TABERNACLE
A Jamaican label for
Christian music, operated by Clement Dodd and part of the Studio One
setup. Tabernacle was licensed to Lee Gopthal's B&C
company in Britain, and was therefore a
sibling of B&C, Action,
Amalgamated (q.v. all), Coxsone and Blue
Cat. It started issuing records here in 1967, using a TS-1000 numerical series for
singles, a TEP-0 one for EPs and a TLP-1000 one for albums;
it appears to have temporarily ceased operations the
following year but it was revived in 1970
- presumably as a member of the Trojan family - and survived for a further
three years. The examples shown above were
pressed by Orlake; it's likely that the others were too, as Orlake
manufactured most of the records on Island / B&C / Trojan's offshoot labels.
The majority had a purple-and-white label (1), but Robert Bowes has been kind enough to send along a
scan of a plain white one; more likely than not it
was introduced as a cost-cutting measure, as happened every now and again with labels in the
Trojan group. The catalogue number of that single, TS-1012,
raises the question of whether TS-1010 and 1011 may have been issued - googling reveals no
sign of them, but then it didn't show a 1012 either. If anybody
can answer that question I'd be interested to hear from
them.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.