One of Ireland's premier record labels, and also a chain of record shops. According to 'Record Retailer' of the 20th of Feburary 1969 Dolphin was launched in February 1968 by record dealer Joe O'Reilly in partnership with Oliver Barry, Jim Hand and Vincent Nolan. The company flirted with the British market: several of its earliest singles were released over here through Island, on a distinctive green label (1), and in 1969-70 selected issues were put out via CBS. The first few of these latter appeared on the CBS label, with Dolphin just getting a production credit, but from July 1969 Dolphin singles were given their own label. This blue-and-white design (2) was similar to the Irish one, but the records had catalogue numbers from the main CBS numerical series - the Irish versions were numbered in the DOS-0s. Some of the CBS-era Dolphin singles came in a dedicated company sleeve (4), while my copies of the Wolftones (sic) one came in a CBS 'distributed labels' sleeve of a type which seems to be uncommon (5). Demo copies had a small black 'A' and the release date on them (3). At least one Dolphin record came out in Britain in the '70s, albeit by the skin of its teeth: Timepiece's 'Hitchin' To Miami' b/w 'Mad Dan The Romeo Man' (4759) was issued in January 1970, and thus qualified the label for inclusion on this site. Incidentally, that band was known as 'The Times' in Ireland and it had to be renamed here in order to avoid confusion with the American act of the same name. Dolphin director Oliver Barry is quoted in 'RR' of the 16th of July 1969 as saying that his company was "trying to establish an Irish identity for ourselves in Britain,", but unfortunately its days here were numbered. Its final mention in 'RR' came in the issue of the 11th of July 1970, when a report stated that Major Minor was going to release Dolphin product on a special label, from August. Sadly Major Minor ran into financial difficulties before that could happen, thus inadvertently robbing us of a third type of Dolphin label. The only Dolphins to appear on these shores after that point were imports from Ireland. The British Dolphins that I have managed to track down are listed below. There may perhaps be more, but I doubt it.
Copyright 2012 Robert Lyons.