Rick Cooper

When I was involved in issuing singles in the mid 1970s the pressing plant would always send at least three white label test copies of a record before going ahead with the pressing run. I don't think they would do more than five white label test copies as they didn't charge for doing them.Of the ones I've still got some I wrote the numbers on but most I didn't bother. It looks like Dave preferred to always put the details on his test copies. I suppose the white label ones are rare but the black and white demos just look so good that they must be more desirable and valuable. Rick

Neil Balbier would usually avoid dealing with most of his customers, especially us youngsters , who he referred to as "kids". A lowly employee would be sent out to deal with them and the hapless customer was told not to cross a white line across the floor. But you made the biggest mistake by ordering large quantities, which makes any dealer panic as they think the price must be too low. Usually the titles would be "out of stock" until the next list , by which time the price had shot up. Your release of the Four Perfections probably riled him as some years before the Cream release of Johnny Jones -Purple Haze had to be pulled as Decca claimed ownership even though William Bell had licensed it to Global. Agree about Anthony Lewis, thoroughly decent chap!! but massage parlours? surely not. Rick

Hi Simon Great clip, watched it loads of time. Some really cool characters, especially the wide awake girls. I think it's a BBC clip, so would be interesting to know what the rest of the program was about. Rick

Could it be the clip of the Plebeians club in Halifax on You Tube with Can't Satisfy playing. I usually find it by a search for Impressions Cant Satisfy and click on the girl with wide eyes. Rick

Dave Well at least I predicted prices would go up, just out by a factor of about x100. Rick

Found one of my old lists from either 1977 or 78 Prices look cheap but in those days records in the US were around 10 to 25 cents , occasionally up to 1 dollar, and the pound was worth about 2 dollars 40 . Also no one was earning a lot so prices stayed low. Anyone who follows current prices say which title is now worth the most , and any guess as to what the lot might fetch? I did some auction lists around the same time, has anyone kept any of these as I'd like to see them again. Rick

Flaming Arrow 37, Gloria Walker- Walking With My New Love, was a big record in the Suriname clubs in the Netherlands and was booted. There is a sound clip of this and info of some other Flaming Arrow artists on the Sir Shambling site. www.sirshambling.com I thought the label was southern USA but could be wrong. Rick

I remember the tape for Tony Galla was there but not Sammy Sevens. I had a copy of Tony Galla but I don't think it was played in the 70s, more of a Stafford play . To sell enough records in the 70s to make it worthwhile a record had to played everywhere and really popular, anything less didn't sell much. Over the years other Swan titles may have sold as oldies like Our Love Will Grow or new discoveries but I had long left Global by then. Going back to Heartbroken Memories , I had it listed on a demo at £1.50 when I sold off a load of stuff in 1978. (insert sad looking yellow face here). Rick

Theirs a quite interesting story about the instrumental of Heartbroken Memories, but apologies to avid Soul Source readers if they've heard this before. Some of the tapes of the Swan label were bought at the closing auction by Ed Balbier who moved to Manchester in 1971 and set up Global Records. The tapes were stored in Philadelphia for many years but were sent over in 1974 by which time I was working at Global. Two tracks were done as Swan look a likes before the Cream label was set up. Most of the tapes were quarter inch mono mixes but some were the half inch four track studio tape. These could be re-mixed and instrumental versions made. However the main problem was that no studios had a machine that could play the 4 track tapes, I think studios were up to 32 track recording by then so asking for a 4 track player was met with much derision. Eventually I found a semi retired sound engineer (ex BBC I think) who had a 4 track player. So I took some of the tape boxes round to his studio in the front room of a semi in a quiet street in Altrincham. The machines looked ancient but were probably state of the art once. One of the tapes was the Sheila Ferguson session. This had the studio chat and count in from the producer, Richie Barrett I think. The vocals were on one track so I asked for a mix of the backing tracks. The studio owner was a bit surprised as to why I wanted this doing but of course instrumentals were all the rage at the time. The tracks done were Heartbroken Memories, Are You Satisfied and Eddie Carlton- It Will Be Done.He had a cutting lathe so I had an acetate done of each track.The instrumentals weren't too bad but not up with something like Bari Track so they would be OK for B sides. Are You Satisfied was never used so it only exists as an acetate and the mono mixed tape. I've got the acetates of Heartbroken Memories and It Will Be Done but not Are You Satisfied. This probably went to Rollercoaster when they got Global's stock but as it wasn't labeled it may have got lost. It's no great loss but would be a nice addition for those who like quirky one-offs. Rick

Valances sleeve is from Leeds but I never went to the shop, anyone else know any thing about it. Shop sleeves seemed to be more common in the 50s as out of about 30 78s I've got 9 had a shop sleeve. The one in the photo is from Nottingham. Sydney Scarborough of Hull used to buy a lot of soul singles from Global Records in the mid and late 70s. Rick

A pair of blackbirds have built a nest in a bush just outside our kitchen window so I have tried to photo some of their comings and goings.The male always likes to land at the top of a small tree, look around and then land on the back of a chair before flying into the bush. The female prefers to wait on the shed roof before flying in. They are both very busy , coming back with another poor worm every 7 or 8 minutes. The nest and chicks are impossible to see and the local cats can't get to them. Whilst waiting to photo the blackbirds two sparrows landed on the ground by the bush. One of them was hopping about flicking its tail up and the other was following it and pecking at its behind. What's that all about? When it starts to get dark one or two bats fly up and down the back of the house, probably feeding on insects. I tried to photo this but all I got was a black screen. Rick

The Sam and Dave Norway show I've seen on a DVD before and is nothing like the shows they did in the UK . At a very tender age, my older brother and his mates took me to see Sam and Dave at the Manchester Odeon. It was a package tour with other Stax and Atlantic artists, possibly Joe Tex and Eddie Floyd but Sam and Dave blew the roof off. As soon as they came on the audience went wild , unlike the Norwegians who seemed very restrained or put off by the military looking security. Sam and Dave gave a brilliant performance with two or three encores , and really seemed to be enjoying themselves, no sign of any bad feelings between them. The band added to the show with great playing and moves, truly memorable and very impressionable to a young lad of thirteen. The Otis concert footage was awesome and shows what a tragedy his early death was. Next Friday (June 7th) 9 pm BBC 4 have a Bobby Womack documentary followed by a 1971 Ike and Tina Turner and Wilson Pickett concert. Rick

Anyone know why Eddie Parker - Love You Baby- was the only release on Ashford?The label did overseas deals, had a special designed logo and pressed demos so probably not a vanity project. Has Ms Chandler said anything about the label? Any explanation of the other one-off labels? Rick

Eddie Parker- Love You Baby - Ashford 1

Junior McCants- Try Me For Your New Love, and Darrell Banks- Open The Door To Your Heart on UK London are usually confirmed as no known issue. Assume this is still the case. Both have a good explanation for this,so must be a safe bet for non existing issue copies. Never seen Holly St James on issue, unfortunately seen demos and even worse, heard it. Rick

Not true, Paul Mooney (reply 46) is spot on. Imported records were supposed to have an MCPS sticker on them to show copyright was paid. At Global Records we used to put a couple of sheets of the stickers in the box when a new customer ordered some US records, but then "forgot" with their next order. Also any US Columbia record sold in the UK was supposed to have any mention of "Columbia" obliterated as EMI owned the Columbia name in the UK. Again this was done for a suspicious looking new customer but very rarely done unless EMI lawyers were getting twitchy. The holes in singles were done on a pillar drill with the singles in a twenty five count box ,the melted vinyl was just due to the heat caused by the drill bit. I've never heard of the heated needle theory, sounds a bit dangerous and impractical. Cut corners or a saw kerf on LP sleeves were done on woodwork type machines, again box and all. Little indie labels that didn't take returns or sell off returned stock didn't drill their singles. Rick

Roger The Cliff Nobles " Horse" demo looks as though it's one sided, so was there a demo of "Love is All Right" before this as I thought the Horse was the B side originally. The story was that radio DJs flipped "Love is All Right" for "The Horse" which would be tricky for a J/G single sided demo Rick

Ian What condition are they in? I never found any mint demos of big hits. The ones I've seen were all in a really bad state. I went to a couple of US radio stations in the 70s and the DJs would throw the unsleeved singles around without a care. Any chance of scans of some of yours Rick

Outside of the northern soul titles some of the rarest demos of cheap records could be of million sellers. Just plucking three at random has anyone got any of these on demo; Wilson Picket "In the Midnight Hour", Otis Redding "Dock of the Bay", Johnnie Taylor "Whose Making Love". If there are any around I bet there trashed. They may not be expensive but probably hard to find in nice condition. Rick

Last weekend there was an article about collectible stamps in a "money" section of a newspaper. The main point was how stamps in the Stanley Gibbons price guide rarely sell for the book price. An example was one booked at £175 sold for £6. One collector prices his stamps at between a third and a tenth of the book price. Someone at Stanley Gibbons said prices were for the best condition examples. Prices for the rarest stamps in mint condition still fetch huge sums, now what does that remind me of? Rick

Hi Kegsy As I was responsible for the Carstairs re-press I'd like to say it was down to painstaking negotiations, trans-Atlantic phone calls and a perfectly timed sales campaign, but it was done by writing Red Coach RC 802 x 1000 on an order and sending it off to the US. simples. This was when I worked at Global in Manchester. For those who don't know about Global (not you ,Kegsy) it was an importer in Manchester owned by Ed Balbier from Philly who at the end of the 60s had a warehouse full of singles worth nothing in the US but big bucks over here. He would have liked to have sold only C+W albums but couldn't resist soul singles . This was not done too well ,Selecta Disc did pressings better, Soul Bowl had the best originals and Record Corner quicker at new releases. However the Carstairs was one small success. I would order the singles stock from the US companies, mainly oldies from the major labels double sided hit re-issues series. These had a few northern sides , such as Linda Jones "My Heart...." James Carr, O'Jays and Motown oldies but were not done for the UK. When Ian Levine started playing 70s stuff I would try to order some titles from one of Global's US suppliers. This was Price Rite Record Corp at Island Park N.Y. who got us the smaller label stock. One day I thought I'd order RC 802 to see what would happen. Six weeks or so later 1000 copies turned up. I don't know how Price Rite did it, I suppose they just asked Red Coach . As Global didn't have an exclusive deal on the record Record Corner and Selecta could also get it. Price Rite also got the Oscar Perry Perri-Tone tracks ,Danny Reed, Lost Family, the two Nasco tracks and Tradewinds singles for us but these weren't pressed up just for the UK they were just the regular stocks. As other people have said the CSP, Okeh. RCA and other records were done for the UK following requests from over here. US labels would do anything if there was a profit in it . However UK labels wanted to keep tight control of everything and the execs were scared of letting anyone show them how out of touch they were by giving Selecta Disc northern titles. I think the special US re-presses were sold as exclusive to whoever ordered them but it would have been pointless to try to get them after Selecta or whoever had flooded the market. The exception to this was Jamie/Guyden who sold to everyone. Jamie did a re-press for Global of two Barbara Lynn records that we sold to a shop in Amsterdam. I tried to get Atlantic to press up Pointer Sisters "Send Him Back" but the rights had gone to Blue Thumb, which is unusual as Atlantic rarely let anything out of there grasp. I don't think there's any doubt the re-presses were legal. The artists may not have got anything but probably there would not have been any monies due as the advance and recording costs were still payable Rick

Walt Khan ,the records producer, did the instrumental mix of "I'm Not Strong Enough" and when I went to collect the tape at his studio there was a demo of Life framed on the wall. I told him that the record was known about in the UK. He didn't really seem too bothered about this and I didn't ask him much else. It's strange that even the records producer didn't have a stock copy in late 1975. Rick

Dave Thanks for your help again, they are all the ones I have on the old tape. The Sir Shambling site is a great help once I know the artists name. Rick

Thanks for your help with these two. The James Barnett track sounds like a duo but must have been Rick Hall messing about in the studio. Track 8 is Bobby Harris (there's an MP3 on the Sir shambling site).

From an old cassette of some 60s US singles I need some help to identify the artists and labels for these: 6. "Have a Heart" Male vocal and backing singers Lyric sample: Hello baby whats on your mind/ What's the use of treating you nice and kind/ Cause when a man loves a woman like I love you 7."The Right to Love You" Male vocal ,guitar and horns Lyric: Baby I don't want to be the one that hurts you/ Baby I don't want to be the one that causes you pain 8. "That's When I'll Stop Loving You" Male vocal (sounds like Sam Cooke) Lyric; Believe me when I tell you darling/ I ain't never gonna stop loving you/ I know, I know, I know/ When the wind no longer blows/ When the stars no longer glow 9. "Take a Good Look" Male duo, with horns Lyric; Take a good look/ Take your last look/ At the man who once loved true 10."Don't Go Away" Male vocal ,guitar intro and horns Lyric; Don't go away you don't know how I need you/ Don't go away I need someone to cling to/ Can't you see I'm crying/ feel like I'm dying. thanks Rick