What have you learnt today. Oriole label UK.

[Tobytyke]

I've found out this morning That Martha Reeves "I'll have to let him go " is rarer than Mike and the modifiers and the Valadiers.

Never knew that.

Edited July 23 by Tobytyke
Spelling

[Tlscapital]

Saw that too. What you've learned today is that this is bollocks. Don't believe the hype ! Although the Martha is musically much betterIMHO.

Last EX copy on eVilbay sold for £164 with at least 3 times more past sales / auctions than Mike and the Modifiers that last sold for about £800...

Edited July 23 by Tlscapital

[Tobytyke]

Next time I looked....it was sold!!

Did someone pay£1200 for it?

[Solidsoul]

Are you talking about Steve Jeffries sales list?

rarenorthernsoul.com

 

[Benji]

There was one on his website @600 quid.

[Mgm 1251]

4 minutes ago, Benji said:

There was one on his website @600 quid.

It was £1200.00 yesterday....

[Tobytyke]

That's the one.

He has some great northern soul records,both American and UK which seem to be mostly excellent to mint condition.They seem to sell for a high price ,but it is a set sale not an auction.

Been going for a long time so must be doing something right, 

[Benji]

4 hours ago, Mgm 1251 said:

It was £1200.00 yesterday....

Sorry, my mistake. Same artist, same label, different release. It was „come and get these memories“ @ 600 quid. 

[Solidsoul]

44 minutes ago, Benji said:

Sorry, my mistake. Same artist, same label, different release. It was „come and get these memories“ @ 600 quid. 

I once found a Martha Reeves "Come And Get These Memories" on Oriole at a car boot sale, along with a mint Stateside white demo with red A, of "Girl Why Do You Wanna Make Me Blue" by the Temptations. That was a good day!

[Davey S]

Should have bought more vinyl from Soul Bowl .

[Mal C]

I don't know about UK prices, but you guys should check this 3/4 part interview with John Schroeder about his music, but also about the Oriole label and Motown.  There are several interviews with EMI execs on this site, and some really good info about how EMI went about representing Motown. The truth is, Motown only wanted EMI, they were highly unlikely to have gone with Oriole any further after those initial releases, but EMI ignored Motown to start with..

anyhow interesting stuff...

https://vinylmemories.wordpress.com/2018/03/19/a-personal-history-of-the-british-record-business-61-john-schroeder-2/

[Roburt]

An extract from the above article ...

Maurice Levy assured me he wanted to put Oriole up against the big boys – we wanted to become a major force. I said ‘if you’re going to do that you’re going to need a lot of finance. You got to have promotion guys, Luxembourg airtime, all sorts of things.’ But he said he wanted to. At the time I believed him. Unfortunately as time went on, the support wasn’t there in the strength it should have been. I don’t think he realised what he’d let himself in for and what was needed to make Oriole a major force. However, I did do a lot in the 2 1/2 years I was there. I had free rein, restricted by the budget so I was always held down a bit. They had their own studios but they were deficient in lots of ways and they didn’t want me to hire any other studios, so we had to put up with the faults and technical difficulties. Then  I set up Oriole as a proper label, got rid of a lot of artists, signed new ones and retained a few old ones, like Maureen Evans and Clinton Ford. I redesigned the label, the yellow and black one. I established an Oriole magazine – it had its own magazine that went to the retailers to tell them about the label. The lengths I went to!

.... ... ... I investigated the Oriole set-up many years ago as I used to often work in the BUCKS village where they had their pressing plant & storage warehouse. This was ASTON CLINTON, south of Aylesbury. The village has now been largely bypassed by a new road & has changed a lot in other ways too (many new houses). Of course, Oriole sold out to CBS in late 1964 having slowed their output Through that summer. CBS eventually closed all the facilities down there & built a new CD plant in north Aylesbury.

I posted up an old thread about much of the work Oriole (& then CBS) did in the village, see here ...   CBS Pressing Plant, Aylesbury ...

... from that thread title it isn't obvious that much of the info is actually about ORIOLE not CBS.

I'll just pick out a couple of bits of real interest (IMO) ... the pressing plant was set up in an old garage building (see pic on thread) ... they bought a 'Plant Managers house' which was next to the old garage. Their record warehouse was just an old shed at the other end of the village. The staff at the pressing plant were mainly young local women. Each Friday they were told they could take home any record they wanted (just one, but most weren't interested, so took one for a workmate who wanted more). So, ex employees would have ended up with a copy of every Oriole / Motown 45 if that was their musical taste . ALSO, when the plant managers house was sold off by CBS, loads of old Oriole stock was found up in the loft. It's believed the new owners weren't interested in records & just sold off everything cheaply or sent it to the dump.

Both the site of their old pressing plant & their old warehouse are now housing estates, again it's thought that when CBS took over the warehouse building, they just got rid of all the Oriole back catalogue really cheaply.  

Oriole's recording studio was back in London, so I didn't look into that. 

Edited July 26 by Roburt

[Roburt]

As well as their London studio facility, they had a 2nd pressing plant in Colnbrook, near Slough. I also never researched this 2nd pressing plant. I would guess though that the set up there was run in a very similar way to the one in Aston Clinton. 

Aston Clinton today, where Oriole pressing plant was ... 

Edited July 26 by Roburt

[Roburt]

After quitting Oriole, John Schroeder went to Pye Records, where he was involved in lots of their UK soul output. He really made his money in the 70's though when he was the guy behind the stuff made by Cymande. 

[Tobytyke]

1 hour ago, Roburt said:

After quitting Oriole, John Schroeder went to Pye Records, where he was involved in lots of their UK soul output. He really made his money in the 70's though when he was the guy behind the stuff made by Cymande. 

Hi Roburt that's interesting.

How would John Schroeder make money from his work with Cymande?

Did they have hit records in different countries?

I didn't think they sold many records in England. 

[Tlscapital]

The single 'the Message' was an international good seller. 

6 minutes ago, Tobytyke said:

Hi Roburt that's interesting.

How would John Schroeder make money from his work with Cymande?

Did they have hit records in different countries?

I didn't think they sold many records in England. 

Their single 'the Message' was an international good seller. 

[Kenb]

some of my Oriole stuff

[Kenb]

[Roburt]

Kenb, I bet there was loads of that stuff up in the loft of the Oriole managers house. But as the buyers weren't record folk, it will all have been sent to the dump. I'd have been happy to have had half a dozen of the old Oriole records cardboard boxes that they'd used to form the loft floor. 

[Roburt]

4 hours ago, Tlscapital said:

The single 'the Message' was an international good seller. 

Their single 'the Message' was an international good seller. 

As said here ... "The Message" was a big pop hit & R&B chart hit in the US ... the group played live gigs across the US for a couple of years on the strength of it.

Since then, Schroeder has made even more money from the song being sampled numerous times.

[Roburt]

More about CBS taking over Oriole ... from a US music mag ...