RECORDS
Unproven, this one, but I think it's worth including. At some point in the late '70s or early '80s electrical appliance retailers W.F. Waite of Stubbington, Hampshire, sponsored a single by what was presumably a local band called Leo. Tracks on it were 'The Theme From 'Exodus'' and 'The 'William Tell Overture''. There's no date on the record, but W.F. Waite Ltd was incorporated in 1977 and a petition to wind the firm up was brought in December 1981 by creditors Lugton & Co - the petition was heard in January 1982. That gives a five-year window for the single to appear. A winding-up petition suggests financial difficulties, which pushes the single's release date back from 1981 and narrows the window a little; in addition, sponsoring a record is something that a lately-established business might to in order to gain a little publicity, which makes a year in the late '70s more likely. Lugton & Co was a prominent independent distributor of records, which makes me wonder if W.F. Waite had not only paid for the record to be made but had undertaken to pay for its distribution by Lugton and had failed to meet the resultant bill. That said, it seems doubtful that a small local label would be interested in getting a firm as big as Lugton to handle its record.
As for the single itself, the tracks on it are Rock instrumentals, performed by a talented guitar / bass / drums trio. The band's name and the prominence given to their logo suggest that the label ought to called 'Leo', but the catalogue number's prefix consists of the initials of W.F. Waite, suggesting that they have a claim; I've taken the cowardly way out by putting them both in the page's heading. Radio D.J. and man behind the Fairfield Parlour LP Dave Symonds wasn't the Dave Symonds who recorded and produced this single; I checked with him and he was kind enough to reply. Pressing was by Orlake. Thanks to Robert Lyons For The Info.
| 79 | Leo | The Theme From 'Exodus' / The 'William Tell Overture' | W.F. WAITE | W.F.W | 1 |
