A Reggae label, owned by producer / sound-system man Count Shelley and based in Tottenham. Third World was more or less a successor to the Count Shelley label (q.v.), and it began issuing singles, in a TW-00 or TW-000 series, c.1974. It had released almost 90 of them by the end of 1978, after which point it seems to have dropped the 7" format and concentrated on 12" singles. It survived well into the '80. The company boasted a number of subsidiaries, Penguin and Jamatel to name but two, in addition to which it functioned as a major independent marketer and distributor of Reggae music. Several different designs and colour schemes were used. The orange-and-white-halves one (1) served until TW-023, the catalogue number shifting to the right and a year being added (2) from TW-9. Three one-off designs followed, all of which were pressed by C. H. Rumble (3, 4, 5). Many of the singles that I have seen pictured have had the 'smooth outer ring, rough inner' appearance that is associated with Orlake pressings; the only two that I have seen in the vinyl have definitely been Orlakes. The yellow version of the label (7) had come into use by the time TW-030 came out, at the end of 1975, and with a few exceptions - TW-46 to TW-49 were white (6) - it remained in use until nearly the end. The final two singles had multicoloured labels (8). Thanks to John Timmis for the second scan; with the exception of the first and seventh, the other scans appear by courtesy of Robert Bowes.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.