For a long time I had no idea where the Richard Francis EP shown above, 'The Organ Of Ludlow Church' (CPZ-2606 / 2607; 1972) came from. The form of the run-off legend (45-CPZ-2606-1K) suggested that Decca was responsible for the pressing, but there was no clue on the label itself or on the picture sleeve as to what company was responsible for issuing the record. Googling revealed no other records in a CPZ-2000 series, so for want of anything better to do I filed the label under 'CP / CPZ'. Then the Butlins single shown above turned up in a Car Boot sale. Its catalogue number, CP-2424, was too close to that of the Richard Francis EP to be a coincidence, and its run-off legend was again in the Decca style. Then a promotional record for Coca-Cola surfaced, 'Buy The World A Coke' by the New Seekers, b/w 'It's The Real Thing' by the Ivor Raymonde Orchestra (CP-2601 / CPZ-2593; 1971). That too was pressed by Decca. I am driven to the conclusion that the CP-2000 / CPZ-2000 series was used by Decca for custom pressings, in the same way that EMI used 7ES-00 and SLE-00 series. It seems like a reasonable guess that 'CP' stood for 'custom pressing', while the 'Z' was added to denote stereo sides. There would seem to be no Decca Custom Pressing label as such; presumably labels could either be plain (1, 4) or they could come in any number of different designs, depending on the customer's requirements; the only identifying marks are the CP-2000 / CPZ-2000 catalogue / matrix numbers combined with the Decca-style run-off legend. The 'Piano Jump' record, CP-2354 / 2356, is from 1963, so presumably there should be a lot of other examples out there pre-dating it, perhaps even going back to the 78rpm era. So far, the only other single that I have been able to trace was a children's EP that I've listed under 'Poplets' (q.v.). Thanks to Pete Wieland for the scan of the Coca-Cola single.
Copyright 2008 Robert Lyons.