Top Ten is one of the UK's oldest cover version EP series, dating back to 1962. They were popular enough to appear in the official UK EP charts of the day, and originally went by the name Top Ten Record Club. After eight EPs had been released, they started being billed on the covers as "Peter Sterling's Top Ten", as shown in the example above. It's not entirely clear who Peter Sterling is, but it's been suggested that he is in fact the well-known session man Peter Lee Stirling, although the name is spelled differently. If anyone knows, leave us a message - there's a photo of this Peter Sterling on an LP cover, featured on the back of the EP sleeve.
The record itself features six tracks, and was the last one released, circa April 1964. Here are a couple of tracks from the EP:
Anyone Who Had A Heart.mp3
Bits and Pieces.mp3
The next EP is a little later - the start of 1967 to be precise - and is one of the 40 or so which make up the Top Six series. This is one of the very last, No. 37, and my copy came housed in the following picture cover, proclaiming it a "'Top Six' Spectacular":
There's no reason to suppose that this cover was not originally sold with this EP inside it, although if you check the website 45cat.com, the sleeve is assigned to Top Six EP, No. 38. Of course, it's perfectly possible that the sleeve was used on more than one EP - there's nothing on it to indicate what record should be inside, which is perhaps a clue in itself. Maybe it was for multiple use? It's a great picture sleeve though, very futuristic for its day, and one might imagine, visually striking when spotted in a record shop.
You might have noticed this sleeve somewhere else too... Readers of the blog will know that Top Six had a slightly awkward crossover with the Avenue EP series, but if you look at the printed sleeve for the Avenue EP, AVE 42, you will spot this "'Top Six' Spectacular" sleeve, along with a couple of recent Avenue 7-inchers:
Exclusive!!! This photo must have been taken in mid-1967, and to celebrate the passing of its 45th anniversary, I decided to bring the star EPs back together in a world's first. And they haven't aged a bit...
