SCOTIA (1979)
The
second Scotia label of the 1970s appears to have been a fairly
long time coming. It received a possible mention in the Trade press in 'Record
Retailer' of the 20th of March 1971, which said that a company called
Scotia Investments was forming Scotia Music and intended to launch its own
label. A month later 'RR' of the 17th of April reported that Scotia
Investments had bought publishing firm Mother Mistro music and that it intended
to launch the Fire label for Pop and the Smoke label for Contemporary material
(q.v. both) in the next few weeks. Shel Talmy had been made managing
director of Scotia's music division. The report added that there was also
to be a third label, for MOR; no name was mentioned, and the label seems
not to have materialized. Had the intention been to name it Scotia there
would have been legal difficulties as there was already a Scottish company
issuing records under that name - see 'Scotia (1960s - early '70s)'. Fire and Smoke were launched
but they disappeared very quickly leaving little
trace.
Some
five years later, 'Music Week' of the 16th of October 1976
indicated that Scotia Songs, a part of the Scotia Investments group, intended
to broaden its operations by starting its own label - up till that point
it had been primarily a publishing company. Again, however, nothing seems
to have come of the plans at the time. It wasn't until 1979
that a new label emerged, this time called 'Scotia' - the Scottish
Scotia had been 'stagnant for some time' according to 'MW' of the 9th of
July 1977, which presumably cleared the decks for the name to be used. By 1979
the parent company Scotia Investments had become a leisure conglomerate. 'MW' of
the 21st of April broke the news that Scotia Songs was launching its own label,
with distribution by EMI. Bob Bloomfield, managing director of Scotia Songs, was to be in charge of record production for the new label, under chairman Peter Frolich, and the first three singles had been scheduled. Those
singles duly appeared, over the course of the next few months, but
sadly as well as being the first three they also
turned out to be the only three. They were numbered
in an SCO-10 series, which started at SCO-17 for some reason. The
final single, The Brothers' 'Mauritius Farewell' b/w 'Loving You' (SCO-19; 7/79), had a matrix number
of GD-013, which suggests some kind of link with the Gold label (q.v.)
- GD-013 is missing from the Gold discography, and the date, 1979, fits
as well. The two earlier singles had SCO matrices rather than GD ones. Demo copies were marked with a
narrow black 'A' (2); thanks to John
Timmis for providing that scan. Distribution was by EMI's
Import division.
Copyright 2010 Robert Lyons.