By my recollection, some of the last acts appearing on Stateside included Vicki Lawrence(The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia, Ships In The Night, He Did With Me are the three biggies for here between 1972 and 1974) and The Peppers(Pepper Box was a moderate hit but the LP which featured it was issued on Axis) and they weren't even American - They were French! The recording was sourced from Event Records, a French label.
Looking over at 45Cat it seems that the last U.K. Stateside single was early in 1974, which is a year or two later than I thought, though I can't recall them having anything that sold well in those last two years.
RC, 1977? Is that the year EMI finally dropped the Stateside label her in Australia? If so it would've been a loss to the industry in some ways as it was through that label we got to hear some of the early magic of Motown. In Britain, Stateside had the early outings by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass... just so much great stuff came out through that label, it was a shame to lose it. But then it was symptomatic of the times when so many household names just vanished, especially in the CD era. A great loss indeed!
Which is why I call them Univar*ehole! ;) Seriously though the way they go about doing what they do is profoundly depressing since they clearly have zero love or care for the music and it's legacy. They even put Buddy Holly out on Geffen and there was a bit of an uproar about that when that happened but it's only those of us who actually CARE that get annoyed by idiocy like that.
I take your point, Biff, especially since the Geffen label didn't even exist at the time Chuck Berry was actively recording. And don't get me started on Universal! Those greedy bastards want to swallow up every other label they can get their grubby paws on! It seems to me the anti-monopoly laws in various countries aren't even worth the paper on which they're printed!
As to the Stateside label revival to issue R. & B. compilations, the bulk of the labels in the USA that had their content issued in Britain or Australia during the label's heyday are either no longer existing or have been swallowed up by Greedy MCA(Universal).
I just get the feeling that seeing other labels were selling soul and R+B compilations that EMI thought it might be a nice idea to revive the Stateside brand to market the stuff they had regardless of whether it appeared on the label originally or not. After all, Universal think it's perfectly acceptable to reissue Chuck Berry on Geffen... in spite of the fact that 1, Berry never recorded for Geffen and 2, Universal actually own Chess so what they were playing at there goodness knows... record companies do do the strangest things.
Also think back to the 70's when EMI had that Harvest Heritage line going... true, a lot of it was Harvest based but there was some stuff originally on Parlophone and Columbia that was being implied to had been part of Harvest when they definitely weren't.
Roger, when we see that some of these tracks weren't actually on Stateside(or as you wrote it, $tateside), it might be seen as somewhat misleading but it's not the first time EMI has done this. In Australia EMI issued a compilation called "20 Country Tracks as TVS-6, meaning it was just three issues after 20 Explosive Hits, putting it around Spring, 1970(September to October, here). This LP, issued carrying the Capitol label, contained Australian-sourced recordings by artists and groups like Slim Dusty, Johnny Ashcroft, Lionel Long and Tex Morton, who were on the Australian division of EMI's Columbia label.
Well Neil, although the casual browser in a British record shop in 1987 might have thought that this was a compilation of recordings that had originally been released on U.K. $tateside in the 1960s (and no doubt this idea was one that went down well with the record company) I have the advantage of having the sleeve in front of me and it is obvious that this was actually a sampler of the mid/late 1980s L.P. releases on the label, with one track taken from each of sixteen of them. The idea, no doubt, being that this would boost the sales of these previously released L.P.s.
All of that blurb on the back of the cover shows the then currently available $tateside L.P. release that each individual track was featured on. A couple of these 1980s releases have appeared on 45worlds at the moment, notably this release by Professor Longhair.
To make this more obvious I've added higher resolution images of the L.P.s that were sampled ... images #745672,3,4,5.
Hi, Roger F. Interesting you said some of the content of this album had turned up originally on Liberty and UA(among other labels), this sort-of leads into what I said about an MFP compilation elsewhere on this site, that compilers make no effort at research to check the content they're bringing together for the album. In this case, the compilers did not check EMI's back-lists to see if the tracks they used were actually issued on Stateside in Britain, I specify Britain because artists or groups appearing on Stateside, like Gene Pitney, for example, did not appear on Stateside in other countries. Pitney was on CBS here in Australia through the mid-1960s. So EMI actually revived the Stateside label in the UK, albeit as a reissues label. No such luck here(though I did see the TM on a CD once) but the TM phased out a bit later in Australia, probably around 1974 or 1975, a bit later than in Britain.
Agreed. EMI had all that material in their vaults, realised there was a market for it so like you say, got in on the action.
Unfortunately, I don't really remember it doing much following this relaunch... there was this initial bunch of albums to support it but they didn't follow through with a sustained enough campaign to keep building on it so I remember it just quickly being reduced to a trickle of occasional albums and CD's... after all the CD market was just starting to get moving at this time so the market was certainly there. I was always on the lookout for new CD's of vintage material and beyond this launch genuinely can't remember Stateside having much of a presence at all which was a shame. Not long after came the excellent Capitol Collectors and EMI Legendary Masters series presided over by Ron Furmanek and it was back to the more generic EMI labels from then.
I totally agree with most of what you have to say biffbampow. However I think that this mid/late '80s revival of Stateside was really EMIs response to what Kent had been doing for a few years. Kent had made a name for themselves as a Soul/R&B reissue label and I think that EMI wanted some of the action.
Stateside was in many ways an EMI version of London Records dealing with licensed stuff from from smaller labels based in the States covering all areas of music, not just soul and R+B and this late 80's revival seemed intent on enshrining it for the soul and R+B stuff. Of course by then a large amount of stuff EMI had originally issued on the label they no longer had the rights to. Ike and Tina Turner did have some stuff released on the label in the mid 60's but as wonderful as "Nutbush City Limits" is, that was never a Stateside release but probably included since EMI owned it and thought "well, they were on the label at some point so, lets represent them anyway!" Given Ike and Tina were on United Artists for longer than anyone else there was a lot of stuff to choose from and a pity the compilers didn't opt for something more unusual but were probably figuring by using one of their biggest hits, it would make it more attractive for newer buyers. Plus by then, United Artists no longer existed, having been swallowed up into Liberty.
So, EMI by reviving Stateside were probably hoping to use it as a catch all roster for the vintage American Soul and R+B they still had rights to.
Actually Neil the label fizzled out in The U.K. around 1971/2 and was revived as a "'60s reissue" label by EMI(UK) in the mid '80s. The back of the sleeve shows a selection of the new '80s batch of L.P. releases.
The funny thing about the tracks on here was that back in The '60s (or the early '70s with a couple of them) the original U.K. issues weren't on $tateside at all, Lou Rawls was on Capitol (an EMI label) but most of the rest were on either United Artists or Liberty which at the time were totally separate entities.
What prompted me to buy this L.P. back in 1987 was the inclusion of the original 1964 version of "That Lady" by The Isley Brothers ...