The UpFront Label.........
holmes
3,532 Posts
What's good/recommended on this label?
holmes
3,532 Posts
Comments
Springboard, Trip and Up Front were all part of the same company, with a goldmine of black music but releasing it in cheesy-looking packages.
While they did reissue a lot of prime R&B and gospel (can't really speak for the jazz, I'm not the biggest fan of that music), once or twice they'd cut corners and do something really shady (like that Best Of Elmore James album that accidentally includes a few tracks by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup). And the reprocessed stereo they used on some of those albums wasn't too hot either.
Flaky-looking covers, yes, but despite all I've said, if you see any of their reissues of Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, James Cleveland, the Staple Singers, Bob & Earl, Lloyd Price, the Highway QC's, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Jerry Butler, Gene Chandler, the Caravans, etc. cheap, they're worth getting.
Plantweed over at Waxidermy has an ongoing budget label discography site going, including a section for all the Springboard offsprings like UpFront:
http://forbiddeneye.com/labels/archives.html
http://forbiddeneye.com/labels/springboard.html
It's not complete, but it's still a nice resource.
Springboard Corporation = too cheap for inner sleeves.
Has there ever been a budget label jernt of Big Jay McNeely's 60s stuff for the Swingin' label? I want to hear all of that stuff.
Oh, the Bob and Earl Upfront is good as well.."His and Hers Shuffle" is some boogaloo business with a lot of fuzz guitar that is really great.
I think the lady's-torso album cover (she's got panties on, BTW) was on United Artists, and did have the same songs. Does the Up Front have "Trespassin'" and "Sophisticated Alabama Soupbone"?
Does Collectables count? Technically, that's not a budget label, but (a) they seem to be run like one, and (b) they did put out a compilation of Big Jay's Swingin' stuff that was relatively classy, with info-packed liners and everything. (But, I think another label released it first!)
One of my favorite Upfront/Springboard/Trip tricks that I learned early on digging was putting a bugged out 70s picture of someone like Miles or Donald Byrd on the cover and the tracks are snoozy 50s bebop jazz. GOTCHA!
SONIC
I believe that was Trip/Springboard's legit attempt to release contemporary music.
Oh, that's what all the budget labels did. Why put an unrecognizable photo of what the artist would have looked like back when the album was recorded, when you could post a current photo, fool people into thinking it was brand new, and sell more records? These labels would release an O'Jays album where there's three on the cover but four or five singing on the record itself.
I remember reading that LaBelle (the group) took them to court for releasing old 1960's girl-group sides from their Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles days with a 1975 picture on the cover of the ladies in their "Lady Marmalade" space-rock gear.
Like Pickwick said, it was their "legit" jazz label, at least up till about '77, when they started repackaging LPs that had previously been released outside of the US, like Michal Urbaniak "In The Beginning" which is a twofer of German releases from the period before he moved to America.
This discography gives a good overview of their catalogue:
http://jazzlabels.klacto.net/catalyst.html
Funny thing about the Catalyst reissue run: I recently found the Jorge Lopez Ruiz album "Branco Buenos Aires" and Upskiboo was telling me that he had it as a Catalyst reissue, but without the recitation vocals. Sure enough he had it with a cheesy Southside Movement-looking cover featuring an ass in wet panties. The music was the same, but apparently they found it necessary to cut out the spanish vocals for the US market!
There is also one called Harlem Hit Parade that might be part of the same shady family of labels.
I think pickwick began by releasing Latin sides in the late 50s or early 60s. Stuff that had only been on 78rpm, or never released in this country. They made up new names for the groups (to avoid royalties no doubt) and had some great cheesecake covers. Before Pickwick they had a bunch of different labels starting with the letter P; Parade, Palace, Paris, Pirouette... I've met Latin heads who know who the real artists are.
if i remember correctly, this and the skull snaps looking ohio joint on trip has almost the same track listing... gotta love those covers btw!
And the funny part is, Trip would pass around the same recordings like a bottle of wine and rerelease them on their sublabels. The Ohio Players have already been mentioned, but there is also an early Wilson Pickett LP (pre-Atlantic) that came out on both Trip (Wickedness) and Up Front (It's Too Late).
Trip could be shoddy too, but unlike Up Front and the rest, at least their records looked like somebody put some thought into it. History Of Elmore James (a two-record set) is a fairly well-done comp of his Fire/Fury material (with liners by James' producer, Bobby Robinson).
Nah, Harlem Hitparade was a Pickwick company. They were really big on gospel and doo-wop, although different kinds of black music was released under this imprint. Somebody must have complained about the name, because at some point they altered the name to Soul Parade.
Yep. I've always wondered what the deal was with this record (the black cover with their pics that's above). Is it just a comp of their earlier stuff? I almost sold this back in the day but didn't know enough about it so I hung on to it.
As best as I can tell, if it includes the two songs I mentioned, it was a compilation of sides recorded around '67 or '68 for the Compass label (probably as singles).