Roburt

Kenb, I bet there was loads of that stuff up in the loft of the Oriole managers house. But as the buyers weren't record folk, it will all have been sent to the dump. I'd have been happy to have had half a dozen of the old Oriole records cardboard boxes that they'd used to form the loft floor.

After quitting Oriole, John Schroeder went to Pye Records, where he was involved in lots of their UK soul output. He really made his money in the 70's though when he was the guy behind the stuff made by Cymande.

As well as their London studio facility, they had a 2nd pressing plant in Colnbrook, near Slough. I also never researched this 2nd pressing plant. I would guess though that the set up there was run in a very similar way to the one in Aston Clinton. Aston Clinton today, where Oriole pressing plant was ...

An extract from the above article ... Maurice Levy assured me he wanted to put Oriole up against the big boys – we wanted to become a major force. I said ‘if you’re going to do that you’re going to need a lot of finance. You got to have promotion guys, Luxembourg airtime, all sorts of things.’ But he said he wanted to. At the time I believed him. Unfortunately as time went on, the support wasn’t there in the strength it should have been. I don’t think he realised what he’d let himself in for and what was needed to make Oriole a major force. However, I did do a lot in the 2 1/2 years I was there. I had free rein, restricted by the budget so I was always held down a bit. They had their own studios but they were deficient in lots of ways and they didn’t want me to hire any other studios, so we had to put up with the faults and technical difficulties. Then I set up Oriole as a proper label, got rid of a lot of artists, signed new ones and retained a few old ones, like Maureen Evans and Clinton Ford. I redesigned the label, the yellow and black one. I established an Oriole magazine – it had its own magazine that went to the retailers to tell them about the label. The lengths I went to! .... ... ... I investigated the Oriole set-up many years ago as I used to often work in the BUCKS village where they had their pressing plant & storage warehouse. This was ASTON CLINTON, south of Aylesbury. The village has now been largely bypassed by a new road & has changed a lot in other ways too (many new houses). Of course, Oriole sold out to CBS in late 1964 having slowed their output Through that summer. CBS eventually closed all the facilities down there & built a new CD plant in north Aylesbury. I posted up an old thread about much of the work Oriole (& then CBS) did in the village, see here ... CBS Pressing Plant, Aylesbury ... ... from that thread title it isn't obvious that much of the info is actually about ORIOLE not CBS. I'll just pick out a couple of bits of real interest (IMO) ... the pressing plant was set up in an old garage building (see pic on thread) ... they bought a 'Plant Managers house' which was next to the old garage. Their record warehouse was just an old shed at the other end of the village. The staff at the pressing plant were mainly young local women. Each Friday they were told they could take home any record they wanted (just one, but most weren't interested, so took one for a workmate who wanted more). So, ex employees would have ended up with a copy of every Oriole / Motown 45 if that was their musical taste . ALSO, when the plant managers house was sold off by CBS, loads of old Oriole stock was found up in the loft. It's believed the new owners weren't interested in records & just sold off everything cheaply or sent it to the dump. Both the site of their old pressing plant & their old warehouse are now housing estates, again it's thought that when CBS took over the warehouse building, they just got rid of all the Oriole back catalogue really cheaply. Oriole's recording studio was back in London, so I didn't look into that.

A couple more bits from north of the border ...

PLEASE MOVE TO ... ALL ABOUT THE SOUL ...

A few bits from north of the border ...

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A track that I had on a cheap Marble Arch label UK comp LP from 1966 ... the cut hung around till the 80's and then really took off ... Muscle Shoals at it's best ... this certainly made a big impression on me in 66 ... YOU PEOPLE COME BACK NOW.

I've posted too much on this thread already ... BUT just have to add that I can't believe there's been so many posts on here AND YET no mention yet of OTIS REDDING and his records. Otis was a big factor in southern soul catching on with UK fans in 1963/64.

Available from Amazon, etc ...

The prevailing view of many involved with the UK music biz in the mid 60's ... a music mag 45 review ...

Well his heart would have been into it ... BUT as with Chuck Jackson; joining Motown might have killed off his recording career for a while ... but then, he might have thrived & been even bigger. GETTING WAY OFF THE ORIGINAL TOPIC NOW ... but Bloodstone's career only took off (commercially) when the moved to the UK, teamed up with Mike Vernon and started cutting in London & Oxfordshire. From 73 to 76 they had 2 big US 45 hits every year ... their Decca contract then ran out & they could sign with a big US label (by then, they were much bigger back in the States than here). They took their time but went with Motown as their new label. It killed their career record wise & they only returned to winning ways when they escaped Motown & signed with the Isley's T Neck label.

What might have been ... though it could have turned out to be a train wreck ... it seems BG had songs like "Reach Out I'll Be There" & "Walk Away Renee" pencilled in to be cut by this Welsh guy ...

MORE IN A SIMILAR VEIN TO THE ABOVE .... a DJ who you wouldn't have expected to have been championing a NS ender years ahead of it taking off on the scene ... FLUFF FREEMAN .... AND OF COURSE, the likes of the Beatles, Stones, Tom Jones, Rusty Springbored bigging up our music helped convince UK labels to put more stuff out.

With reference to the UK mod / soul scene .... UK 45 & LP releases that catered to the mod crowd in the early 60's came (a lot of the time) from the likes of Pye (& it's subsid labels), then Sue / Island with EMI always having it's toe in the water. A stranger collaboration came when Oriole took on the Motown catalogue. But EMI jumped in & got hold of Motown. Even though the company was a massive worldwide organisation, it always seemed to have the b*lls to employ staff who liked their own particular specialities ... soul in particular. It soon realised that to market US 45's by (then) obscure acts you had to badge them up to catch buyers attention. Hence SOUL SUPPLY, DISCOTHEQUE 66, etc.

Not talking bout the influence of latin sounds on the NS scene but on the UK soul scene in general ... BUT many latin sounds got little or no attention from UK record companies, so the genre was always gonna struggle to get more widespread acceptance. As a indicator of what I mean I go with Jo Cuba. He had a UK 45 release (with BANG BANG) in Dec 66 (Pye Int). While he had no more UK releases right thru to the mid 70's, he had around 17 more US 45's out on the same label as "Bang Bang" (& therefore all probably available for UK licensing by Pye). If your definition of Latin just means the Boogaloo stuff, then even the soul singers who made boogaloo records in the mid 60's, soon moved onto other stuff ... see what Jerry O was pushing as the main sounds in his live act by 1970 ... James Brown & Stax covers ....

If you meant influential with UK fans (rather than influential with other US acts or with US buyers) ... then if your local club DJ had imports as early as 63 OR if not & he only had UK 45's then from 65 right through to 1970, "Harlem Shuffle" would have been just about the biggest mod / UK soul club track of influence.

I'd agree with our kid; you can't ignore at least one track from the Duke / Peacock / Backbeat catalogue.

Cleveland soul producer / label owner has passed ... another sad loss to our music.

I'd say NOT ... other 60's soul songs have been done by more different artists.

A song that everyone performed back in the 60's (UK beat groups & US soul acts) was "Knock On Wood". It has stood the test of time too, so I'd nominate Eddie Floyd's biggie. PLUS ... with regard to Chicago R&B / soul ... most Chicago tracks were very blues based until around 1962 when Curtis Mayfield + the Impressions took the city's sound in a whole new direction. You could nominate one of many songs Curtis penned as INFLUENTIAL but I guess it's his songbook / sound as a whole that counts as being the most influential factor. Can't ignore the influence of early 60's Motown tracks, mid 60's Stax tracks or early to mid 60's New Orleans stuff (pre & post Allen Toussaint). As it was performed by so many other UK & US acts I'd go with "Ride Your Pony" as being the most influential of AT's songs / recordings).

On Doris Willingham's "You can't do that" Jayboy UK version the backing slows down about 15 seconds into the track ...

The individual records are easier to make out on this version of the pic ... AND why not have Rufus too ...

Of course, many hit R&B / soul songs got covered a lot, both by UK & US artists ... another such song was Rufus Thomas's "Walking The Dog" ...