Due to incredible reaction to the Top of the Pops appearance (if that tiny TV audience can provoke hundreds of E Mails, there's clearly an audience out there) I've decided to put out a collection of our UK Records smashes - we get loads of requests for those which pop up on TV commercials like Let It All Hang Out and future/past gems like Fatty Bum Bum and Wall Street Shuffle and Beach Baby. So look forward to a collection of gems in time for your Christmas stocking!

This is great news. Just glancing at the discography - I never knew you released a single by that strange chap Freddie Garrity!

And that track will indeed be on the compilation Pru. He was a sweet, nice man.

JK2006 wrote:
And that track will indeed be on the compilation Pru. He was a sweet, nice man.

Blimey!!

This is great news JK but please also throw in a few 'lesser known' gems from the UK vaults as 'music nutters' like me will have all of the really big hits already hundreds of times over. I guess what I'm trying to say is 'Let Them All Hang Out'! (Lol)

There are many great obscure items on it, Tony, including tracks by soap stars, terrific US tracks...

Great fun though incredibly hard work putting this together; we're calling it - UK Records - 80 great hits from the 60s and 70s. Dame Edna Everage doing a disco version of Waltzing Matilda is one gem (I remember having to go down to Top of the Pops to balance the sound for "her" appearance - I wonder whether "she" was goosed by Jimmy Savile... I must ask her... she could claim millions... and perhaps she encountered Rolf Harris - who refused to allow her re-written but hilarious version of Two Little Girls (called Edna and Madge) which I'm desperately trying to find... I laughed so much recording it that I was very nearly hospitalised).

Noele Gordon's unintentionally funny To My Daughter (UK80) is quite extraordinary. One of my favourite ever US smashes (No2 in 1967) was UK/USA 7 - A Little Bit Of Soul, which I now discover was written by my friend John Carter (whose Beach Baby is also, naturally, included).

I think this collection could be the smash "bundle" of the 2013 holiday season - over 4 hours of terrific nostalgia which young people (anyone under 40!) has probably never heard. I bet parties around the world will be hopping and bopping to it.

Is it just a digital relerase, or will it be available on CD - with beautiful artwork?

We may do a few CD's just for some radio and promo but essentially it will be digital, Dixie - with beautiful artwork though! And sleeve notes about all the tracks.

Oh. i don't do digital albums! Can't see the point. Why buy something that you'll never own? With a CD I can keep it, leave it to someone in my will, sell it (if I get fed up with it), lend it or even give it away. I can't do any of those things with an MP3 - except keep it!

I also do not like digital downloads and would really hope that it could be put out in a box set on cd as people who were around when the label was up and running are more likely to purchase it on cd that download it. (Or perhaps I could blag a demo/promo copy from you)

Hopefully the correct 45 single masters rather than album versions will be used as sometimes there are significant differences between the two and also that the set will sell well enough to warrant a second/third volume so that eventually a complete history of UK records will be available for the first time since the label was up and running.

Finally just to be pedantic Little Bit Of Soul was USA 9 not 7. Noel Gordon was UK 76 not 80 and Disco Matilda was released on Charisma and not on UK.

Correct on all points... the collection will also, however, contain tracks like Dame Edna that I produced... for example, some of my early hits before UK was formed.

Incidentally, if you have a full list of our releases and cat numbers I'd appreciate it; the site that carried them has gone down and I can't find my printed copy!

Sadly missing the early and later years.

www.45cat.com/label/uk

www.45cat.com/label/uk-american


From the amazing www.45cat.com

Thank you! There will now be fewer mistakes for you to spot in the credits.

+1 for CD release.

Must put something like this out physically. Sure to profit.

JK2006 wrote:
we're calling it - UK Records - 80 great hits from the 60s and 70s.

I'll certainly be buying it, but, with all due respect, the title isn't the best. That subtitle is a bit messy, like some kind of K-Tel collection you used to find in garages.

But it says it all, doesn't it, Bex? And you're quite right; what I'm hoping to do is capture that exact equivalent crowd; the 2013 version of people who wanted a nice, large, varied collection of hits from a certain era (or genre) to entertain guests at parties. Those who hear a track on a Christmas TV commercial campaign, visit iTunes to buy it, see the list of other hits, decide they loved at least a dozen of them and plump for downloading the entire 80 track collection - 4 hours of nostalgic magic.

So far, the UK iTunes buyers have shied away from albums (our biggest seller in America is the Rocky Horror Show Original Soundtrack)... perhaps this collection will make them decide "bundles" are the better purchase.