RECORDS
Atlantic Records was An American giant, formed in 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson in New York City. Jerry Wexler joined in 1953 and contributed hugely to the label's R'n'B / Soul development; Nesuhi Ertegun did the same for its Jazz catalogue when he joined in 1955. The label was sold to Warner Seven Arts in 1967, and operated separately under the Warner-Seven Arts corporation; Warner-Seven Arts was bought by the Kinney Corporation in the same year. Atlantic joined Warner and recent Kinney acquisition Elektra in 1970 to form WEA. Hugely successful down the decades, in the fields of Soul, Funk, Disco and Rock, the label is still going on today as part of Time-Warner. Its biggest Singles artists in the '70s were Euro-Disco band Boney M, who had nine successive Top 10 hits from 1976-79. British manufacture and distribution in the mid '60s were by Decca, and catalogue numbers were in an AT-4000 series. The label was black with silver printing, demos being yellow-and-black. In March 1966 Polydor took over manufacture and distribution, at which point the label design changed slightly, the colour turned to red and 584-000 catalogue numbers were adopted. Singles from this era generally had solid or three-pronged centres. The 584-000s became 2091-000s when Polydor adopted seven-digit numbers for all its products, in April 1970. These singles were often dinked at the factory, and supplied with three-legged 'spiders'. At the end of January 1972 Atlantic left Polydor and joined its sister labels Warner Bros, Reprise and Elektra under the Kinney Corporation umbrella. CBS and Kinney had a joint manufacturing and distribution arrangement, which embraced Atlantic at this point. Kinney having adopted K-00000 numbering for all its records, Atlantic singles were put in a K-10000 series; they were also given a new 'halved' label. With several colour variations, this design lasted throughout the '70s. Generally speaking, red-and-blue labels appear to have been reserved for Soul singles, and red-and-green labels for Rock and Pop records, though there seem to have been some exceptions. Some early issues of both the blue and the green labels had white centres. There were some minor changes: a hollow 'A' appeared on the labels from around September 1975 and the perimeter script changed to include a credit to the Warner Communications Company and the company's logo. Red-and-fawn labels appeared from time to time in the mid '70s, but they are uncommon - the only two I have seen have been on Jazz Rock records. The occasional injection moulded label can be found, thanks to contract pressings being done by Phonodisc. There was also a short-lived Country series: see the 'Atlantic Country' page. When WEA set up its own distribution facility, early in 1976, Atlantic moved with the other labels in the group. CBS continued to press Atlantic singles until around the end of 1978, at which point WEA became resposible for manufacture as well as distribution. For the first couple of years promo labels were in a style similar to that used by the Pye group but in 1974 a CBS-style 'large thin A' design was adopted. The American Atlantic label had its own special design; it made an occasional appearance in Britain, among all the 'halved' labels. It featured on a 'Black Label Revival' series, in 1975, which had a special sleeve, and it could also be found in its black-and-red colouring on a few singles licensed from Migration Records. In somewhat changed form it reappeared at the end of the decade. As far as company sleeves are concerned, Atlantic had its own red sleeve for most of the Seventies, but in 1978 WEA started using a common sleeve for all its labels, including Atlantic. The design of this sleeve changed after about a year. In 1971 a short-lived 'Action Replay' series of reissues, common to several of the Polydor family labels, was marked accordingly and came in a special sleeve, while a later series of reissues, '208 Radio Luxembourg Atlantic Gold' from February 1974, had special sleeves but no distinctive label markings. In 1975 certain disco-orientated records were released as double 'A' sides in a dedicated 'Disco Double' sleeve; again there was nothing on the labels to distinguish them. Several independent companies leased material to Atlantic. Sometimes these records were released on the Atlantic label with the originating company's logo on it, as is the case with the Eruption single shown. Quite often, however, the records appeared on the originating labels, if only temporarily in some cases; these singles shared the main Atlantic K-10000 numbering. See Big Tree, Cotillion, Nemperor, Pacific and WMOT for examples. This discography is full of holes (some of which are due to the numbers being used for overseas issues), there may be errors in it. Numbers which were used for issues on labels other than Atlantic are marked accordingly. Thanks to Robert Lyons For The Info.
A FULL DISCOGRAPHY OF THE ATLANTIS 2091-000 SERIES 1970-1974 CAN BE FOUND HERE
A FULL DISCOGRAPHY OF THE ATLANTIC K 10000 SERIES 1971-1977 CAN BE FOUND HERE
A FULL DISCOGRAPHY OF THE ATLANTIC K 11000 SERIES 1971-1977 CAN BE FOUND HERE
