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8/20/12

Enoch Light - The Early Years - Big Brass & Rhythms (Coronet Records)

Front cover.
 
Back cover with liner notes.

     Enoch Light was a big name in the '60s; after all, he gave us all those percussion records which appear to have sold so well back in the day. This budget album gives us some of his early recordings as a bandleader. These recordings were in mono, ironic considering that this was the man that took stereo from a novelty to an industry-standard! Here we get eight marching band standards reprocessed to simulate that stereo sound we so love and enjoy. I hope you enjoy the selections from this interesting album.
High School Cadets
Under The Double Eagle

1 comment:

  1. The irony here is that when this LP was released there were still tons of Enoch Light budget LPs (under different names) in the racks. Enoch Light was big competition for Synthetic Plastics, and both were based in New Jersey. EL would release tracks under fake names on his rack-jobber labels, then re-name them for the Waldorf Music Hall 10" LPs and 45 EPs (sold exclusively through Woolworth's in the US -- the UK Woolworth's had their own budget labels), and then rename them for his higher-priced Grand Award LPs sold in music stores. He also had mail-order 45rpm EP packages of cover versions aimed at teenagers.

    The Coronet-Premier LPs started off as re-issues of old Synthetic Plastics/Spin-O-Rama material, and the guy added things from transcriptions (which is what these probably were -- the Enoch Light Orchestra did early radio and lots of theater performances) and other things. I might be mistaken, but the owner was Morty Croft (or Marty?), who previously had several rock & roll labels. The LPs to look for are the jazz combo tracks he used as filler when he didn't have enough "name brand" tracks to fill the LP. I think the combo was named Freedman (the name was also used for some bad twist-era LPs, so it's probably a fake name).

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