Avenue of America - new finds

A couple of recent discoveries here, from Avenue of America - not a US imprint of Britain's Avenue organisation, but a Canadian one. First up, we have an edition of a fairly obscure LP which came out in February (give or take) of 1970. First the front cover of the UK press:

And so to the Canadian equivalent - apparently a straight duplicate of the album but with subtle changes to the cover art (couldn't afford any yellow ink??):

The catalogue number remains unchanged as compared to the UK pressing. The fact that it is a duplicate in all but cover details stands it in contrast to the album below, a similar-looking package from Avenue of America, which has the sleeve art from the UK's AVE 034 but the contents of the UK's AVE 044!

The second new find was this 8-track cartridge:

"Avenue of America Presents 50 Top Hits of 72". Hmmm... not a title known from the UK discography, need we say. The contents are of interest - it's an Avenue comp of course, with several selections from the ongoing cover version series. There is, in fact, a Canadian vinyl equivalent - an extravagant triple album, to which this cartridge matches disc 1. (So presumably, there are two more such cartridges 'out there').

The closest Britain came to matching this release was the comp below, a comparatively meagre 20-track compilation issued on Avenue's side-label, Stereo Plus 3:

For more about Avenue's overseas editions, see here.

A peek at the original Avenue / Marble Arch tapes

I recently ran a post mentioning the different stereo/mono editions of the Marble Arch albums, and in response, Colin Richardson of Artistry fame kindly sent me some photos of some of the original studio master tapes for these albums. Fascinating they are too, and we learn that some of the stereo tapes were prepared but never pressed to vinyl.

Here's a shot of some of the tape spines:

These are all Avenue tapes, but constitute master recordings for the Marble Arch LPs, whose catalogue numbers are showing. As will be apparent, there are different tapes prepared for mono and stereo pressings, for instance one tape for MALS 848 (stereo), another for MAL 848 (mono) - which should come as no real surprise.

The tops of the tape boxes show the track listings, and here are a couple of examples. First, the stereo and mono tapes for MAL/S 760:

These are accompanied by typed information for the record labels, which details the track listing and also gives the exact release date: 17 November, 1967.

Mono copies of the album, Big Hits of 1967, were duly pressed by Marble Arch. I am not aware that stereo copies ever appeared, despite the proof above that the album was supplied to the label in both mono and stereo formats. Here is the commercial record sleeve and the labels for the mono release:

Next, we have the same items for MAL/S 848:

The label info gives the release date as 13 September, 1968:

This time we know that both mono and stereo editions were manufactured, and here are some images of the commercial mono pressing, Autumn Chartbusters:

Returning to the original image, there are in fact four pairs of stereo/mono tapes pictured. Besides Big Hits of 1967 and Autumn Chartbusters (shown above) there are also tapes for MAL/S 776 and MAL/S 788. The albums in question are Chart Busters, the very first in the series, and More Chart Busters, the second. Again, these are only known to have been pressed up in mono, but thanks to the tape boxes we know they were mixed/mastered for stereo as well:

Returning to the full set in the photo, besides these Marble Arch albums, there are some other tapes shown next to them. Here is the image in full:

Notice that these additional boxes show catalogue numbers starting STR. These belong to later (1970s) albums on Avenue's sub-label, Stereo Plus 3. Discographies are hard to find, but with a little help from Google we have managed to identify every album in the frame.

STR 003: 22 Smash Hits of the 60's
STR 004: A Tribute to Michael, David and Donny
STR 005: Goodbye Beatles
STR 010: Three Stars Featuring the Songs of...
STR 011: The Best of Atlanta (Original Artists)
STR 012: Stay Later (Eric Winstone & His Orchestra)
STR 013: TV Stage & Movie Themes

Here are the covers of the commercial LPs (excuse the poor quality of some of the images):

Thanks to Colin for sending us the tape photos, and thereby enlightening us that it was, in fact, down to Marble Arch (and the parent company, Pye) that stereo continued to be shunned until the second half of 1968. It seems amazing nowadays that mono was preferred, but in truth, stereo never really became the dominant format until the end of the 1960s. Marble Arch were, so far as I know, the only one of the budget cover version labels to issue albums in both formats, until they finally abandoned mono at the start of 1970.

New discovery adds to UK Avenue listing

I was lucky enough this weekend to find a copy of the LP pictured below:

 

What's the significance? Well you'll notice that the label is Stereo Plus 3. This was a sub-label for Avenue, created in 1972 in an attempt to appeal to more record buyers. The LPs itself is made up of 20 hits, all of which charted in the UK during April and May, 1973, and so these recordings sit in the gap between two of the last Avenue covers albums. Were it not for the fact that they shoe-horned 20 titles onto a single album, it would naturally form part of the main series.

So what's going on here? It could be that the LP was conceived as the start of a new series on the Stereo Plus 3 imprint, although as far as I know there were no others released. The exception is the two end-of-year round-up LPs issued on the label and sourced from the main Avenue series; The 1973 collection borrows no fewer than seven tracks from this album alone!

There's more. It is quite well known that Alan Caddy issued two LPs called "England's Top 20 Smash Hits" in Poland during 1973, on the national Pronit label (pictured here).

 
These are quite widely documented and each LP (volumes 1 and 2) contains 10 tracks. What we have above is an album with the entire contents of both the Polish LPs on one disc! The tracks are even in the same order - side 1 is volume 1 and side 2 is volume 2. It is tempting to view the UK LP as a re-issue of the two Polish ones, but in truth the Polish albums probably arrived later.

There is one interesting point to mention in relation to the UK cover. The lettering might look familiar; it is the same as the lettering used on two Avenue EPs from 1971:

LISTEN: We thought we'd upload a sample track. Have a listen to this spirited version of Paul McCartney's "My Love" - it could have been a hit itself!...    

08 - My Love.mp3