Lost 45's -- 1974

[Roburt]

A war in the Middle East in 1973 led the OPEC countries (mainly Arab) to restrict oil production to punish western nations for supporting Israel. This led to a worldwide shortage of petroleum sourced items, as well as resulting in a massive price hike in petrol (gas) prices.

By early 1974, many US pressing plants were struggling to source new supplies of vinyl, so they cut back on their production. Non regular customers were dropped, pressing volumes were reduced for many existing / ongoing customers and recycled vinyl was used (in whole or part) when pressing up new 45's.

I guess we'll never know which acts had proposed releases that never saw the 'light of day' but it is easier to state which 'unsold stock' of 1971 / 72 / 73 soul 45's fell victim of the need to mince up singles just sat on warehouse shelves.

Which decent soul 45's fell victim to this policy, has it been determined in the past ?

Which soul 45's suffered from poor pressing quality due to the use of recycled vinyl ?

Also some 45's must just have been produced in limited run promo copy form. If they didn't then garner any radio plays or get favourable music mag reviews, that would have been the end of that proposed release. I guess many of these have been ID'ed too.

  

Edited 2 hours ago by Roburt

[Mickey Finn]

Years ago I heard an interview with jazz trumpeter Eddie Henderson who said that his run of albums on Capitol came to an end in 1979 due to the second oil crisis affecting vinyl production costs and forcing record companies to cut back on releases.