Previously unknown Top 4 EP found

This week, I was contacted by collector, Benn Elsey, with details of a Top 4 EP, produced by Bill Wellings and featuring a couple of Lennon-McCartney songs on side 1.

At first, it was unclear what Benn had found - so far as we knew, there were only ever four of these EPs released, and none had "She Loves You" or "Bad To Me" on - so this would be a brand-new discovery.

What we are looking at is T4505 - the fifth EP in the Top 4 series, previously uncatalogued and not known to exist!

The previous four can be seen here, by the way.

The Top 4 label was a cousin to the Top 6 label, whose EPs contained six tracks. Top 4 would take a quartet of them and issue them again - presumably at a cheaper price. Here, then, is the corresponding Top 6 edition, which also has versions of "I'll Never Get Over You" and "In Summer".

Dating the disc is reasonably easy, since it would have appeared while the hit versions were current. We therefore place it circa August 1963.

Great find - our thanks to Benn for the info and images.

Bill Wellings - did he start his own label??

A short while ago, we were contacted by Clive Hetherington about an album he had chanced upon, called "Top Hits of '72". here are some images of the LP in question:

If the model on the sleeve looks vaguely familiar, it's because we've seen her before, on the Deacon label's "Top Hits of the Year" for 1971:

So what have we here? Initially, this looks to be a typical LP of soundalike cover versions on some obscure label - International Hits Series London - so maybe this is an overseas release? The tracks on the album look familiar to us, even if the label does not - all of them were also included in the "Hot Hits" series - ranging across volumes 9 (January 1972) to 12 (July 1972).

Clive kindly did some sound checks to compare, and was able to confirm that these are the very same recordings. Of course, we didn't realise at first, but this could be one of our most significant finds for a long while.

What Clive has found is a previously unknown compilation from mfp's "Hot Hits" series, which appears in fact to be a UK release, as we shall see. This is amazing enough to a seasoned collector like myself, but is just the tip of an iceberg or two, which we need to explore in more detail.

First of all, there is a Canadian edition of this in existence too. This was released on the Arc label:

Highlighted above is the small print on the back of the sleeve (not stated on the UK edition) - "A BWD Production". This is the more obvious clue that these recordings are from the mfp stable. So is Clive's LP really a hitherto unknown UK album? I think so!

The International Hits Series London released several others which look very much like editions or compilations of Bill Wellings' mfp material. Here are some more examples:

"Soul Hits", "Million Seller Hits", "Smash Hits Presley Style" and so on - this could be mfp itself, in some parallel universe! More significantly, Clive's album is catalogue-numbered BW 012 - while the other six examples above are numbered BW 004; BW 005; BW 016; BW 018; BW 023; BW 027.

These are clearly Bill Wellings' recordings - and the catalogue numbers starting BW, his initials, surely point to this being Bill's very own label! This being so, how has it escaped our attention for so long???

If I have convinced you, I'm about to throw a spanner in the works. This is bothering me, and I would like to know the whole story...

Check out the last of the images above. "Smash Hits Presley Style" was almost issued on mfp in the UK, but the last three tracks are different. Here's the standard edition we know and love:

The trouble is, Bill Wellings' own edition (if that's what it is) was issued in Italy on the Broadway label:

Why does this matter? Because Broadway issued a long run of albums, many of them nothing to do with Bill Wellings, or mfp for that matter. In fact, we featured one on this blog just a few days ago (here). Broadway, and Broadway International, used the same catalogue prefix BW (presumable short for "BroadWay")... so perhaps BW does not stand for Bill Wellings, and the albums on the International Hits Series London label are just re-issues of Italian albums?

It's impossible to be sure, but my hunch is that they are the creation of Bill himself, and the coincidence of the "BW" catalogue numbers is just that - a coincidence.

Looking at the Italian album above, it has the Broadway logo on the front, but also that of the International Hits Series London label - what's that doing there if Broadway were the original issuers? Surely it implies International Hits Series London were the creators of the album? And similar logic applies to that Canadian press of "Top Hits of '72" - it mentions BWD, but nowhere does it mention Broadway. So in both cases, the overseas editions point back to the UK for their source, and not at each other.

So, we can cautiously conclude that Bill was indeed behind the International Hits Series London label - his own outlet, with his initials given in the catalogue numbers!! Clive's discovery is not just a hitherto unknown compilation, but a hitherto unknown label and whole series of albums containing our celebrated cover versions.

As a point of interest, here is mfp's year round-up for 1972. Only a couple of tracks duplicate Bill's selection (and in fact half of mfp's album is all-new, rather than being compiled from the usual albums - which is perhaps a clue to the fact that two labels were going at once in the UK).

One final thing to note - Clive's album was pressed on the same nearly black vinyl we have covered several times lately, which is in fact coloured when held up to a strong light. Here's an image:

What an amazing new find. Moments like this make me realise how little I really know about all this! Despite the confusion of the Broadway label, I do believe we have documented a Bill Wellings UK label for the first time. Please help us with any info you may have, so we can get to the bottom of it all!

Thanks to Clive for flagging this all up to us.

Europe and the aliases

I've recently become aware of several cases where anonymous hit cover versions, familiar to UK listeners, have been released in various countries on the Continent - but with fictitious names attached to them (or, at least, names of acts which are not really responsible for the recordings). These are quite interesting and worthy of documenting for their own sake (and watch this space for some international Top of the Pops aliases, at some point).

The first one to mention is from the Avenue label recordings. We are looking here at a series of EPs from Europe, probably Sweden. These are essentially straight issues of the Avenue records, but put out under the name Magnus Banck, who was a Swedish entertainer. The EPs were made in the UK for export, and the six of them are basically the Avenue EPs, AVE 68 to AVE 73 inclusive, with different labels and covers.

According to the backs of the EPs, the recording outfit is "The Hit Parade Orchestra and Singers", but of course we know them better as The Clive Allen Orchestra and Singers! Each EP is identical in format to its UK counterpart. Here, for example, is the Magnus Banck EP 6, along with AVE 73:

Another example of this kind of (mis) appropriation can be found with the mfp ...Hits... albums. These were produced by Bill Wellings, and apart from his mfp endeavours, he was also busy managing the group, John Smith and the New Sound in the mid-1960s. Come 1968 though, Smith left the act, but Wellings was not about to kill a cash cow, and proceeded to release further singles under the group name - which in fact contained cover versions! So far I have located two of relevance here:

"Birthday" would feature on the mfp album Hit Hits in 1969, but it is interesting that the label above is dated 1968. Was it recorded first, then pulled in to the LP as an afterthought? The other track pictured above, "Return of Django", would appear on mfp's Hits Again album.

As noted above, the various fictional names applied to Top of the Pops recordings will warrant a blog post of their own at some point, but while we're on the subject of European singles, we may as well look at a couple of Spanish 45s. In all cases, these are the standard Hallmark versions, with a range of group names applied:

Above: "Goo Goo Barabajagal" by Tommy Sterne and "Baby Make It Soon" by Mickey Trounce, both from Top of the Pops volume 6; "A Boy Named Sue" by Jack London and "Good Morning Starshine" by The Young Idea, both from Top of the Pops volume 7.

 Above: "Cotton Fields" / "Brontosaurus" by The Bird Watchers, and "Honey Come Back" / "I Don't Believe In 'If' Any More" by Hal Prince. All four tracks are from Top of the Pops volume 11.

Top 6 EPs

My latest bargain find was the pair of EPs pictured below. These are installments in the short-lived Top 6 series, which ran to just seven EPs (not counting an additional four called Top 4 - the same, but with two tracks dropped from each). At the beginning of 1964, Top 6 was superseded by Top Six - with "Six" spelled out, and distribution by Pye, and the rest, as they say, is history.

These earlier discs were made and sold by Bill Wellings. Each is significant in its way, the first (T 6505) being the final one with the original Top 6 label design, and the second (T 6507) being the last of the pre-Pye discography. The track listings are given below the scans.

No prizes for spotting the deliberate mistake - the scans show the two records in each other's sleeve. Oops!

 T 6505 (side 1)

She Loves You

Bad To Me

I'm Telling You Now

 

 T 6505 (side 2) 
It's All In The Game

I'll Never Get Over You

In Summer

 T 6507 (side 1)

I'll Keep You Satisfied

Sugar And Spice

You Were Made For Me

T 6507 (side 2)

Don't Talk To Him

Memphis Tennessee

Fools Rush In

Top Twelve LP on Top Six label

Before the UK covers series got going properly in 1967, there was a short-lived series of releases on the Top Six label, better known of course as an EP outlet. The EPs were of course Bill Wellings' project, and it is fascinating to see him launch a parallel album series in 1964, three years ahead of his mfp work. I recently picked up a copy of volume 2 of the LP series. Here it is:

Although the albums were called Top Twelve, the label was still called Top Six, as per the EPs. In the event only four albums would appear, all in 1964, after which the EPs still continued apace. In each case, the LPs are compilations of the latest two EPs - so the LP pictured above (volume 2) contains the songs from the Top Six EPs, number 3 and 4.

Now to find the other three LPs...

Surprise Surprise - mfp on 45

This recent find is one of a series of 7-inch releases from mfp, which tie in with their Hot Hits album series. It's also one of a run of more than 130 singles released on the label between 1970 and 1975, aimed at the children's market and released under the Surprise Surprise brand name. (Of course, those were the days when kids actually had toy record players, as opposed to gadgets like MP3 players.)

This particular single takes its A-side, "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing", from Hot Hits 9 (early 1972), while the B-side, "Morningtown Ride" appears to have been recorded especially. As was the case with all of these kids' releases, the sleeve had a colour-in drawing on the back.

Looking at releases like this, which contain one or both of their songs from the Hot Hits LP series (plus the earlier ...Hits... albums), mfp released a tally of 16, putting them on a par with Pickwick in this respect. These singles are surprisingly little noted, but still better known than mfp's brief foray into the adult market, for which they created another label, Double Top. In the event only three Double Top singles ever appeared, while the kids' Surprise Surprise singles continued apace. Like the record above, all these Double Top singles featured tracks from Hot Hits 9, and one of them also has this same recording of "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing":

Hear the song in question here: Id Like To Teach The World To Sing.mp3