Amsterdam Russ

Very poignant image, but this is a photography thread, ie, images you've taken with your own camera. Hope you don't mind, Steve.

This morning's sunrise. Gorgeous colours welcoming in a lovely sunny day.

The Yank and Robbk have answered the second part of your question now, and my adding the link to part of the Vapac catalogue was simply to provide some additional interest for everyone in highlighting the importance of the company in Chicago soul music.

A list of songs published by Vapac... https://www.discogs.com/label/577462-Vapac-Music

Here are the differences between the label variant you posted and mine (r-h-side): 1: The label on left has "BMI" while mine on the right has B.M.I. (ie, has full stops between the letters) 2. Flash Records. On the left the word 'Records' is centred under 'Flash'. On mine the word is ranged left (although not perfectly left) rather than centred. 3. On the left label, 'Prod.' has a full stop after it, while on the right it does not. 4. The time on the left label correctly uses a colon to separate minutes and seconds. The label on the right is missing the colon. Et voila - four label variations.

Post up the pic with the three label scans on and I'll point out the differences between mine and the other one without the VAPAC credit.

Following on from Tlscapital's thread about the multiple label variations of Sunday's Al-teen release 'Ain't got no problems'/'Where did he come from' (see link below), the subject now turns to Billy McGregor's 'Mr Shy'/'Fall on my knees' on the Flash record label. This is the label on my copy. There are no matrix numbers stamped or etched into the runout grooves. Instead 'MR SHY' is scratched on the side carrying that song, and FOMK on the flip (with the 'O' being hardly visible). @Tlscapital has identified three label variations, and mine differs from those, meaning four separate pressings of the 45 have been identified so far. Any others?

I'll be delighted to. Thread here:

Four - mine's different to these three! Want to start a new thread?

Only seen a Hoopoe twice - first time was somewhere around the Beachy Head area in the very late 70s or very early 80s. The second time was on the Greek island of Lesvos a few years ago. Never seen a nightingale, but have heard them. I recorded one once, in the Amsterdam woods at about four in the morning on the final leg of my journey home by bicycle after a soul night in Amsterdam.

That Al-teen was allowed to continue selling it 'locally' is very much what I was thinking. That would be the most logical thing - unless, as Timmy suggested - Bill Meeks continued to press and sell it without the knowledge of Chess. That seems less plausible than the first option, to me at least.

...but I can tell you that of the 44 Chess copies on that site: 10 are listed as promos two are listed as demos Thus 12 in total, which gives a ratio of 3.7:1 issue vs promo. Or put another way, 27.5% are promos (if my poor maths holds up and any of my calculations are correct!).

No way to check that without clicking on each listing individually - and that's a bridge too far!

Ah, I'm also using an ad blocker but can still access that site. The search I used to bring up the 44 Chess copies was: Sunday chess I've just searched again using: Sunday got no problems That brings up 173 listings (the oldest being from Sept 2015), which means there are 44 releases on Chess and 129 on Al-teen. That's a ratio of roughly 3:1 (Al-teen/Chess)!

Well done for cataloguing the differences. That makes everything much clearer. My thinking about the Sunday Al-teen 45 is that label owner, Bill Meeks, only pressed up a small number at a time, maybe to reduce outlay and possible wastage (in costs) of any 45s that didn't sell. First run sells well, so he gets more pressed. That also sells out, so he does the same again. Interest grows, probably because of radio plays. Meeks seeks out a better deal for the pressing of more copies. If he only had a small number pressed each time, it's likely he would have had roughly an equal amount of labels printed. Each time a new batch of 45s is pressed, a new set of labels is also required. The first two presses show that Meeks was distributing them himself. Other presses do not indicate this. Perhaps he did a tie-in where the 45s were pressed and distributed in a single deal via a distributor. No idea if this was something that happened back then, but it would seem logical to have places that provided a one-stop-shop kind of service. Also, the first two presses credit only one person as arranger - M. Thompson (with 'M. Thomas" simply being an error). Perhaps as record sales grew, and making a presumption that anyone involved in arranging to tunes was getting a cut of profits, J. Powell was added with the intent of making money for someone involved in the management of the label, but not necessarily actually involved in the arranging. While the Al-teen 45 is pretty common, there are also plenty of the Chess presses out there. The site ValueYourMusic.com - a Popsike copyist (I can't get into Popsike at the moment as I've used it too much today!) - lists 44 of them going back only as far as September 2015. That also makes it pretty common. Link here: https://www.valueyourmusic.com/vinyl?q=sunday+chess&sort=date_end_asc&utf8=✓

I also notice that your promo credits M. Thomas as the arranger, whereas mine gives credit to M. Thompson and J Prowell and the bottom-right scan of the four you first posted only acknowledges M. Thompson. Confused? I am. Beyond that, my Johnny McCall is the same as your scan, and Drake and the En-Solids appears to be the same the partial scan you posted.

On your scan the words "Way above - Way out in front" sit underneath the "A" in Al-teen. On mine, those words sit to the left of the much larger "A". Also, the fonts used on "Way above - Way out in front" are not the same. Additionally, it could be the scans, but I suggest that on yours, "Recorded at Al-Teen Studios - Chicago" is in a different type size with the font being more compressed, ie, the character height is smaller. It also looks as if those words are in a bolder font style. But again, it could just be the scans. Subtle, but very definitely different.

Make that five variations as my copy doesn't seem to correlate with your scans.

Very insightful and excellently put together. Congratulations!

And to prove that point... Comma butterfly: pic taken in 2011 with a Nikon D80 and a 200mm lens. Not being able to get right up close, I did have to crop the image.

Very cosy, but a week of overcast and rainy days ahead. Must enjoy it while I can!

The weather might have taken a turn, but we’re well prepared for life outdoors on the balcony.

Thank you - lovely bird.

I'm still waiting on a package of umpteen 45s that were posted to me by Colemine on 18 March. The last entry in the tracking information is "In transit to next facility" - that was 23 March. Where is it stuck? Chicago.

Please do let Mark know that both songs - Today's man/Don't come around here anymore - are very popular with soul fans/collectors all over Europe, and they are often played at soul music events, even in the year 2020.