More cover versions found on the T.A.G. label

Blog regular, Clive Hetherington, has discovered a few obscure additions to our ever-growing catalogue of UK cover versions. His latest find adds another LP to our small T.A.G. label discography:

Catalogue number is TAG 4, from 1976, and the track listing reads:

• Music
• Take Me To The Mardi Gras
• One Of These Nights
• Gonna Make You A Star
• The In Crowd
• December '63
• All Right Now
• Free Electric Band
• He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother
• In The Summertime
• Rock & Roll (I Gave You The Best Years)
• That's When The Music Takes Me

Interestingly, four of these titles show up on the other T.A.G. album we have, Request Time.

This one's called 45 Revival: Singles from the Seventies, which is a little misleading in that none of these were singles, at least not as far as these recordings are concerned. They are all cover versions, of course.

The title reminds us of Hallmark's Revived 45s, and it's clear that T.A.G. were well-connected with the cover version world, since Clive has identified several of these tracks as having come from other cover version LPs:

"'In the Summertime' is from Pick Of The Pops. 'The In Crowd', 'Free Electric Band', 'Alright Now' and 'Take Me To The Mardi Gras' are all from the 16 Chart Hits series on Contour."

So a bit of a compilation, really, and another impressive discovery. Thanks, Clive.

Second Deacon EP surfaces - now it gets interesting!

A long while ago, I was impressed by the discovery of a 7-inch EP on the Deacon label. I wrote a blog post about it way back when (see here), but have found out a bit more since then, and also managed to bag a copy of my own. And there, I contentedly let the matter rest. But this week I was contacted by collector, Lester Monks, with scans of a familiar looking EP, or so it seemed:

Ah yes, I thought. I know all about this one - DEA 5023, containing tracks from Deacon's Pick of the Pops volume 4, of summer 1970. But then I did a double take. Lester has in fact turned up a completely new EP on the same label. Here are some spruced up images:

The catalogue number is DEA 5022 - one before the other EP. And get this - 5023 contains tracks 9, 10, 11 and 12 from the parent album; this one has 5, 6, 7 and 8 from the same LP. In other words, the two EPs taken together contain two thirds of the LP, with the tracks in the same order. So... what's the betting there is a third disc out there, numbered 5021 and containing tracks 1-4? I'd say the odds were pretty high.

So, how have these EPs managed to slip under the radar for so long? Presumably because they are rarer than hen's teeth, but nevertheless, this new find features no less a luminary than Elton John - and yet it's completely undocumented! 

For those interested, Elton can be heard singing lead on "In The Summertime" and "Lola", and tackles backing vocals on the other two recordings. This ought to be a celebrated rarity among Elton collectors, commanding a staggeringly high price. So be it - their loss is Lester's gain!

Thanks again to Lester for the scans - what a brilliant find.

Oh - one last point: both EPs are called "volume 2", while the LP, the second in the series, was called "volume 4". What's that all about, then?...

Another Heron pressing shows up...

Last year I did a post on a couple of Heron label LPs I have (here). Heron was brand of petrol stations, who somehow, someway, somewhen created their own record label! Their output, to my knowledge, just consisted of pressings of LPs normally available on the Deacon label.

I have one orthodox soundalike collection on Heron - Pick of the Pops volume 1, which you might guess was Heron's fist such release. But now another has come along - namely, the best-of collection for 1969. It's tricky to try and work out what was released when, but Deacon gave the LP the catalogue number DEA 1001, which implies it came out before the "Pick of the Pops" series launched (well into 1970, with DEA 1010).

In any case, here is the newly-discovered Heron pressing:

As you can see, only the packaging has changed. Everything else, including the catalogue number is exactly as per the regular Deacon pressing, but there is, obviously, a new label - while the back of the sleeve has been altered to promote the brand.

Seasoned collectors will know that there is more to the story of Deacon: not only did Heron put out copies of some of their LPs, but they were also issued on the Gallery label. This particular collection is now known in all three incarnations, so here are label scans from the other two editions:

Incidentally, unlike Heron, the Gallery pressings used standard Deacon sleeves. This one just had a gold sticker over the Deacon logo on the back:

Pick of the Pick of the Pops

I was contacted this week by a collector with some very interesting scans of an obscure Deacon label EP. I had heard of this before, but it's so scarce I didn't even know the songs on the B side! Thanks to these images, all is now revealed:

So what do we have here? Well, this is a 4-track EP which is taken directly from Deacon's "Pick of the Pops" album series. Volume 4 in fact, and the last quartet of songs on that album are the selections on this 7-inch disc - in the same playing order, too.

Notice that Deacon have titled the EP, Top of the Pops rather than Pick of the Pops. Whichever way you look at it, this is naughty, and Pickwick, issuer of the real Top of the Pops records, sued Deacon for infringement, winning the case in the first half of 1972. The upshot was that Deacon needed to back away from similar-sounding products. If the title "Pick of the Pops" was retired, Pickwick would drop its claim - and so the album series closed down at that point, or to be precise, transmuted into "Parade of Pops". (The Windmill label had already taken it over by then.) This little EP may therefore have been quite a significant release in budget cover version history.

Below is a report from Billboard magazine (12 August, 1972) summarising the outcome of the case (they accidentally say Pickwick's series is called "Pick of the Pops"! Oops!

Now, back to the record itself. If you like speculative theories with no hard evidence to back them up, you're in luck. I have two!

1. For some inexplicable reason, Deacon's "Pick of the Pops" albums went directly from volume 1 to volume 4, with no volumes 2 or 3 ever appearing. No-one seems to know why, but my first theory goes like this: The EP above has the inscription "volume 2" on it. Did Deacon in fact issue their first LP as "volume 1", then two EPs as "volume 2" and "volume 3", followed by the next LP, "volume 4"? The only snag is, I've never heard of an EP called "volume 3", but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

2. This is even more speculative: Since this EP contains the last four tracks from the parent album, in order, it hints that it might be one of a trilogy - tracks 1-4 on one EP, tracks 5-8 on another, and tracks 9-12 on another (the one above). Releasing whole albums on EP was not common, but equally not unheard of. Avenue were doing it with every album they released! Maybe there are two more Deacon EPs waiting to be discovered?

So those are my thoughts. One other point of curiosity: what kind of sleeve was it sold in? Did Deacon have their own ones with their logo on? If any readers have any info, or thoughts, please feel free to add a comment.

the Heron label ... it's a gas, gas, gas

Motoring must have been such a joy in the 1970s:

     "Can I help, sir?"
     "Yes - fill her up, would you?"
     "Would you like me to check the oil and water while you're here?"
     "Sure, why not?"
     "And will there be anything else, sir?"
     "Erm... do you have an LP of anonymous cover versions of recent chart hits?"
     "I'll just check, sir."

How many times was this scenario played out on the forecourts of England in the 1970s? Millions, I'd imagine. And so to my latest find, fresh from the charity shops of Brighton:

This LP is billed as "The Best of Tom Jones & Engelbert Humperdinck", but is of course filled with cover versions. It was issued on the Heron label, a little-noted imprint from the early 1970s - in fact, and quite bizarrely, Heron was a petrol station forecourt retailer:

For some reason Heron decided to branch into the LP market by launching their own label, and while most budget LP collectors know about the Deacon label, and their "Pick of the Pops" series, some will have noted that many of the Deacon LPs, perhaps all, were also issued on the Gallery label. What is not so well known is that Heron was in on the same racket.

The Heron albums are in fact Deacon albums with different labels - with gallons of Heron branding on the backs. The LP above is a fine example - it was issued on Deacon, and while the Heron edition looks much the same, there are a few telling differences:

The back of the sleeve is most obviously different - they have bunched everything up towards the top in order to make room for a list of Heron petrol station outlets. There is also a subtle difference on the front: Note how the Deacon pressing bills the act as The Studio 77 Orchestra and Singers. The Heron label makes no mention of a recording act, anywhere, and so is more truly anonymous.

The songs on this LP appear to have been made especially, with the exceptions of "Winter World of Love" and "A Man Without Love", both of which had appeared on Deacon's Top Hits of '69.

So far as the "Pick of the Pops" series is concerned, we have located just one Heron edition - and it's a pressing of volume 1. Were there any more? We don't know but would like to find out!