5
4
would prevent a DJ/station from accidentally playing or purposefully
pushing the ’wrong’ side (diluting the label’s control over the record)
and labels would not have to pay royalties on promotional copies.
Only if a single hit in a specific market would a label begin to press
two-sided ’stock’ copies of the single in any real quantity to distri-
bute to stores for sale. A losing single could be recouped by being
written off as a tax loss.
Although major labels had contracts with their own artists who they
recorded and released records on, most labels also placed indepen-
dent productions in an attempt to get more material and more play
(often stealing artists from their original producer if a record did
become a hit). By the mid-’70s, placing material onto major labels
was one of the only routes a small independent producer could
follow to have any commercial success in recording an artist. Labels
would sign a contract with a producer to release one or two singles;
producers would either use already recorded material or use the mo-
ney advanced to record an act. Labels would try to secure as many
productions as cheaply as possible, quickly promotionally pressing
and distributing material, hoping it would ’stick’ as a hit, and writing
off failures as tax losses. Labels would rarely promote a single long
enough for it to actually get played and sink in with a radio audience,
and only the poppiest, most widely appealing sides would get pressed
to send to stations.
Out of all the ‘70s major labels promoting African American music
(Atlantic, Epic, Capitol, and Mercury, to name some of the larger
players), Polydor was one of the most tightly controlled – licensing a
large amount of material, pressing few copies of each record, mostly
as single-sided promos, and giving each single very little chance to
get any play. All the artists / material on this CD are small, licensed
in productions, with only one act (Creative Source) actually getting
a contract with Polydor (and probably only after the single was
released and became a minor hit). Most of the material on this CD
is even rarer as most of the tracks are the more soulful, less poppy
songs which were relegated to the b-sides of stock copies pressed in
minute quantities. The short-sightedness of Polydor’s policies, even
relative to other major labels, became clear, as some of the acts on
this CD (e.g. Debbie Taylor and most notably Enchantment) had later
success on other major labels that gave them more of a chance. In
any case, Polydor’s policies led to a large amount of high quality but
often very rare material, some of which is compiled on this CD.
