
DORÉ
American, based in Los
Angeles. Doré - sometimes referred to as just 'Dore' - first saw
the light of day in 1958 in its native land. It and
its sister-label Era were jointly owned
by cousins Lew Beddell and Herb Newman at first, but 'Billboard' of the 8th
of June 1959 reported that the two labels had split and that the former partners
were heading one of them each, with Beddell being in charge of Doré. Doré continued
to release singles until the mid/late 1980s. A few of its early
singles were licensed to Decca for the UK and came out on
the London label, the most successful of them being 'To Know Him Is
To Love Him' b/w 'Don't You Worry My
Little Pet' by The Teddy Bears (Dore 503; London HLN-8733; 1958), but it only
made one appearance here as a label in its own right. The company responsible
was Record Mart of Southend-on-Sea, who specialized in licensing and reissuing obscure Rock 'n' Roll
and Rockabilly singles, and the record concerned was 'Showdown' b/w 'Boogie
Woogie Feeling' by Tony Casanova. The reissue was manufactured in the USA, apparently
through Doré themselves. It had the same catalogue number as the 1959 original but had the
multicoloured 1971-81 Doré label rather than the original black-on-light-blue one;
as can be seen from the scan, it also had 'This Release Initiated
By "Record Mart" England' at the bottom. I haven't been able to establish a
date for this UK version but Record Mart made a similar arrangement with
the Antler label (q.v.) in 1975-76, resulting in singles with the
same 'Initiated by' credit on them, so a date not far away
from that seems reasonable. See also Olympic (Rockabilly), Yucca, Glee, and
Record Mart's main label, RM.

Copyright 2022 Robert Lyons.