American, out of Detroit, Michigan. Hot Wax was one of a pair of labels started by the legendary songwriting and production team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland in 1969, after they left Motown, the other being Invictus (q.v.). Hot Wax was launched in May 1969 in its native land, a few months before Invictus, but they both had to wait till the following year to make their debut in the UK. In America, Hot Wax was handled by Buddah and Invictus by Capitol, but in the UK the pair of them joined the EMI stable, EMI having strong links with Capitol. 'Record Retailer' of the 4th of July 1970 announced that both labels would be launched through EMI under their own logos 'within the next few weeks'. Invictus got off to a fine start when its first two singles charted here, but Hot Wax was unable to get any of its records into the Charts. A fairly similar situation seems to have applied in the States: 'Billboard' of the 30th of May 1970 observed that Buddah's deal with Hot Wax hadn't been as successful as that of Capitol with Invictus.
April 1973 saw Invictus part company with Capitol in the USA and move to Columbia / Epic, and on the 22nd of September 'Music Week' reported that Invictus had signed a deal with CBS for Britain. Hot Wax as a label doesn't appear to have been included in the deal, for although it continued for a while in the USA its final British single came out in October 1973. Laura Lee was transferred to Invictus here but none of the other Hot Wax artists appear to have any more new records released here. A number of Hot Wax sides were however reissued here in the mid '80s on the H-D-H label.
The Hot Wax label came in one design but two different colour schemes, black-on-white (1) till June 1971 and silver-on-black (2) from then on. Demo copies were usually marked after the standard EMI manner, with a medium-sized 'A' and the appropriate text (3) but there were exceptions (4). Singles came in a company sleeve (5). The years on the labels seem to apply to the American releases, the British ones coming out later.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.