Mine was 1964 maybe early 65. I used to buy the Record Mirror which was great for Soul about then. In the ads there was a list available from Crown Records in the USA. My knowledge of soul and R&B was limited to what was issued in the UK. When it arrived the list was of Crown LP's and you could buy 2 for one so I sent off to L.A. for a John Lee Hooker and a mate bought a Brook Benton. To this day I always wonder where I got the dollars from. They must have been fairly cheap because I was earning next to nothing at the time and I lived in a small village in the Welsh mountains. Anyway the LPs were disappointing, very early stuff not full of tracks like Boom Boom. Dimples etc which I was expecting! Anybody beat this?

Not in the year but in the rarity, our Ace colleague Peter Gibbon bought Leroy Taylor and Jimmy Armstrong as new releases on Shrine in 1965. He was probably buying direct well before that too. He's on the forum but far too modest to mention it!

Quite a few people who are (or have been) members of this forum were buying what could probably be considered the true forerunners of 'soul packs' from Ernie's Record Mart in Nashville at around the time of your Crown purchases, I wonder how many ended up with a Charles Sheffield among the Excello 45s that were always included (Ernie's being the retail arm of Excello...)

Can't remember when I first bought directly from the USA. Probably no earlier than 1967, judging by what the first ones I that I owned were.