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Tag: Kent Records

  • Ady Croasdell

    Ady Croasdell

    Finding The First Copy

    Kenny Carter

    It’s a bitterly cold February ‘94 and I’m in New York City attempting to persuade Tony Middleton to come to Cleethorpes, one of north east Lincolnshire’s premier hot spots, to sing to his UK fans at our inaugural Northern Soul weekender. While I’m there I decide to pop in on Paul Williams, an old friend who used to buy Jackie Moore imports off me in 1974 when I was a West End barrow boy. He had worked his way up in the music business and was then a Vice President at the mighty RCA Records situated on 1540 Broadway, NYC.

    Paul knows my passion for all things Northern from those early 70s days and I had already faxed him with a list of what I consider to be the classiest 60s soul acts on his label. When we meet up on the 30 somethingth floor of this legendary building, I’m invited into a rather (definitely, by Kent standards!) opulent office, and after catching up on each other’s news and record company gossip, I am presented with a complete list of the recordings made at RCA by the acts I have queried Paul about.

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  • Ady Croasdell

    Ady Croasdell

    Finding The First Copy

    Gettin’ To Me

    In the mid-90s when I wandered into Vinyl Experience a second-hand collectors’ shop on Hanway Street in London’s West End, for the first time in a few weeks and while I was checking out the various specialist collectors boxes that they kept behind the counter, I noticed about 50 sealed cardboard boxes under the LP racks. On asking the shop owner what they were he said, “Oh that’s the remnants of the Carlin collection we got a few months ago”. “What’s that all about then?” I ventured. It turned out that this famous music publishing company had decided to throw out all its old demos and samples as surplus to requirements. Mark Hayward, the shop’s owner, had snapped up the massive collection which included demos and acetates from every major popular music act of the 50s, 60s and 70s, including Elvis, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie etc. etc. etc.

    After turning luminous green with envy, I realised that Mark knew which were the obviously rare soul records (as did everyone with the advent of Record Collector magazine), but, as he was sketchy on the more obscure items and ignorant of US labels altogether, a bit of damage limitation was in order.

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  • Ady Croasdell

    Ady Croasdell

    Finding The First Copy

    GWP Records

    I had visited Jerry Purcell in the 80s when he had an office in Manhattan and, while asking him about Debbie Taylor and the Persians, of which he had very little knowledge, could not stop my eyes wandering over to some old metal filing cabinets, intrigued by what might be hidden inside. The conversation did not get as far as “Can I just delve through your files for half an hour?” so they remained untouched by British hands. Twenty years on, I was contacted at Ace by Mr Purcell’s office who indicated that they were ready to make a deal to license their masters to Europe; the previous meeting had held us in good stead. A trip to New York was duly arranged but by then GWP was virtually dormant. Most of the publishing had lapsed and Jerry had relocated his office to his home in Bayside. There I met Ed Bland, a charming musician and arranger who had done the early work for the GWP label who, as Jerry’s right hand man, had been entrusted to organise the deal. After surveying the fascinating looking tape cache I caught site of one old filing cabinet and asked Ed what was in there. “Oh just old music sheets, record samples and contracts”, “Could I look?”, “Sure”. I pulled open a drawer and found that the container was a treasure trove of records and acetates. The company had filed their samples fastidiously and in between the cardboard dividers could be found four demos and two issues of September Jones’ 45, five issues of the Dynamics’ ‘I Need Your Love’, a Kenny Carter single in a German pic cover, Willie Kendrick’s ‘Change Your Ways’ plus many more vinyl singles: but oh, the acetates.

    GWP Records

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