Last week their was a oldies-show on german radio dedicated to songs about the moon.

Is Old Gold a "real" label? I always thought it was a bootlegger?

Excerpt from the playlist:

21) Everyone

As far as I know "Old Gold" is/was owned by CBS.

Old Gold was owned by Lightning Records. A wholesaler run by Ray Laren, from North London. In its heyday, the label was distributed by WEA. They specialied in issueing 7" singles. At its height it problably had over a 1,000 different titles. I believe it folded the same time as Lightning went under. The reissues were genuine releases.

Hi,
My name is Freddy Bailey, I have been in the jukebox business for over 50 years, I read with interest your reference to Ray Laren and Lightning Records. Ray's Father Dave Laren was a pioneer in the jukebox business with his company Laren For Music in North London, Ray's Father-In-Law was Ralph Mandell a Director of Phonographic Equipment Company Ltd, who were distributors for several jukebox manufacturers, Ray and Norman Mandell who is Ralph Mandells Son, started Lightning Records Ltd mainly to supply records to jukebox operator's like my self, they were so powerful that they helped many record artist to get in the top ten record charts just by sending their records out to jukebox operator's. Ray is alive and well as is Norman Mandell, Ralph Mandell sadly died last year, he is sadly missed in the coin machine industry.

Freddy Bailey
British Coin Machine Historian

Splendid to hear from you Freddy - welcome to the 10,000 visitors a day army, many of whom are also music industry stalwarts!

Lightning was indeed a major creative and marketing success story and people tend to forget the power and the influence of the Juke Box business from the coffee shop era of the 50's onwards.

Thanks for posting.

Lighning records, I assume is the same company that brought the excellent Joe Gibbs releases over from Jamaica, distributed by Pinnacle.
That`s probably one for Mickey One to confirm.

I can confirm, it is indeed the same company. They also released Uptown Top Ranking by Althea and Donna.

When I was in retailing, I used to re-stock my first store by popping into Lightning every Sunday morning. I remember a great staff member called Martin Wickham, who went on to run a chain of record stores called Trump records in north London.

I believe Ray sold Lightning to the US wholesaler Ingram Entertainment Inc, but, if I remeber rightly, they pulled the plug on the UK operation when things got tight in the US.

I went to my local record shop at the time to buy Althea and Donna on the Joe Gibbs label, and the owner(bless him), would not sell it me to me and advised I waited until Lightning bought it out the following week.
I appreciated the advice at the time, wish I had the original now though.

Hi Freddy
At last, someone who knows a little about "Lightning Records". I'm researching the record label and would appreciate any info on, the history, people involved etc
Regards.........Mark

Hi Mark,
This is the first time I have seen these blogs, I can give you as much as you need about Lightning as all of the players either are or were my friends, I say were because Ralph Mandell sadly died last year. I can be reached through www.jukeboxes-r-us.com

Freddy Bailey

Mark wrote:
Hi Freddy
At last, someone who knows a little about "Lightning Records". I'm researching the record label and would appreciate any info on, the history, people involved etc
Regards.........Mark

If anybody is interested in Lightning Records, I am a British Coin Machine Industry Historian, and I know the Laren family since the early 1950's, Lighting was initially set up to supply jukebox operaters with records for their jukeboxes, as operaters weleft the choice of records to Lightning, We would order 5 records every two weeks for each hukebox, at the time there was an estimated 400.000 jukeboxes operatingin the U.K. and Ireland, that meant that is an artist put out a record that was silent it would have sales of at least 250-300.000 sales, this had been a practise of the american operaters for years, I have pictures of all of the artist visiting mob controlled jukebox distributors, such as Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Teresa Brewer, Tommy Dorsey, Vic Damone, Mills Brothers and many more, they wanted to keep the the jukebox industry happy. In 1955 Readers Digest wrote an article called Jukebox Racket in the Mob. Please visit my web site at www.jukeboxes-r-us.com and find the Billboard record statistics for 1962.

Freddy Bailey
House of Seeburg

Well this is certainly a welcome change from the usual handwringing crap about how unfair life/society/the media are on perverts or insights into JK's murky past.

But this thread really makes fascinating reading. I have plenty of OLD GOLD 7" and Lightening singles. Great memories.

Just dug out a Dennis Brown single from Lightning. Absolutely brilliant, great performance. I just love the vibe of that labels releases.

Walter you must stop being so bitter - and so inaccurate. This Tipsheet board is rarely handwringing and is normally devoted to music music music.

Discussions about other trivial matters like miscarriages of justice do take place on Your Views every now and then but some feel distressed by tragedies like Sally Clark's murder, which obviously pass you by with a tut and a giggle as you concentrate on more pressing topics like Lou Christie's Greatest Hits.

Fair point JK, perhaps "handwringing" was a cheap shot but bitter I am not. Anyway a different point of view plays its part in lively threads here.

Indeed Walter - you are forgiven (and I notice you tend not to visit our Your Views board anyway).

Old Gold was largely the brain child of Keith Yershon, who was one of the directors of Lightning Records and who is definitely one of the nice guys in the business.

Keith was a serious music fan and set about re-releasing tracks to satisfy the unfulfilled demand that there was for golden oldies in the late 70s.

Lightning Records' own golden oldies catalogue was also something to behold. They had loads of singles that were still available at that time, such as the Beatles and (part of the) Rolling Stones back catalogues. They also imported singles from the USA, including re-pressings and 'plugged' originals.

Best of all, they even got records pressed especially for them.

For instance, they managed to get Cliff Richard's first 6 singles re-pressed by EMI in Ireland, in glorious mono using original single masters.

They got a set of singles out of Pye, including double A-sides by the Kinks, Petula Clark and others. Largely in glorious mono. Their re-pressing of "Dedicated Follower Of Fashion" by the Kinks had the widest groove at the start to best accommodate the suitably loud opening guitar chords.

They got Decca to press some singles with a Decca label that harked back to the days of 78s. These included a double A-side by Arrival ("Friends" and "I Will Survive") and a double A-side by Alan Price ("Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear" and "I've Put A Spell On You".)

The most curious releases were two singles pressed by EMI in Greece on the Harvest label. These were "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play" by Pink Floyd. Theye were in "mono re-processed for stereo" mixes but not the same mixes with awful time delay as appeared on "Relics". Instead, they actually sounded half decent when folded down to mono because there were no time delays in the re-processing, only slightly altered phase relationships between different frequencies. |Sadly "See Emily Play" also had a slight electronic buzz running through it, possibly caused by radio interference somewhere up the signal path at some point during the single's creation.

Oh yeah, and they took delivery of a UK Records promo copy of "Old DJ's Playing New Songs", which I still have in my collection. Mutton dressed as lamb? Bah?

I worked at lightning from June 77 to January 80. It was a great company, and all the main players were great people - ray laren, Norman mandell, Keith and Brian Yershon, Martin Wickham - but nobody's mentioned Alan Davison - great character who actually ran the Lightning label without whom you would not have heard wayne County's infamous single, or Lloyd grossman's group Jet Bronx - also didn't we help Police get their A & M deal? I met quite a few artists including Althea and Donna on one occasion, and dennis Brown on another, both when they were over to do Top of the Pops - I remember Dennis being taken out to get an outfit - Alan gave him £100 (lot of money in 1979!) and that's where the famous leather trousers came from! I've loads more but that's all for now.

Goodness me - welcome to this dear old thread. Sadly both Martin and Mike Ashwell are no longer with us.

So sorry to hear of Martin’s passing. It only seems like yesterday that he was there at 841 Harrow Road with his natural enthusiasm, including a love for his Triumph Dolomite Sprint, which got him into trouble on the North Circular.

Oh, and a very belated hello to Phil, whom I last saw at Marylebone Station in a complete chance meeting.

At the end of my interview at Lightning in October 1976, I asked Keith Yershon whether or not ”Image Part 1” by Hank Levine and His Orchestra was still available. This is a classic track that few know about. A sleazy sax-led track drenched in the atmosphere of seedy night clubs. He replied that it was deleted.

In 1980, when I was on leave for a day, he visited the offices of Record Business magazine where I was working to promote Old Gold records. The following morning I returned to find a copy of “Image Part1” on my desk. I still have it now. It’s a treasured item that shows that Keith cared for people as well as music and business. It would be wonderful to meet him now. My recommendation to him today would be the 60th anniversary stereo mix of “Only The Lonely” by Frank Sinatra.

But, more than that, I have to thank him for believing in someone who had been turned away by many of the majors because I was over-qualified. Madness!