A rarely-met-with Pop label, Solid Gold was owned by publishers Carlin Music and was a sibling to that company's 'Black music', label Feelgood (q.v.). It started out in 1973 as a production company: 'Music Week' of the 30th of June said that Carlin intended it to be an outlet for Rock 'n' Roll songs in its repertoire and hoped to place its products with EMI and Phonogram. One Solid Gold production, 'Da Doo Ron Ron' b/w 'Pig Bin An' Gone' by Grumble, had already been successfuly placed with RCA (RCA-2384); another, John Perry's 'Nancy Sing Me A Song' b/w 'Crying Eyes' came out on Philips (6006-319) the following month ('MW', 14th July). Solid Gold became a label in its own right towards the end of 1976; Mike Collier acted as the managing director for both it and Feelgood ('MW', 5th November 1977). Its singles were numbered in the SGR-100s; the numbers reached SGR-117 but 114 to 116 seem not to have been used. For some reason Solid Gold was shelved after four singles and a 1978 album, 'The Last Survivors' by Philip J. Wells (SGRLP-101); nothing was released in 1979, but 1980-82 saw the label being revived, with catalogue numbers continuing from where they had left off. Solid Gold never threatened the Singles Chart, but it did produce one minor 'collectable': Shakin' Stevens's, 'Shaky Plays Elvis' EP (SGR-107). Manufacture and distribution were by Pye in the first incarnation; Pye and its successor PRT handled distribution in the second, but the only single that I have seen in the vinyl from that period was pressed by Damont. The label looks brown on the scan, but, logically enough, it was in fact coloured gold in the '70s - some later issues were yellow.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.