Zella (formerly known as Ladbroke, or 'Ladbrooke' on some demo labels - see the fourteenth scan above) was a recording studio in Birmingham. From the late '60s until at least the late '80s, under owner Johnny Haynes, it made custom recordings and acetates for many amateur and semi-professional artists from the Midlands. The kinds of music found on Zella - or Zel-La, as the labels from c.1971 onwards put it - were as varied as the people who were prepared to pay for the company's services, and ranged from medleys from Cabaret performers to self-penned songs by bands from the local Pub Rock circuit. Interestingly there were several records of Indian songs or music artists, presumably aimed at the city's Asian communities; these records are collectable nowadays. Organist Brian Link, from Clows Top (near Ludlow), appears to have had some seventeen EPs out on the label.
The main series of catalogue numbers had prefixes with 'JH' at the front of them; Singles had 'SP' after the 'JH', EPs 'EP' (3), and albums 'LP'. By 1972 a letter 'M' or an 'S', indicating mono (4) or stereo (8) had been added at the end of the prefix. JH numbering seems to have started at JHxx-1; the earliest example I have so far found is JHLP-5, which dates from 1968. There was also an early WHSP-2000 series for singles (2), and two for EPS: an early WHEP-1000 and a later WHEPS-6000 (6). In addition there was a very early ZEL EP-100 series (1). The sleeve notes to ZEL EP-102, an EP by Forum Folk, describes Zella as 'A recently formed recording company', which suggests that the ZEL-xx-100 numbers may have been the first ones to be used. 'JH' were obviously Johnny Haynes's initials; were 'WH' the initials of a different member of the Haynes family?
One basic label design served throughout the '70s, but the size of the logo varied and a reference to Birmingham (4) disappeared before the start of 1973. White labels with red print were the norm initially, but there were occasional variants and by the second half of the '70s a number of colour schemes were being used, not all of which scan well. Products of the Zella studio also appeared on other labels, such as Beeswing, Jes, Star (Oriental Star), UBM, Derby County Promotions and Merimusic (q.v. all). Sometimes Zel-La records didn't have the logo on them (9) and can only be identified by their catalogue numbers. The two earliest examples of Zella 7" records that I have seen appear to have been made by Linguaphone (1, 2), but later ones were often Decca pressings. Haynes sold the studio to Rock band Magnum in the 1980s, and there don't seem to have been any records made on the Zel-La label after 1989. The discography below is incomplete, but it's better than nothing. Many of the gaps are down to numbers being used for LPs. Thanks to Robert Bowes for the seventh and eleventh scans; thanks also to Tony Turner for letting me know about the Chicago Hush EP and for providing the scan (1).
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.