Cube Records

Cube Records was launched on 26 May 1972 by independent music publisher David Platz, and was based at his UK offices for Essex Music.

Platz had entered the arena of record production in the early 1960s, and having had a string of hits by licensing records to major labels (most Essex artists were released on EMI's Regal Zonophone), decided to start his own independent record label in 1970. With Malcolm Jones as label manager he formed Fly Records.

By mid 1972 Marc Bolan had left Fly Records to set up his own label imprint and Essex/Fly producer Tony Visconti had also left with Bolan, setting up his own Good Earth Productions. With new staff brought into the label, Platz decided to promote a new roster of artists and re-launch with a new label named Cube Records.

The headline of the press release issued by Malcolm Jones in May 1972 to communicate this development boldly stated "Essex puts Fly into Cube". A fact literally translated by the label's logo, which consisted of a fly within a wire-frame cube. According to the press release, Fly Records had been limited to operating in the UK, but Cube Records would be an international operation. In effect, Cube simply continued using Fly's catalogue numbering prefix, but with only one Fly artist, guitar virtuoso John Williams, remaining on the new label.

By July 1972 the label's ethos had moved too far from Jones' remit during the Fly days, and he left the label. The company's legacy recordings that had been released via FLY on its TOOFA series were also now brought into Cube, and by the end of the year Cube continued the TOOFA campaign with releases by T. Rex and Procol Harum, while all efforts were focussed on a brand new signing Joan Armatrading, an artist developed by Elton John producer Gus Dudgeon. Cube released Armatrading's first album, Whatever's for Us in 1972.

Cube became Electric Cube, albeit briefly, before its label manager Jeremy Thomas shelved the Cube imprint and established The Electric Record Company, whose Electric Records imprint became the home for new releases.

Cube Records soon ceased producing its own catalogue, opting to license to various catalogue companies over the years. Going full circle, Cube's recordings were incorporated into Onward Music, run by David Platz's son Simon Platz, and Cube’s catalogue has returned to its initial home, Fly Records.

Fly Records

Fly Records is a British independent record label, established in 1970 by the independent music publisher David Platz, and initially managed by Malcolm Jones from the offices of Essex Music in London.

Platz had been producing records independently, in conjunction with record producers funded by Essex, and leasing them to major record labels. These creative collaborations quickly made their mark with hits such as "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (Procol Harum), "Flowers in the Rain", "I Can Hear the Grass Grow" and "Blackberry Way" (The Move) alongside influential recordings from the likes of Beverley Kutner, Tucker Zimmerman and Michael Chapman.

The producer roster involved with Platz included Denny Cordell, Gus Dudgeon, Rodger Bain, Don Paul, Johnny Worth and Tony Visconti, whom Platz had brought over to the UK at Cordell’s initiation.

After a string of hits in the late 1960s licensed via labels Deram and, later, Regal Zonophone, Platz launched his own label Fly Records in 1970. Malcolm Jones had left university to work for EMI, becoming a label manager and creating his own imprint at EMI, Harvest Records, but moved to work for Platz as manager of Fly.

Fly's first release was "Ride a White Swan" by T. Rex, produced by Visconti. The following year the album Electric Warrior was both Fly's and Bolan's first #1 album.

In keeping with Platz’s publishing style, the label chose not to concentrate on a particular sector of the market but preferred to offer an eclectic mix of artists and releases, some aimed directly at the chart and some intended simply to enhance the profiles of new artists or artists who were linked to the Platz's publishing enterprise. Vivian Stanshall, Third World War, John Kongos, Georgia Brown, John Keating and John Williams were all featured on the label's early releases.

In 1972, Fly consolidated their chart success with older material. Four three-track Magni-Fly singles were released which reintroduced songs from the company's back catalogue, such as "A Whiter Shade of Pale", into the UK Singles Chart. An album campaign entitled 'Toofas', (double albums priced as a single), found favour, and albums such as Procol Harum's debut set suddenly made the UK Albums Chart years after their initial release.

Once T. Rex's album Bolan Boogie reached #1 in the UK Albums Chart, departures at Fly HQ forced a change of plan. Jones left the label, Cordell moved to the US forming Shelter Records, and Bolan moved to EMI, where he was given his own imprint, taking Visconti with him. The new Fly team chose to relaunch the label as Cube Records, with a new logo caging the 'Fly' in a cubic jail. A raft of new artists were signed, and Fly Records was shelved as a label in its own right.

By the time the Fly label was revived in 1988 as an independent outlet for various publishing related projects, Platz had incorporated the Fly label into his company Onward Music Ltd., whilst Platz’s publishing company Bucks Music Ltd. remained his core business. The revived label's first signing in 1988 was Babayaga a band fronted by Kirsty MacColl's brother Hamish and recording engineer Matt Wallis.

Following David Platz's death on 20 May 1994, his son Simon Platz continued managing Onward's ongoing archive exploration under the wing of his own publishing company, Bucks Music Group. A host of original tapes thought lost, as well as unreleased and forgotten recordings from unfinished or unreleased projects from the production company, continues to fuel releases through Fly Records and various licencees.

Blue Thumb Records

Blue Thumb Records was an American record label founded in 1968 by Bob Krasnow and former A&M Records executives Tommy LiPuma and Don Graham. Blue Thumb's last record was released in 1978. In 1995, the label was revived and remained active until 2005.

Bob Krasnow had been in the record business since the 1950s, working as a promotion man for King Records and also working for Buddah/Kama Sutra Records. Blue Thumb was originally intended by Captain Beefheart to be the name of his backing band. However, Krasnow did not think the name was right for the group. Later Krasnow chose the name for his label.

Other acts that appeared on the label include Gerry Rafferty, The Credibility Gap, The Crusaders, Hugh Masekela, Aynsley Dunbar's Retaliation (licensed from UK Liberty Records), Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, Jimmy Smith, Dave Mason, The Pointer Sisters, The Hoodoo Rhythm Devils, T. Rex (in its earlier incarnation as Tyrannosaurus Rex, licensed from the UK's Regal Zonophone Records), Ike & Tina Turner, Love,and National Lampoon (on the Banana label imprint).

Blue Thumb originally used independent distribution, but went to Capitol/EMI for distribution in late 1970. Gulf and Western's Famous Music Group took over distribution in mid-1971, then bought the label outright in 1972. Late in 1974, the Famous Music record labels were sold to ABC Records. ABC kept Blue Thumb active for a time, mostly for albums by the Pointer Sisters and the Crusaders as well as some reissues. In 1979 ABC sold its labels to MCA Records, which discontinued the Blue Thumb imprint altogether.

In the UK and Europe, Blue Thumb releases were licensed to Harvest Records (also owned by EMI) from 1969 to 1971, and to Island Records thereafter. In 1995, an anthology CD was released, All Day Thumbsucker Revisited: The History of Blue Thumb Records, consisting of recordings from various artists from 1968 to 1974.

The label was revived in 1995 for blues and soft rock releases. This remained so, even after the 1998 merger with parent Universal Music Group and PolyGram and being put under the fold of the Verve Music Group, continuing to be Verve's imprint for non-jazz releases. In early 2005, the Blue Thumb imprint was deactivated and was replaced with Verve Forecast to handle such releases. UMG's reissue arm Hip-O Records has reissued several Blue Thumb recordings, including such acts as the Crusaders, Dan Hicks & his Hot Licks and the Pointer Sisters.

Regal Zonophone

Regal Zonophone Records was a British record label formed in 1932, through a merger of the Regal and Zonophone labels. This followed the merger of those labels' respective parent companies – the Columbia Graphophone Company and the Gramophone Company – to form EMI. At the merger, those records from the Regal Records catalogue were prefixed 'MR' and those from the Zonophone Records catalogue were prefixed 'T'. Record releases after the merger continued using only the 'MR' prefix.

Originally Regal Zonophone handled American releases from Okeh Records, Victor Records and Columbia Records, as well as offering home-grown recordings by artists such as Gracie Fields and George Formby. The label is also known for its releases of Salvation Army (particularly brass band) music.

In the 1950s the Australian division of Regal Zonophone played an important role in the emerging Australian country music genre, signing several emerging country stars including Slim Dusty, Smoky Dawson, Reg Lindsay and Chad Morgan. Slim Dusty's 1957 Regal Zonophone hit "A Pub with No Beer" became the biggest-selling Australian recording ever released up to that time.

EMI revived the Regal Zonophone imprint in 1967 to handle the Essex Music/Straight Ahead producing account that had moved from Deram (after one Procol Harum single and two singles by The Move) and continued well into the early 1970s, with successful producers Denny Cordell and Tony Visconti both having production companies releasing records through the label. During this period the label had both album and single success with artists such as The Move, Procol Harum, Joe Cocker and Tyrannosaurus Rex. During the mid-1970s, many of these production deals ended and, despite a few sporadic releases by Blue Mink, Geordie, Dave Edmunds, and Grunt Futtock (a one-off project featuring Roy Wood, Steve Marriott, Peter Frampton and Andy Bown), EMI stopped using the imprint as a major pop label. Many of the label's artists moved to Fly Records or to the EMI imprint.

Regal Zonophone was revived by EMI in 1985-86 and again at the end of the 1990s as a reissue label. This incarnation of the label is no longer active, as EMI relaunched Regal and Zonophone as separate imprints of Parlophone. In 2013, both Regal and Zonophone were taken over by Warner Music Group after Universal Music Group spun off Parlophone from EMI, at the request of international regulators.

NB Regal Zonophone is one of the few record labels commemorated in song, namely "Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone)" from the album Shine On Brightly by Regal Zonophone artists Procol Harum and mentioned in "Repetition" by the Fall.

Regal Zonophone originally released Thrillington, a 1977 album produced by Paul McCartney, under the pseudonym of Percy "Thrills" Thrillington.