RECORDS
Independent label: Hollick And Taylor custom recording label of the Hollick & Taylor studios of Birmingham, and thus an elder sister to Grosvenor Records. The type of music which appeared on Hollick and Taylor seems in the main to have been the same kind of thing which appeared on other pay-to-record labels: discs by school and church choirs, club / cabaret artists, brass bands, and so on. Occasionally some of those artists had recorded, or would record, for other companies: the Rockin' Berries and the Fortunes had had a number of hits, and Renato Pagliari eventually teamed up with Renée and had a number one with 'Save Your Love' in 1982. The band called Unicorn which made 'Going Home' (HT/SP-1258), however, was not that which recorded for Transatlantic. Singles and EPs shared the same 1000 numbering; EPs were prefixed HT/EP with an additional 'S' if the record was stereo, while singles had an HT/SP prefix, again with the conditional 'S'. The Hollick and Taylor studios started up in the early '60s; the earliest record that I have been able to date was from 1964 but there were many others previous to it. Early labels had a striking yellow-and-black-and-white design, which lasted until at least HT/EP-1101 and appears to have been used for some time after that for the company's tape-to-disc service. The simpler green-on-white design which followed it seems not to have lasted for long, and was replaced by a more professional-looking one which came in various colour combinations. Pressing of those that I have seen in the vinyl has been either by British Homophone, Decca or Orlake.
