LOW BUDGET RECORD LABELS
m_dejean
Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut. 2,946 Posts
You know the kind. Cheapo companys releasing lesser-known recordings by well-known artists. Labels like Success, Pickwick, Hallmark, Astan and so on. Usually with butt-ugly covers and poor sound quality, but often with some nice and overlooked music in between the grooves. One example is the myriad of mid-sixties Jimi Hendrix recordings resurfacing on various labels. And I'm not talking about russian pressings of The Doors Greatest Hits or shit like that. I'm talking about those records labels that capitalized on licensing big artists pre-stardom recordings or unofficial live recordings.I know everybody has encountered these kinds of records. I recently bought another two of the kind:
On the german label Imtrat. Surprisingly good live recording from around '73, I'd say (all tracks are from his '70 - '73 albums). Nice rendition of "Visions". The cover makes me wanna throw up, though.
On the german label Timewind. It's a double album, where the one disc is a bullshit live recording from the sixties and the other disc is actually the entire Harlem Underground Band record. Yep, the one on Winley Records with "Cheeba Cheeba" and all that mess. Kind of a strange juxtaposition of recordings, besides the Benson connection.I often buy these things, because they're always dirt cheap and might reveal some really good music. What are some of your experiences with cheapo labels, which records do you think are the dopest, and does anyone know some stories about the business people behind them? ENLIGHTEN???PS: post some pics if you can. I wanna see that fucked-up artwork.
On the german label Imtrat. Surprisingly good live recording from around '73, I'd say (all tracks are from his '70 - '73 albums). Nice rendition of "Visions". The cover makes me wanna throw up, though.On the german label Timewind. It's a double album, where the one disc is a bullshit live recording from the sixties and the other disc is actually the entire Harlem Underground Band record. Yep, the one on Winley Records with "Cheeba Cheeba" and all that mess. Kind of a strange juxtaposition of recordings, besides the Benson connection.I often buy these things, because they're always dirt cheap and might reveal some really good music. What are some of your experiences with cheapo labels, which records do you think are the dopest, and does anyone know some stories about the business people behind them? ENLIGHTEN???PS: post some pics if you can. I wanna see that fucked-up artwork.
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Three letters.
One of the greatest cut-price labels was Up Front[/b] (a sub-label of Trip). They were sitting on a goldmine of classic black music yet packaged it like homemade shit! They reissued a ton of stuff from the Vee Jay vaults, yet always found a way to fuck it up. For Gene Chandler's Duke Of Earl, as popular as he is they couldn't find a picture of him for the cover, so they got some "light-skinded" black guy with similar features, had him wear dark sunglasses to hide the fact that he wasn't Gene, then put a steel medieval helmet over his head! (Hey, he was the DUKE of Earl, not the KNIGHT of Earl!) And that was the album!! And then there's that Best Of Elmore James elpee, where they accidentally threw in some Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup tracks...
(I'd post pictures, but I gotta leave for work in an hour!)
Other faves in the discount label realm:
- Crown[/b] (lots of good R&B here; they were distributed by Modern/Kent...BTW, anyone here heard Cycle Psychos by the Scramblers? there's a sax player on here that sounds like John Coltrane! on a hot-rod rock instrumental album, at that!)
- Harlem Hitparade[/b] (this 1970's subsidiary of Pickwick released all kinds of black music, but seemed to release more doo-wop and gospel than anything else...somebody must have complained about the name, because later on they changed the name to "Soul Parade"
- Design[/b] (another Pickwick label...put out all kinds of stuff, although most of the ones I have were all reissues of vintage country & western...only one problem: just so these albums would be in stereo, they used to take the mono masters and overdub a fiddle and bass in one speaker...and on top of that the bass would be playing in a different meter...Cowboy Copas'"Let The Teardrops Fall" has the bass on the two and four in one speaker, and an overdubbed bass in the other speaker on the one and three!)
- Sunset [/b](the budget sub-label of Liberty...released all kinds of stuff from Jimmy McGriff to Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys)
You mean this one?
This is on a budget label out of Belgium called Surprise. Don't think it has any overdubbed moog, though. It's old recordings from the fifties and sixties with Watson in blues mode, but the cover picture is clearly from the late seventies.
laserlight
Applause
Yeah, I've got two Bobby Hutcherson records on that label. They are both compilations of his Blue Note material from 70-75, real quality tracks in fact. I always wondered why Blue Note would let their shit go out like that. I bought them both brand new and sealed in a cutout bin, but the records were naked in the covers, no paper bags. Cheapo style.
It wasn't the first time. When Blue Note was distributed by Liberty, a few of their recordings were reissued on Sunset (Liberty's cheapo label). But then again, Sunset's packaging was classier than Up Front's.
Yeah, that entire Trip family of labels (Trip/Up Front/Springboard/etc.) was known for that.
I believe he was referring to this album on the Big Town label in the U.S.. I think its' called Gangster Of Love. Big Town already had the rights to the original sides (since it was a subsid of Modern/RPM), but since JGW was hot at the time (late 70's), they decided to overdub the synth (as well as a cover drawing of the artist as he looked at the time).
Don't remember the title, but that sounds right.
Yo Pickwick, do you have the Chi-Lites/Romanceers split LP on your namesake label? It has a really good version of Marvin Gaye's "You're the Man." As far as I know it didn't get released on anything else.
The Trip/Upfront/Springboard operation was located on RT1 (near Rahway) in NJ. I used to commute to college (early 80's) and the bus always went by their warehouse, which looked defunct even then.
It wasn't the first time. When Blue Note was distributed by Liberty, a few of their recordings were reissued on Sunset (Liberty's cheapo label). But then again, Sunset's packaging was classier than Up Front's.
Yeah, that entire Trip family of labels (Trip/Up Front/Springboard/etc.) was known for that.
The Trip/Upfront/Springboard operation was located on RT1 (near Rahway) in NJ. I used to commute to college (early 80's) and the bus always went by their warehouse, which looked defunct even then.
probably was defunct - i think that whole shady empire went out of business around '79. i dont believe ive ever seen an album on any of those labels made after the late seventies.
i've seen that around - i even have a few of the (pre-fame) chi-lites tracks on the original singles. never got around to buying the elpee, though.
i think the romanceers tracks were recorded specifically for pickwick. i dont think those were acquired from another company. obviously they didnt have enuff chi-lites tracks to fill out the album, so they got some studio cats to do the hits of the day (1972, i'm guessing). probably the same folks that played on soul mann & the brothers' pickwick LP - you know, the one where theyre doing songs from Shaft.
- J
Is it a vocal version? I'd like to hear what the singer says in place of "I'm Archie Bell & the Drells from Houston, TX."
There's this budget LP I have on the Custom label called Here Comes The Judge - no artist credited, and the cover has the prerequisite pic of a black guy wearing a white powdered wig and judge's robe, just like Shorty Long's album. The title track is a cover of Shorty's hit, and of course, the singer refers to himself as something OTHER THAN "Judge Shorty." The rest of the album is all jump-blues honkin' sax instrumentals from the fifties (probably Joe Houston).