purist

This is my (probably very flawed) logic on majors pressing stock copies figures. You can tell I've thought about this waaaay too much down the years I thought about the UK ( I worked in a chart shop for a while btw) The rep's wouldn't want to take an order if it was for less than 6 copies, 3 or less and they'd sulk and stamp their feet, and almost always the discount breaks were done on quantity, climbing percentages and the order size grew, depending on product. One in Six meant you'd receive multiples of 7 copies but only be charged for multiples of 6, so an order for 35 meant you'd be invoiced for 30, with probably 50% returns on unsold stock for example. The unsold returns was always a mystery to me, until many years later when I was working in a sister industry, videos. I was taken into one of many warehouses and on pallets were massive overstocks. I picked up one item, Private Benjamin, a semi successful Goldie Hawn movie. The seller represented a bankruptcy stock seller. " How many will you take of that" He said, " Take them all, I'll do you a great deal". I couldn't believe how many copies of this one movie they had, row upon row, hundreds of thousands, of just this one title. I assumed it was some mega cock up, but then he showed me another title with similar quantity. Why anybody thought they'd manufacture 900,000 copies of a semi successfull movie and the UK public would all want to buy one for 9.99, bonkers. All this dead money, crazy. How many of our precious 45's sat around for a decade in similar warehouses before going to landfill or other disposal methods? At the time the common belief was that there were approx 200 cities and larger towns in the UK (with 50,000 or more population) My home town was near 4 times that in 1970's, or 1/300th of the total population of urban areas. I can remember the record departments in stores such as Co-op, Boots, WH Smiths, Beatties, Woolworths (two stores with record counters) and they took a large slice of the sales pie being town centre based. Then the independent shops, I can remember 6 dept stores, then probably 6 stand alone shops, but pretty sure there were more ( I only knew the city centre and the north & west half of the city well then) I'm not counting outlets that were located in other stores where you could order records, like the larger newsagents/general stores etc. So if we multiply the minimal 12 shops by 300 we'd get 3600 outlets in the country, so if you placed just 3 copies in each the minimum you'd need to press would be 10,800. (You can see in the USA if it was only a local release they'd only press up 1000 for the one city, but I thought we were talking about serious major labels, and I'm trying to extrapolate the USA from what I'm surmising about Britain? Was there ever local city wide pressing done in the UK, other than stock which club bands would order for themselves to sell at working men's club gigs) So continuing, If we then assume that the USA had 5 times the population of Britain, you'd be talking 54, 000 of one title in order to place just 3 copies at each store nationwide, so if you are a major label and you've got 3 releases this week by your stars then you're going to press initially 30000-50000 per 45 so you can get enough stock into the shops to grab initial sales and chart maybe? but you've also got your lesser artists and the deals would be " take 500 of Neil Sedaka's guaranteed new hit, 300 Diana Ross, 10 copies of each of these other 4 and we can give you this many free copies of Tom Jones" - you have to imagine fishermans arms here, where the gap changes size depending on who they are talking to. Now we are talking serious cash flow if they're pressing 100,000-200,000 records in one week, even on a 30 day credit account you can stretch it up to 9 weeks of deliveries before paying for the first months sales, and I'm guessing the large wholesale distributors probably got 90 day accounts . Even allowing for bi coastal pressing plants the shipping costs, labour, packaging, invoicing, it's gotta be scary, so the companies are trapped, press and distribute too few on their main artists and they won't hit and you're in trouble, press too many and the shops will reduce their orders on that artists next new single because they'll remember sending back loads of unsold stock. Add into these frightening costs that horrendous creation, the album. Imagine having to fund the cash flow for a new album by say, Led Zeppelin. It might sell 20 million in the US alone, but take 6-12 months to sell that many, and 18 months to recoup the costs. So I do think the lesser artists like Bobby Bell had a very minimal pressing. A token gesture in the hope that the bigger shops might take a punt every week on a 45 purely whether they liked the sound and order 10, but in total across the nation these sales wouldn't amount to 500-1000, or even half that. Surely RCA's thinking would have been ' we spend a small amount on each new artist figuring that one out of a hundred might be the next Beatles, and 10 might be artists who sell enough to create enough profit to carry the entire set up, so any income from any of these small fry artists is pure bonus, and losses on promotion will be tax written off??? (incidentally, I know Popsike isn't a perfect measure, but over 15 years of it recording Ebay sales there's 52 WDJ's of Bobby Bell, and 1 copy on stock. In that same period there's 7 Magnetics on Ra Sel for instance. Everybody would call the Magnetics a rare 45, but how many would recognise Bobby Bells stocker in that same class of rarity? I've collected RCA's for many years and some rarely come up for sale, say less than 10 times in the time Ive been chasing them, and we'll never know how many of those 10 were the same copies changing hands multiple times? I don't want to hurt my label collecting by saying which I think are the rarest, plus I'm not the expert. I paid waay too much for some. Stone Crushers for example, 52 copies on Popsike today, but when I bought mine I'd not seen 3 copies ever. Oh, that's an example of the era when RCA wasn't issuing WDJ's, so only stock label copies exist, same as when Capitol stopped doing promos - or so we believe !?!?) Sorry I was off on a tangent then. The first time I went to the states I tore out the yellow pages in each city, thinking I'd write to them all later. Often there'd be two or three pages in each phone book, more in some. These were only record shops and not outlets like Woolworths, so there must have been a huge amount of independent shops in all the urban areas. What the criteria was in order to deal direct with the record companies in the US might be very different, the UK labels seemed to like a mixture of direct accounts with larger shops and mini chains and via distributors. Personally I found once I got an account with Warner Brothers I was all of a sudden offered accounts with all sizes of companies, many of whom wouldn't even return my calls weeks before. If they thought you could shift the stock then I think you were more manipulable if they dealt direct with you possibly -tangent again ( a word on chart shops. I saw a lot of winking going on. Rep's would leave a pile of promos on the counter on their way out. They'd nod and wink and say things like " Donny Horsesmond is going to chart high this week, what do you reckon". My boss would laugh, wink and generally act as though he was going to do the reps a big naughty favour, but I honestly believe he never ever put through one single sale that wasn't genuine. He'd tell me " it's what the rep's think that matters. They think I'm helping them with false figures and they give me all sorts, but I don't and never ever would. It's just not worth it to lose my chart shop status". Frequently he'd have these market sellers from far away areas come to the shop and take away tens of thousands of singles for pennies on the pound. If he hadn't that shop would have sunk with overstocks of free stock he'd been given or so heavily discounted it might have well been free. Maybe this shop was the exception to the rule, but maybe not) Now obviously not every store orders every title, but there's stores that would order vast amounts. The shop I'm talking about had at it's height 200+ regular DJ's who did the bulk of their shopping at this one shop. An item that was getting hot from advance plays in the clubs the week before release was guaranteed to sell to every one of those DJ's before the public bought a single copy. When the orders arrived we'd spend ages putting a copy of every potential hottie into a shop bag with the DJ's name on it. These bags were done in order of importance. so if the first order arrived with 100 copies (50 from the record company, 50 from the wholesaler maybe, depending on how much you had left on your credit limit with each company) then they'd go into the top 80-90 DJ's bags, and 10-20 would be kept for the public. As the reorders came in thick and fast on some hot items, 5 deliveries some days, we'd be putting more aside into bags but needed to keep more out for the public. Top up orders attracted much smaller discounts but the boss knew that over ordering was dead money, so orders would be mixed through the companies and wholesalers like Terry Bloods. The DJ's, at least the better ones, operated on trust. They knew what was in their bags each week was what they needed, plus a few that might get requested and the odd punt. They simply ask, " how much this week" and take their bags away. Occasionally they'd bring the odd thing back when we'd given it to them twice, but often any mistakes were used as prizes at Discos. They were generally people who held down other jobs so didn't have the time to wait around record shops for hours to hear this weeks new releases, plus of course the imports. 250 copies of "There's No Stopping Us Now" and 2 days later another 200 sticks in my mind, all sold in a week. Couldn't get any more before it got dropped for being overplayed, even pop soul discos could be fickle The rep's would despair when they saw a steady stream of kids coming in asking for the next big import. The rep's would offer other incentives, for example giving promo copies based on order size. Of course these promo copies went into the DJ's bags and they paid full whack for the contents of their bags each week, but then the boss would knock some off, or throw them another promo or two of some other tune the reps had asked us to try to get some interest in. Some larger companies were very tight, but some were lax and gave away huge quantities. A collector market already existed and we had regular customers who'd come in just to buy the latest promos. They didn't care if it was a Tamla Motown promo or Shakin Stevens. Pretty soon these promos started to sell for a lot more than the stock copies, and once they started with special sleeves, weird shapes and colours then the prices went up and up. Some rep's would bring what they said was their own copies of some promos for the shop to sell for them, and a little bag was put aside for their money from these sales. Wheels within wheels. Blimey I've rambled on a bit there, but maybe this snapshot might one day help people understand it's not all black and white, although that's how I prefer my stockers and promos feel free to totally destroy my maths theories btw it's just supposition for the fun of it

The advantages of a record shop dealing direct with the record company were minimal except for ' sale or return' on stock copies,and this practice goes back to the 78 days. This allowed shops to gamble every week and the only way to avoid shops becoming overwhelmed with unsold items. Shops could literally hand back 100's and be immediately credited against 100 of next weeks new records. Shops had paid upfront for the first orders so the companies were always holding their money, and didn't have to operate an expensive credit note system. Transporting the unsold stock around the country was impractical and the various deletion practices started occurring, drill holes, gold paint splodges etc. Companies realised they preferred dealing through wholesale distribution, so they had to offer a similar deal via the wholesaler. This is one more factor to add to the ones above. Another thought comes from the artist contract disputes mentioned in numerous biographies. Depending on the company the wording of the contract could contain clauses where the artist bore all expenses incurred, and these were deducted before any money from sales was paid to them. Amongst these expenses were the costs of producing the promos, in some cases every cost involved in producing the promo inc mastering and distribution shipping etc. All this led to the artists believing they'd been ripped off when they heard their record was number 5 in the charts and they still owed the record company money on the deal. The various payola cases that came to light suggested that certain DJ's, especially certain well known Radio personalities, were given hundreds of promo copies of a title and they sold these at a discounted price at their DJ shows and kept the money and this was deemed a bribe for playing the labels new releases. Sometimes they'd bother to cross out the not for sale promo wording, but most times didn't bother. Similarly some bands would be given promos of their record to take to their shows to sell as a way of offsetting the costs of touring and promotion. One other thought that needs mentioning. The larger companies with nationwide organisation knew how to sell and promote white pop music and caught up with the whole rock and roll wave quite quickly. They were out on a limb when it came to getting into the black market. Once a soul record got high enough in local radio charts they'd bother to work it nationally using their relationships with distributors, Radio Stations, DJ's, sales reps etc, but they were not about to put the effort into pushing something like Bobby Bell's Drop Me A Line when they had a new Beatles or Beach Boys single to work on. All these things contribute to the whole stock issues can be rarer belief, and it makes perfect sense to have the promos pressed up, leave the master at the plant and then if required as many orders and reorders can be asked for. Gambling even a few hundred at a time on every release by having the promos and the issues made at the same time might mean the cash flow isn't there for as many releases, and that applies whether you're a small independent as it does when you're a major label. I'm sure there's other reasons that haven't been mentioned yet.

Maybe I blinked at the wrong moment, but I had difficulty following all the jumping around the time line. Perhaps when they flash on screen ' Los Angeles 1972' or whatever they should leave it on longer or add ' Five years earlier,

I always presumed these label changes from plain to a more artistic image was something to do with the changes happening in the post war America, how people, perhaps emboldened by the hippy movement broke away from the plain drab 'use-the-minimum-you-can' mentality. It's not just the Detroit labels that updated their look, some of the major labels also got a refresh

In the days before soul source we had an internet soul list that many collectors/dj's were contributing members of. This subject came up and we discussed a small number of so called rare records. These weren't records we knew were mega rarities and one offs, instead they were ones which some people thought were unfairly listed as " super rare". One I recall was Jimmy Mack My World Is On Fire., and the idea was that every member who owned a copy on that day should shout up. This conversation spread to the record bars of Niters and serious Rare soul Nights. In the end it seemed that loads of people owned a copy, far more than I would have expected, but at that time you never really heard it played out, it had gone out of vogue. I sold my copy soon after, then my mate Max bought a copy for about 150 more than I'd just sold mine for. Now I'd say that the person who recently paid 1800 or something like that will lose at least 50% - 66% should he or she ever need to sell it some years in the future, because it's a classic case of 'not coming out of a collection anytime soon' rather than "ten copies or less". Don't forget or get confused by the terminology. When I was a youngster we called it all rare soul, as a way of describing a sound, rather than how common or not it was. When pressings were 65p and 85p a lot of originals got sold in amongst them at the same prices, and some of todays big money items are claimed to have come from soul packs, but the real danger is to follow what's currently hot. I look and see on lists every week records that five years, ten years back, were selling for double what they are listed at today. You'll never find accurate numbers, and its pointless me saying "John Anderson had 200 of them", or " My mate had 98 copies of the Vonnettes on Cobbblestone", I know he did, and sold them all out of his little shop in Wednesfield, along with various other ' rarities in quantity', Dickie Wonder being another example. It's down to whether you can lay your hands on one when you want one at a sensible price today, not 40 odd years ago, that matters, not how many copies in circulation. p.s. I always respect collectors who say " Never had one, never got near buying one" when discussing records, there are some folk who bullshit massively about what original 45's they own, sadly that's another reason why you will never get a true number count, but don't let that stop you doing your own straw poll around the Niter record bars, just pick a tune and ask away

Not sure how it works, and I may be talking out of my backside, but a few years back I was sent a link to a private video on YT. Can't recall now, but maybe you needed a password, which I'd been given. It was a video of a Soul venue and I was on this film, dancing, and I was told I couldnt pass the video info on to anyone. Maybe it was a one time password or something, or not (my memory is getting worse) The point I'm trying to make is, can you use this system (if it still exists) to get around all the nonsense these record companies are using to stop us enjoying these old films and tunes? If you make the setting private and dont invite anyone outside of our scene then maybe that might help solve the problem? I wonder if putting up a video of a kids 21st party featuring todays music attracts the same level of scrutiny ? Lastly would I be correct in thinking that these claims are being generated by some computer algorithm identifying music whose rights are now owned by somebody who never had any involvement in creating the music in the first place, rather than some person sitting there watching endless videos?

I still have it Mick (it is Canadian btw) along with a small mountain of label variations, issues/promos, different colours etc, plus the equally wonderful alternative version by BL in assorted label variations - I always intended to frame them all up, but I'd need a massive frame

Was it also claimed that the original Quadrophenia scooter that sold for big money also went to a person from Hull? Wonder if it's the same person ? Be kinda cool if it was.

The Joe F doesn't sound like the same singer on other tunes I've heard credited to him, I wonder if this was a songwiters cut for Joe F to learn the tune from?

When you see all these competitions advertised on TV I tend to think they are just catch-pennies. Really glad you won, restores my faith in humanity

Really sad news. Dave was one of my most favourite people ever on the scene. Everybody knew him as a laugh, but he was always kind and supportive to me. Back in the day I've had several promoters come up to me and say ' Dave Clegg has told me I have to book you'. I never knew what to say to that.I like to think of myself as a gentleman in the proper sense of the word, and that's the most apt description for Dave. At Dave Rimmer's wife's funeral in the car on the way home my wife asked me while we were at the doo afterwards what I'd been talking to Dave about. I said I couldn't remember, she said ' well you've been talking for about four hours non stop to each other'. He had some great stories, even if you'd heard them multiple times before.A memory has just popped into my head. One night at the 100 club Niter, mid way through the night Dave appeared. Some body called him on it, saying ' where you been, part timer '. He told us that he'd travelled 60 miles to some soul night, then gone a further 200 miles in the opposite direction up to Blackpool to see some artist at a doo up there, but then came down to the 100, which clocked up another 250 miles. " Can't miss the 100 club" he said. I wish I could remember the instant witty comment I gave him, but he did a double take over his shoulder, first with a snarling angry face, then with a massive grin. He literally picked me up and said " I love you Mr Pugh". I shall treasure that memory for as long as I live.

you might have heard me play it Daz

I wonder how many beside 'Willie' have Teri on lead? SOS is definitely CC, so maybe there's other tracks that feature other girls on lead ? My hearing isn't that great to distinguish between them all, though Teri is different vocally to CC

sounds the same to me, just with an introduction

One of the two middle ones on the back row ? Don't know if I've still got the album, seem to think they named all five members, anybody got it handy to check ?