Something of a mystery. I have only been able to track down one record on the Specially Made For Us label, a moderately sought-after single by The Casual Four, 'I Can Tell' b/w 'Love Potion No.9'. Its catalogue number, MH-102, suggests that there ought to be an MH-101 out there, but if the series was used by a studio rather than a record company it may well be on a different label. There's no date on the Casual Four record; it has been compiled on a CD collection 'That Driving Beat, Volume 4', which was dedicated to 'Freakbeat Rarities 1964-66', but the fact that the record is stereo makes a dating in the mid '60s very unlikely - even the major companies weren't releasing singles in stereo at that time. The 45Cat site has it as coming out in 1972, which sounds more reasonable; in the early '70s stereo singles were still novel enough for some companies to put 'stereo' on the labels, as is the case here. As for the derivation of 'Specially Made For Us', there was a deodorant called 'Us' in the early '70s, a product of Johnson & Johnson, and it was responsible for a 'giveaway' single in or around 1972 - see 'The Sound Department'. It may perhaps be that this was another Us giveaway, 'specially made' for them, though I've found no evidence whatsoever to support that theory. The style of the matrix numbers indicates that Pye were responsible for manufacture and that Gordon Vicary was the engineer. Any more solid information would be gratefully received.
Copyright 2022 Robert Lyons.