A 1958 ISSUE 78 ON THE UK EMBASSY LABEL

MAUREEN EVANS COVERING CONNIE FRANCIS' HITS

STUPID CUPID

CAROLINA MOON

Embassy was Woolworth's own 78 record label and the records were produced by Oriole records. Not surprisingly Oriole used its own artists to make cover versions of the hits of the day for Woolworths - and this cover was down to a young Maureen Evans.

Maureen went on to become a star in her own right on the "Oriole" label with five hits in the UK  charts - the biggest "But I do" reaching No 3.

She had performed in many stage shows before making it as a recording artiste at the age of just 18 - and now she teaches at a stage school in her home town of Cardiff.

HISTORY OF THE EMBASSY LABEL

In 1953, just a year before the US release of Elvis Presley's "That's Alright Mama", a WOOLWORTHS company business review identified the increasing significance of popular music: sales of American performers like Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney and Frankie Laine were steady if not spectacular, and it was believed that this type of music (rather than classical, band or children's music) presented strong commercial opportunities. With retail price maintenance embodied in law, the only way in which it was felt that Woolworths could compete against the more established and specialist music retailers was to develop a cheaper alternative--budget music. Thus, the concept of a record label which would sell near-identical copies of popular hits at a substantially lower price was born. 

In his discussion of cover versions, Griffiths has distinguished between "rendition ... a straightforwardly faithful version of the original ... [and] ... transformation ... a more determined claim on, even an appropriation of, the original" . From the outset, the cover versions planned by Woolworths were unequivocal renditions--precise copies, whose likeness to the original was seen as their principal objective and greatest asset. 

After discussions with a number of potential partners, Woolworths chose Oriole Records, already a successful label in its own right, to produce an own-brand label specialising in covers of current popular hits, backed up by a library of perennial classics. The label was to be called Embassy Records. While Woolworths would sell the products exclusively through its stores in the UK, Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, and West Germany, the agreement allowed Oriole to market the same material in other territories; in fact, very positive sales figures were recorded in Belgium (on the Teeny label) and the Netherlands (on the Disco Foon label).

 The performers used by Oriole for the Embassy project generally fell into one of three categories. Some were well known musicians who were happy to record under an assumed name. Some were session musicians, for whom the recording was simply one more engagement. And some were aspiring performers, who saw an Embassy recording contract and the experience it provided as the first steps on a potential route to stardom. To keep costs down, all were paid a single session fee, rather than a royalty.

As the impact of rock 'n' roll made its way across the Atlantic, Embassy reduced its covers of perennial classics in order to concentrate more exclusively on contemporary chart music. In December 1955 the Canadians' version of Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock" was released. The presence of a cover version of Frankie Laine's "Hawkeye" on the other side was significant, since it indicated that little thought was given to presenting similar tracks on the one disc; the only criterion was real (or anticipated) chart success. Even stranger was the flipside of the Canadians' cover of Haley's next hit, "See You Later Alligator"; released in April 1956, it featured a completely different singer (Pearl Cart performing "Our Melody"). In fact the practice of releasing tracks on a single disc by two (or more) unrelated performers would become increasingly commonplace as Embassy sought to maximize the number of successful songs it could reproduce, with little attention to consistencies of genre.

 The constant challenge faced by Woolworths, of course, was to predict which forthcoming releases by the original or "real" performers would become hits, and therefore lend themselves to duplication by Embassy's roster of artists. Such estimations were crucial: if the original record failed to reach the charts and thus remained unheard by much of the music-buying public, it would be impossible for the cheaper cover to attract many purchasers. While little risk was involved in predicting the success of records by US artists such as Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, the Everly Brothers and, as the decade wore on, British stars like Cliff Richard, the Shadows, and Adam Faith, accurate judgements about records by new or unfamiliar performers presented greater problems.

The newer seven-inch 45 rpm format (for singles and EPs) was adopted by the label in May 1958 but they were still releasing 78's well into 1960 some of which were not released as a 78 by the original artists! Some of the later 78 releases in 1959 and 1960 are now very hard to find.