KELLY
A label from the Isle of
Man. Kelly had a recording studio as well
as a label, and was based in Duke Street, Douglas. Unfortunately there are
no dates on its records, but the cover of KS-2,
'Ellan Vannin' b/w 'The Manx Fisherman's Evening Hymn'
by Kenneth Dove, has a review of a 1972 performance by the artist, so the company
was putting out singles in our decade. I know of only fourteen seven-inch releases,
but the gaps in the discography below indicate that there may well have been others. Seven-inch and twelve-inch records had
different numerical series, and the prefixes varied. The basic singles series looks
to have been KS-0, with KEP-0 for EPs and MAN-0
for LPs, but eventually prefixes were used which took their lettering
from the name of the artist.
Labels
came in two basic designs,
of which the one with the large three-legged logo is by far the
most common. Initially the label name was in a large font and came in three
lines; early releases had pink legs on a white background (1) but some
pressings with yellow-on red labels can be found (2). By 1973 the
label name had started appearing in a different font and
was in the form of an arch at the top of the label. There were at least three different
colour schemes used for these arched labels: yellow-on-red (3) seems to
have been the earliest, or possibly pink-on-white, with white-on-salmon-pink (4) being the
latest. By 1977 a new design in blue-and-white
had been adopted (5) - an LP by Mike Williams,
Al Lawrence and Laurie Kermode entitled 'Live At The Colby Glen' (MAN-3) from that year had
that kind of label. The Mannin Folk Group EP 'Mannin Folk Sing' (KEP-1)
sold well enough to be re-pressed several times and can be found with
at least four of the five different kinds of label. The Kelly company
is reported to have been dissolved in 1985. Thanks to Dr. Doom of the 45Cat site for
permission to use the first scan here; the second and fourth appear by
courtesy of John Timmis and Robert Bowes respectively.
Copyright 2008 Robert
Lyons.