DEROY
RECORDS
Independent label: An obscure but collectable
label. Deroy Sound Services seems to have been primarily a custom
recording-and-pressing concern. It was owned by Derek Marsh; in
addition to putting out dozens of cinema- and theatre-organ records he recorded
some very desirable Folk and Rock albums, by the likes of Parameter, Forever
Amber, and Dark, all of which were given extremely limited
pressings. Frequently Deroy records came with labels upon which the
details of artist and title had to be handwritten, or with blank white labels;
artists could add information themselves or paste their own, more informative,
labels on their records, as has been done with the Thurlstone Bells EP
shown. The additional label, which has been pasted on rather roughly,
claims that it is a Sonroy recording, so I have included it under 'Sonroy' as
well as putting it here. Other records had more conventional labels
pressed on to the disc, as is the case with the John Hall EP shown
above. The matrix number of the 'B' side of that record, ADM/EP-76/3
- just visible, for once, on the scan, at the bottom - appears to be an earlyish
one (the matrix number of the 'A' was ADM/EP-75/3). Records actually issued by
Deroy had a proper printed label with a Deroy logo it; it bore a strong
resemblance to the label which RCA used for its LPs. It seems to have
come into common use for everything made through or by Deroy from around 1975
onwards, and can be found on at least one EP. It also appears to have
been used by records made by Deroy for other companies - LPs in that style with
Deroy numbers can be found on West Coast Sound and Gowanbank, among others, and
there were a couple of singles on S.R.W. Previous to that, custom
recordings seem to have mainly had the 'Deroy Sound Services' label until around
1970, after which albums tended to have a 'A Deroy Production' on their labels
while 7" records were often blank white. Going by the few examples
that I have seen, the company's 7" products are often only identifiable by means
of their catalogue and / or matrix numbers, as exemplified by the single by the
Blackburn Rovers F. C. squad for the season 1972-73, 'By Gum We'll Make It A
Day', DEROY-880 and the split single by Frank Wappatt / Cathy Wilkin single 'It
Took A Miracle' (DER-1153; 1975?). While many of the company's records had
a DEROY prefix others were prefixed 'ADM' - 'ADM LP' for albums, 'ADM EP' for
EPs, and plain 'ADM' for singles, the initials standing for 'A. D.
Marsh'. Both DEROYs and ADMs seem to have shared the same numerical
series, but each side of an 'ADM' record had its own number. The
studio offered a tape-to vinyl service; these pressings, presumably, could be in
single figures, and some - such as the 'Caren and the Triplets' record shown
above - don't seem to have been given numbers. As for dates of operation, 'Tape
Recorder' magazine of November 1965 says that the Deroy Sound Service offered
tape-to-disc and tape-to-tape services from an address in Hest Bank, Lancaster,
and had 'twenty years experience', which suggests a start in the mid '40s.
The article also says that transfer of tapes to 78rpm records was available,
which again suggests a pre-1960s origin. An album exists of a December
1960 Mass from St. Alban's Church, Blackburn, with the Hest Bank address on it;
while the material on the 'Caren & The Triplets' record shown above was
recorded in October 1961 according to the person who was doing a commentary on
it - it is just a record of parents talking to their young children and the
children responding. At what point these were actually transferred to
vinyl remains open to question, but it seems likely that it was done not long
after the original recordings were made. By the end of 1966 Deroy's labels had a
new address on them, 'Little Place, Moss Delph Lane, Aughton, Ormskirk,
Lancs'. Early '70s labels indicate another change of address, to
Carnforth, Lancashire. 'Billboard' of the 10th of June 1972 has '1966' in
brackets by the company's name, which suggests that it underwent some sort of
structural change in that year. That same article gives the company's
director / studio manager as A.D. Marsh, with the chief engineer being G.
Crompton (the 'G' stood for Gerald); G. Crompton and B. Marsh are listed as
'mixers'. 'Music Week' of the 1st of May 1976 gave Deroy one of its rare
mentions in the trade press when it reported that the company was in the process
of moving to Kilcreggan, on the Clyde coast, and was cutting down on
equipment. According to the article Deroy would then have a pressing
plant in Northumberland and a plating operation in Leicester; at that point it
was cutting masters for Scottish labels BGS and Emblem. The mastering
facility had been mentioned in 'MW' of the 27th of May 1972, which observed that
it was a service which most provincial firms didn't offer - they generally just
cut acetates. I don't know what the matrix numbers started at - ADM-1 seems a
not unreasonable guess - but the highest to which I have seen any reference was
DEROY-1486, an album of music played on the Hooghuys Fair Organ, which came out
in 1979. One advert for Deroy's services says that the company cut discs:
demo discs - presumably acetates, or cut on blanks - were available within
twenty-four hours, while vinyl pressings took from three to four weeks. A
small advert in 'Studio Sound' magazine of March 1974 claims that discs in
quantities of one to twenty could be delivered within four days, while
quantities of twenty-five upwards again took three to four weeks. It would
appear that small orders of vinyl records were pressed 'in house' while larger
ones were pressed elsewhere: the few Deroy products that I have seen in the
vinyl have had matrix number styles suggestive of British Homophone or (later)
RCA products.
A FULL
DISCOGRAPHY OF DEROY SERIES 1958-1979 CAN BE FOUND
HERE
CAN YOU
HELP FILL IN THE DISCOGRAPHY GAPS EMAIL INFO TO SAMMAUGER@GOOGLEMAIL.COM