One of the best-selling labels of the 1970s, but one which concentrated almost exclusively on compilation albums. The K-Tel company was started by Philip Kives in Winnipeg, Ontario, in the early 1960s, and moved to Minnesota in the early '70s. To begin with it sold household gadgets, but in 1971 it started licensing popular records, jamming them on to albums, and selling them under titles of the '20 Fantastic Hits' variety. It used the same television sales techniques for its records as it did for its other products, and was hugely successful. The single shown above seems to have been the company's only 7" record of the 1970s. It wasn't sold: it was included in a package with a piece of Keep Fit apparatus called the 'Multi Exerciser'. The record features spoken instructions on how to use the Multi Exerciser, deliverd over several snippets of weebly MOR electronic music. There was no catalogue number on it, but the matrix number in the run-off is NR 009 - it looks as though it was originally 1009, but the '1' has been scratched out. The position and style of that number on the first record shown above suggest a CBS pressing, but a 'B' at 9 o'clock and mother numbers at 3 o'clock on the run-off suggest Decca. The record can be found with a different logo: a 'K' in a circle, with 'K-Tel' underneath it; that scan, which looks like an EMI pressing, comes courtesy of Sam Mauger. K-Tel did eventually get around to issuing a few proper singles, but not until the '80s.
Copyright 2012 Robert Lyons.