philmh: it's not that decca ever owned the recordings on dm126, but they'd licensed those recordings of awsop & lime street blues, and controlled them in the markets they'd signed up for until & unless that licence expired (or was bought out, or they broke it, or it was otherwise determined).
these recordings were all originally released on the emi group label, regal zonophone, which had previously been known (if at all) (and only in parts) for the joy strings (~salvation army band things) etc, but which emi and essex music agreed to be the home label for all of essex music's artists - negotiations with decca/deram manglement evidently broke down over the package details somewhere, so both procol harum and the move were translated to the (rather distinguished-looking) (and non-standard silver-on-black corporate emi image) blue-and-silver of regal zonophone, despite decca's success with night of fear, i can hear the grass grow, and a whiter shade of pale...
the first lp was on decca uk's deram label in merkia, complete with a whiter shade of pale (which the uk first lp lacks) - and in all the glory of rechanneled fake stereo
Back and labels added.
Printed and made by The E. J. Day Group, London & Bedford
Manufactured for Fly Records, London
(by EMI, see->)
Deadwax (stamped)
One: 1 TON 4 A - 1 U G R
Two: 1 TON 4 B - 1 U P
Label rim text typeset reminds me of something I cannot point to atm.
Ref. omitting a hit, of course Decca would still own it after just 4 years elapsed, and this was summing up stuff from the EMI family.
P.S. It's just a tad odd that a "best of" doesn't have the band's biggest (only?) hit on it! Or did Decca/Deram still have some residual right to it at that point?
I would tend to agree with you, Paul, certainly no later than 1973, which is when the label morphed into Cube. I just t had a look at the record on Discogs,and that has the 1969 date on it as well, most likely due to the statement on the labels that most tracks were published in 1969.