CASTLE (CAS / CAS EP Prefixes)

 

The third Castle label from the 1970s belonged to the Castle studio, of Hindley, Wigan, which was run by William Leyland's L.E. Agency.  It seems to have been a custom recording concern.  The earliest of its products that I've happened upon was a single by Prize Guys, 'That's What I Call Lovin'' b/w 'Thinking About You' (CAS-002); there were no dates on its labels but it had Lyntone matrix numbers LYN-5104 and 5105, which enables us to pin it down to 1978.  The split maxi-single shown above, 'These Are My Mountains' by Marion Robinson b/w 'There Is A Heartache Following Me' and 'A Railroad Bum' by Bill Sutcliffe (CAS-003) appears to have been intended to be a four-tracker but a song called 'Country Girl' was left off the 'A' side for some reason.  Again, the Lyntone matrix numbers - LYN-5192 and 5193 - in the run-off show who the manufacturers were and pin the record down to 1978.  The only other Castle 7" from the '70s that a trawl of Google reveals was a 1979 single by Humbug, 'Wearing Suspenders' b/w 'Maggie May', though there were a few more in the '80s.
Generally numbering was in a CAS-000 series for singles, with EPs and LPs having the appropriate lettering added after the prefix; the Humbug single was an exception, as its number was CASTLE-007.  The '011' number was shared: CAS-011 was an album by Altitude, while CAS EP-011 was an EP by Rainbow Cottage.  The most recent Castle record that I have found listed was CAS-33, which was from 1985; as can be seen from the 'discography' below, I haven't been able to account for quite a lot of the numbers, so any help in filling-in the gaps would be welcome.  As can be seen from the scans, the colour scheme changed from black-on-white to silver-on-black; the design of the castle was tweaked, and the label layout was altered.  Further changes of colour - to silver-on-red and then silver-on-blue - took place in the '80s.  The way that the designer put the 'A' and 'B' in the drawbridge of the castle of the earlier version was a nice touch.

Copyright 2007 Robert Lyons.