sketchy Euro Hank's message lp on ebay

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

theres 3: back/front covers + label

never seen it before!

ebay freezes my browser or i woud do it for all of us!

saw it last night at a friends house!

[mikeweil]

ebay link

Edited September 23, 2007 by mikeweil

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

good work MW! whats up w/ hanks HAIR in that pic-- the 2nd i saw it last night, i was all "hmm hank looks different"

"LE MESSAGE"? WHAT THE HELL IS ****LE MESSAGE!?!!!*****?!?!??!?!?

[clifford_thornton]

Pretty cool, if you ask me. Why am I not surprised it's expensive, either?

Certainly dating from "the day," as one can tell from the thin flipback cover and label artwork.

When I saw the thread title, I assumed it'd be some shitty BYG or Musidisc bootleg, but this is the real deal.

[clifford_thornton]

I've always been intrigued by this one, too:

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I didn't know Barclay was issuing Prestige LPs back in the fifties. Interesting. Mut have been around the time Esquire were issuing them in Britain.

MG

[Daniel A]

"LE MESSAGE"? WHAT THE HELL IS ****LE MESSAGE!?!!!*****?!?!??!?!?

Le=the, if that's what you mean.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I love the French Atlantic labels of that period. If the label's stuck on correctly, the way the logo goes round on the turntable makes your eyes go all funny.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Hey, the pix have all gorn!

MG

[clifford_thornton]

I didn't know Barclay was issuing Prestige LPs back in the fifties. Interesting. Mut have been around the time Esquire were issuing them in Britain.

MG

Yeah, I'd assume that too. Esquires are often beautiful, and rarer than their Prestige counterparts. If Sidewinder were around this week, we could hear from the resident expert on that!

[brownie]

I didn't know Barclay was issuing Prestige LPs back in the fifties. Interesting. Mut have been around the time Esquire were issuing them in Britain.

MG

Yeah, I'd assume that too. Esquires are often beautiful, and rarer than their Prestige counterparts. If Sidewinder were around this week, we could hear from the resident expert on that!

Barclay issued quite a number of Prestige albums in the late fifties, early sixties. At the time I thought their covers were a disgrace when compared to the original designs. Still dislike most of them. The US originals looked so much better (and were very hard to find even then).

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

why didnt prestige just have Euro-prestige and get the lps over there- why did they whore em out to different labels with different covers in shit--- can someone narrate to chewy what the hells been up with that?

[Big Beat Steve]

Why take all the fun out of collecting just by keeping the same covers and labels everywhere, Chewy? :D

Different countries, different customs, that's all. It was part of the deal for some reason back then, and probably due to import duties/shipping, etc. it seems to have been far more lucrative to press the items locally instead of shipping the records worldwide. Even in the mid-70s when I started collecting (and even afterwards) there were lots of wisecracks in the record stores that stuck an outrageous price tag on any item that just looked like it was an "Import LP" (even if it only came from, say, France or Britain and not from across the Pond to Germany).

Be glad that German pressings did not go that far astray. Even when Metronome and later Bellaphon issued Prestige they usually retained the U.S. artwork and just used their own printing facilities and own materials for the covers.

BTW, in France it wasn't just Prestige (maybe I ought to give those French pressing(s) on the Bel-Air label I have a spin again?) and Atlantic but also others such as Mercury and Columbia that had their own French covers.

[couw]

why didnt prestige just have Euro-prestige and get the lps over there- why did they whore em out to different labels with different covers in shit--- can someone narrate to chewy what the hells been up with that?

they made another cover so chewy could have his "hmm hank looks different" moment 50 years later

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Back in the day, the British market was pretty different from the French and German markets. There were very few hit records right across Europe. Philips, the Dutch company, and EMI, had Europe-wide operations. Most countries had their own major companies operating mainly in those countries such as Polydor/Deutsche Grammophon in Germany; Vogue in France; Decca and Pye in Britain (there were indies as well). Basically, these firms understood their rather different markets in those days. It was normal practice for even the major American companies to license their material to the national majors. US Columbia was licensed by Philips across Europe; US Decca, WB and RCA Victor by Decca in Britain; MGM and Mercury by EMI; Capitol was a subsidiary of EMI even then. What the US majors did, the independents couldn't improve on and they also licensed their material (the exceptions were Blue Note and Riverside, whose albums were imported from the US and pretty expensive).

Most indies licensed their records to Decca, who marketed Atlantic, Dot, Imperial, Chess, Sue, Liberty, United Artists, Monument, King, Cameo, Hi, Kapp, Jamie, Contemporary and Duke/Peacock and Pacific Jazz (all three in association with Vogue), Savoy and many others in Britain. But some small British companies got some action, too. In 1962/63, Oriole were handling Savoy, and Motown, which had previously been handled in turn by Decca and Philips; and in the late fifties/early sixties, Esquire, as noted, were handling Prestige. But the licensing situation was pretty fluid because licensing contracts seem only to have run for a few years. And the agreements only affected one country - in the sixties, Chess was handled in Britain by Decca, then Pye; in France, Barclay handled the company's product (at least for some of the period).

During the early sixties, many US indies saw some value in getting their own trademarks known and negotiated with their distributors for some kind of label change, either incorporating their logo into the British label (Atlantic, Verve, UA and Dot), or having their distributor start up an explicit label for them (Liberty, Chess, UA, Cameo, Atlantic, Stax, Sue, Motown and Verve).

US Columbia was the first American major to open a branch in Britain, when they bought Oriole, which owned its own pressing plant, in 1963. Because EMI owned the trademark Columbia, a legacy from the days when US Columbia went bust and was acquired by its former British subsidiary, the label had to be called CBS. That company operated across Europe. Following that breakthrough, more US companies opened British offices, including Blue Note (then owned by Liberty - but it was a Blue Note office, not a Liberty office; Liberty was being distributed by EMI at the time).

MG

Edited September 24, 2007 by The Magnificent Goldberg

[brownie]

why didnt prestige just have Euro-prestige and get the lps over there- why did they whore em out to different labels with different covers in shit--- can someone narrate to chewy what the hells been up with that?

they made another cover so chewy could have his "hmm hank looks different" moment 50 years later

Most French releases at the time shunned the US original covers and had new ones printed for the local market. Fortunately Barclay used the original Verve (Clef/Norgran) covers - many of them by David Stone Martin - when they issued the albums on their Blue Star label!

[sidewinder]

I didn't know Barclay was issuing Prestige LPs back in the fifties. Interesting. Mut have been around the time Esquire were issuing them in Britain.

MG

Yeah, I'd assume that too. Esquires are often beautiful, and rarer than their Prestige counterparts. If Sidewinder were around this week, we could hear from the resident expert on that!

Barclay issued quite a number of Prestige albums in the late fifties, early sixties. At the time I thought their covers were a disgrace when compared to the original designs. Still dislike most of them. The US originals looked so much better (and were very hard to find even then).

Yes, 'Mobley's Message' did appear in the UK on Esquire. I remember seeing the cover art and it is different to the Prestige but don't have a pic I'm afraid. The Esquire was only in small quantities and is a rare one.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

so did they send to europe the orig. master tapes, or copies thereof?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

so did they send to europe the orig. master tapes, or copies thereof?

Just checked my old Esquire version of Jug's "Bad bossa nova". It looks like they sent stampers, the things they use to press the records. In the dead wax, there's the Prestige master number PRLP whatever, and also, "VAN GELDER". So an Esquire Prestige is essentially the same thing as a Prestige Prestige, though perhaps with a different vinyl mixture - the Esquires are quite heavy records.

MG

[clifford_thornton]

So either they copied the stampers or plated 'em up here, right?

(Apologies in advance to Chuck if I'm butchering the process)

[sidewinder]

I think I recall reading that RVG prepared stampers for Esquire, which were then sent over to Carlo and Peter Newbrook.

There's usually the 'Van Gelder' in the run out in all of these. Vinyl quality invariably better than the original Prestige, so they compare well sonically.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I think I recall reading that RVG prepared stampers for Esquire, which were then sent over to Carlo and Peter Newbrook.

There's usually the 'Van Gelder' in the run out in all of these. Vinyl quality invariably better than the original Prestige, so they compare well sonically.

The PRLP number in the dead wax is in the same handwriting on the Esquires as on the Prestiges. Did RVG put those on, or was it done later in the process, when Prestige had sorted out things like, whether they were going to release it and what the catalogue number was going to be?

MG

[sidewinder]

Not sure on that one, MG.