies.

[Mickey Finn]

On 12/03/2023 at 12:11, Roburt said:

Back in the late 70's & thru the 80's, much of the TK catalogue was largely ignored by many UK soul fans (too disco-y).

But if you check TK label 45's now you find that many are now going for really good prices -- to NS, Modern Soul, funk, boogie & disco fans.

Some of the earlier TK soul 45s appear on this very nice Japan-only cd comp that came out in 2020:

https://www.discogs.com/release/16603491-Various-We-Dig-Good-Old-Songs

 

[Roburt]

Back in the day (70's / 80's) you could get many mint TK label 45's in TK sleeves from OLDIES for 10p each

NOW ... guys are asking £2.50 just for an empty TK 45 sleeve ...

 TK Records Original Company Sleeve 45rpm 7inch Record 7" disc vinyl | eBay

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325470768794?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=7101533165274578&mkcid=2&itemid=325470768794&targetid=4584826055637456&device=c&mktype=&googleloc=&poi=&campaignid=412354546&mkgroupid=1299623041023876&rlsatarget=pla-4584826055637456&abcId=9300541&merchantid=87779&msclkid=d16d478bdf9d133f7ae0239b84902f11

 

Topping even that ... you can now buy packs of reproduction TK 45 sleeves .... go figure.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Roburt

[Roburt]

2 hours ago, Mickey Finn said:

Some of the earlier TK soul 45s appear on this very nice Japan-only cd comp that came out in 2020:

https://www.discogs.com/release/16603491-Various-We-Dig-Good-Old-Songs

 

Some of the tracks on that date from the later half of the 70's (76 & 78) ...

so those are the 45's that OLDIES had in abundance. The label was beginning to struggle from around 1978 and went bust in 1981. I think it was during that period that OLDIES started buying up loads of their old stock. 

[Seano]

That had me salivating! I loved buying soul packs, but never got from from Oldies Unlimited. Sounds like I missed out....

[Sjclement]

my Jerry Washington Don't Waste my Time came out of a soul pack could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw it priced at £700 (it had long since gone in trades for jazz albums) 

[Modernsoulsucks]

19 hours ago, Rick Cooper said:

Oldies Unlimited seemed to be very active around the 1970s as a seller of pop oldies but never tried to compete in the rare soul market. Selecta Disc had the mass market and Soul Bowl for rarities. I think the owner was Anthony Lewis and definitely not the guy in the above photo. I think he would have been in his thirties and looked like an accountant or Geography teacher. He was straight to the point and blunt but in a nice way. He was probably fed up with us lot spending all day messing up his stock and then only buying less than 100 records. 

I got to go sometime around 74 or 75 with Terry Thomas from Kidderminster. He was selling records at The Mecca and his shop so could buy in quantity. We were shown a small back room with loads of boxes which he said we could take whatever we wanted for a fixed price. There weren't any TK titles so they must have come later but a lot of smallish indie labels from Philly and NY such as Today/Perception and Jay Walking. There was quantity of Andre Maurice- You're The Cream Of The Crop, which was a new spin for Ian Levine. We also found some Canadian records mixed up with the US stock, three Precisions titles , Eddie Parker- Love You Baby and Timmy Willis on Stone in small quantities. The best finds were one copy of Ben Aiken -Satisfied on Warners and Billy Butler- I'll Bet You . 

I don't know where he got his stock from, maybe Soul Bowls excess or containers from The House of Sounds in Philly after John Anderson had taken his pick. Oldies Unlimited wasn't a major supplier of rarities but did sell some great stuff that is now fetching good prices.

I got an Andre Maurice off you.

Swapped it at Wigan with Richard for Stanley Mitchell and Sam Ward !

I think he's forgiven me.

[purist]

I met a lad in the later 80's/early 90's who showed us 3 Shrine 45's in Max's shop, can't remember which, but definitely all three were big guns. He told us he was only a stay home collector and that he'd bought them from Oldies in Telford many years before (Supposedly the guy who owned it told him that his Dad was based in Washington DC and occasionally arranged to get him batches of 45's sent over from a record outlet over there)
This lad reckoned he'd paid a pound each and had bought them as unknown to him soul 45's that he just liked the sound of and had just heard that they were fetching money and he was thinking of selling them. Max and I would have bought them off him but he couldn't decide on a price. He said he'd come back the following week and tell us how much but we never saw him again. I think one of them was Stop Overlooking Me, which I was very keen on at that time. Always made me wonder what other gems might have emerged from Telford ?

[Paul R]

I used to get his lists in the early 70s when he was A J Lewis. I don't remember much rare stuff at the time, but some mid range that I then sold on at a small profit at the Casino.

 

Paul

Edited March 14, 2023 by Paul R