American; out of Los Angeles. Solar was the successor to Dick Griffey's and Don Cornelius's 'Soul Train' label (q.v.). Cornelius was the creator and host of the 'Soul Train' TV show; when he decided to concentrate on the TV show (around the end of 1977) Griffey was left in charge of the record company. He renamed it, Solar ('Sounds Of Los Angeles Records'), and relaunched it. Under his guidance Solar became a respected and successful Disco / R&B label: the Whispers, Dynasty and Carrie Lucas all hit the charts in the States, but the company's top act was Shalamar, with twenty hits Stateside. It was the same in Britain, but on a smaller scale. A few Solar singles came out on RCA before Solar came on the scene as a label in its own right, which it did in the summer of 1979. Successful acts in the UK on Solar were Shalamar, who scored fourteen times from 1979-86; the Whispers, nine times (1980-87); Dynasty, three times (1979-83); and Carrie Lucas, once (1979). The label operated as a collective, with artists working on one another's records, and lasted into the late 1990s. In the '70s RCA manufactured and distributed Solar records over here; initially the singles had roughly the same numbers as their American counterparts, except that the prefix was different and the first '1' of the number was dropped - for example, YD-11482 became FB-1482. This type of 'adapted numbering' can be found on American-sourced records on other RCA-family labels such as Windsong, Tattoo, Soul Train and indeed RCA itself (q.v. all). These numbers were replaced with a dedicated SO-0 series at the beginning of 1980. Around 1982 WEA took over; the label design was revamped, and the numbering changed again. The discography below only covers the 1970s.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOLAR_Records)
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.