Garethx

I don't think the Soussan theory is correct in this case.

The Steinways other title on Oliver has "The Steinways" and the title set in Franklin Gothic on the west coast demo:

The real west coast demo has different typesetting of artist and title.

There are legitimate white label copies of this 45 without the green stripes, but they are on styrene and pressed at the Monarch factory. Yours looks like some kind of carver with a botched homemade label where someone has tried to emulate the typesetting really badly and also to artificially age the label by staining it.

That's a 100% flat-out bootleg I'm afraid.

Frank Turner, "All For My Kids"

The Eddie Finley as posted by Dylan is the perfect example of this sound. A really special record.

Thanks for clearing this up Pete.

The original post was factually incorrect for some reason. It's 4914, same as the ARP pressing.

I also agree that how this record sounds is as important as the fact that it's from a different plant to the so-far-known copies. ARP pressings were notorious as the cheapest, noisiest vinyl records you could get from a major facility. I'd imagine a Southern Plastics copy would sound appreciably better.

Southern Plastics did have their own label-copy/artwork department. Their typesetting on Motown releases is pretty distinctive and highly consistent if you know what to look for. Thinking about the Frank Wilson disc I went to my shelves to pick out a handful of Motown releases from 1965-1966 to look at the markings on the deadwax and and copy on the labels. My copy of Marvin Gaye's "Little Darling" is an odd one in that it was lacquered at RCA Chicago (like every single other Motown release from 1965-66), plated at Nashville, but pressed at RCA Hollywood (upper case "H" clearly in the deadwax) and with labels from Southern Plastics. The Nashville Matrix code for a release like this was "10", as opposed to the "5" (meaning to be pressed at Southern Plastics itself) on the Frank Wilson disc. Other RCA Hollywood Motown pressings I have from the same timeframe have RCA-originated labels. The typefaces are all consistent with general RCA typesetting rules, the RCA matrix codes are on the labels as well as the Motown Duplicate Master codes and crucially the label stock is high-gloss paper. Southern Plastics pressings never have these high gloss labels and generally don't have the RCA matrices on the labels themselves.

45cat.com now has the images from this listing as well as Tim Brown's copy plus the former Kenny Burrell copy autographed by Frank Wilson. It now looks obvious to me that Tim's copy says in red handwriting "American Pressing" while this one has "S/P" (Southern Plastics) in the same handwriting in the same red ink. Both copies signed on the same day, 23 November 1965.

That relates to their custom clients Chalky: small labels essentially.

The DM code DM ZQL 163317 tells us it was produced by Davis & Gordon and the engineering supervised by Lawrence Horn. Perhaps it is his handwriting on the copies of this disc we have seen so far. He died in prison earlier this year while serving a life sentence for ordering a triple murder, so I guess we'll never know.

All the Motown mastering in 1965 was done by RCA's mastering studio in Chicago (pre 1965 they used Bell Sound as well). The lacquers would be sent back to Motown and then passed on to the various pressing plants. The fact that this has the Nashville Matrix and a "5" suggests pretty conclusively it was pressed at Southern Plastics (5 was the SP client code at Nashville and is on other companies' 45s pressed there, so it wasn't Motown's exclusive code). Matrix of Nashville was by no means the only metal plating factory which Motown used. Monarch for example did their own metalwork as the styrene injection process presumably required different mothers to those needed for vinyl pressing. Chris King confirmed on facebook that the two existing known vinyl demos were both done at ARP and are stamped as such. ARP may have used a different plating company so the absence of a Nashville Matrix stamp on those might not have been unusual. Equally they might have also been plated at Matrix of Nashville too, so it wouldn't be unusual for both an ARP stamp and Nashville Matrix stamp. Motown records pressed by RCA factories generally have the RCA master lacquer code on the label as well as the Motown DM (Duplicate Master) code and the catalogue number. Obviously this disc has no label artwork but the deadwax suggests it was pressed at Southern Plastics.

So apparently the two known, labelled copies were pressed at ARP. This one at Southern Plastics. Might not be outside the bounds of possibility there are styrene test pressings done at Monarch as well. Get digging everyone.

Just doing some reading about the mastering process used by Motown at the time. This from former Motown engineer Bob Ohlsson via the Steve Hoffman music forum: "I was one of the four mastering engineers at Motown in Detroit between 1965 and 1972. Everything I saw during that period, besides occasional production masters we cut ourselves, were production masters cut by Randy Kling at RCA in Chicago to match the level and eq. of the acetates we sent him. RCA even had our equalizers and filters. We QCd test pressings from RCA and the 3 indi plants." On the practice of using RCA for pressing DJ copies but other, cheaper factories for stock copies: "Even so, the vast majority of Motown's records were not pressed by RCA. I know Berry Gordy had a financial interest in American Record Pressing and Southern Plastics and he may well have had one in Monarch too."

Good info mshoals. Which makes this a Motown recording mastered at RCA and intended to be pressed at Southern Plastics in Nashville. It would be good to know what's in the deadwax of the two labelled copies which are known to exist.

A lot of the supposition on this topic shows an incomplete or fuzzy understanding of how the manufacturing process at Motown worked. By 1965 Motown manufacturing was a labyrinthine process involving many outside facilities for mastering and pressing. RCA, ARP, Southern Plastics, Monarch all pressed tons of records for Motown who did not have their own manufacturing facilities. The few major factories I don't think they used were Bestway, the MGM plants, Shelly or Chess's Midwest plant (although lots of Motown discs were pressed there in the companies formative days). As Chalky says the Nashville stamp was the trademark of the company which made metal parts: their stamp would have been on the disc no matter where it was actually pressed as those parts would have been sent to any of the facilities which were involved in pressing it. The RCA mastering codes are interesting. Again they would be on the disc no matter where it was pressed, as they show that the client's tape (Motown) was received by RCA (I'm assuming the Holllywood mastering studio as this was recorded in a Californian studio) along with a reference acetate to produce the lacquer. It is this lacquer which was used to produce the metal parts. The Nashville matrix was on the blank mother plates no matter where this was done. [As an aside other metalwork companies such as Longwear (used by Atlantic for instance) would have their own LW symbol on their blank metal parts. Longwear had a client code which they would scratch on the blanks according to which client had ordered the parts. The Atlantic one was W (presumably for Wexler). I don't know if Nashville (as in this case) also had such client codes.] If it was pressed at an RCA factory I would expect it to have the upper case I (Indianapolis), H (Hollywood), or R (Rockaway) somewhere in the deadwax. If it was pressed at ARP it should have the ARP stamp. If it was pressed at Southern Plastics there might be a S. The fact that it's on vinyl rules out Monarch and Columbia. This disc looks pretty legit to me.

Glad this got resolved Ray and glad my hunch about it being completely legit has been confirmed. Nice record to have!

I must say that the first scan above looks very much like a legitimate ABC press from their factory on Long Island NY, which was called True Sound. It may be the case that the only first pressing of 1968 was done on styrene at Monarch with delta number 73393 but it's unusual for a nationwide operation like ABC to produce only one regional press of a release. When I first saw the scan my initial impression, like Swifty's, was that the black ink in the top portion was to cover up ABC's telltale deletion mark, a dab of gold paint. Deadwax markings will tell a lot of the story, but I would say that whatever this is it is not a bootleg. A legitimate pressing from a reorder from 1971 sounds plausible. The fact that it's on vinyl and not styrene alone makes it a pretty nice way to own Darkest Days.

The west coast one must be pretty scarce. Never seen one in the flesh.

Thanks! As I thought the My Dear Beloved variant is an Indianapolis press.

These look like they were all pressed at RCA factories. I'm guessing they are as follows: First image: RCA Hollywood. The use of Franklin Gothic for artist and title is consistent with some of the Fantasy/Galaxy label releases which RCA pressed there at the time. Second lot of scans: RCA Rockaway. Last line: RCA Indianapolis. If anyone can confirm the deadwax label codes (H for Hollywood, I for Indianapolis and R for Rockaway) that would help, but these look far more like RCA jobs than anything else.

This topic deals with this group of labels.