Fab started life in 1965 as a subsidiary of Melodisc. At first it dealt in Pop music, but in 1967 it started concentrating mainly on Jamaican music and became a successor to Melodisc's 'Blue Beat' label. The main numerical series was FAB-0, though there was a short-lived EP-0 series in 1971 devoted to English Folk Dancing, with a caller (8, 10). FAB-126 onwards came out in the 1970s; numbers reached 262 in 1972, at which point things slowed down considerably, only a handful more singles coming out in 1973-77. These later singles had no dates on the labels, so the year of issue is debatable, but according to 'Music Master' the final two are from 1976 and 1977. Many of the numbers seem not to have been used. Fabs come in a number of different label designs, and, thanks to re-pressings, some individual singles can be found with different types of label. The first twenty-five releases, covering the period 1965 into 1967, had a gold label (1). The colour turned to light blue (2) with FAB-26, and stayed that way until in 1971 the black-on-light-blue became red-on-white (4) for a short time, on FABs 163 to 166 - the example shown is a re-pressing of an earlier record. Things got messy at this point, the design remaining the same but the colours changing rapidly, through black-on-white (FAB-176), black-on-yellow (FAB-180), silver-on-blue (5) (FAB-182) and black-on-green (6) (FAB-188). Partway through 1972 the numbers jumped from the 180s to 200, the logo disappeared and the labels took on a home-made appearance, with the credits looking type-written. The examples in the low 200s that I have seen have been yellow, those in the 240s to 260s white (7); FAB-243 had a more normal--looking label, with 'FAB' at the top in a plain font. Proper labels had made a return by the time FAB-271 came out, in 1973; they had a fancier logo, and the colours varied (8). Not having seen pictures of all the subsequent singles I can't say that they all had these labels, but FAB-280 and FAB-281 certainly did - FAB-272 seems to only be available as anonymous white label copies. Thanks to Robert Bowes, who provided all the scans apart from the first, second, seventh and ninth; the second scan comes by courtesy of John Timmis. The discography below only covers the 1970s. Manufacture of the few '70s items that I have seen in the vinyl has been by Orlake.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.