More ultra-cheap label fun! JEB, Irene, Owl, Folk Music, Record PAK

Last post, I shared twelve fake hits from the cheap, cheap, cheap early-1950s label called TunePAC--"fake hits" being sound-alike knock-offs which were released mostly by budget (or, as I call them, junk) labels, though bigger outfits were guilty, as well, including the majors.  Not as often, but there were fake hits offered on RCA's budget label RCA Camden, and on Columbia's Harmony and record club labels.  And the smaller (but non-junk) label Cadence issued at least a couple of LPs titled 8 Top Hits, both featuring its own artists covering then-current hits.  Respectable labels were not above the "Get the latest hits--in our own versions" game, so we can't be too hard on Tops, Prom, Royale, and the other cheapos.  Unless we want to be.  Personally, I find it fun to pick on them.  In reality, I love them, of course--I wouldn't have so many if I didn't.

Fake hits, by the way, continued past the 1950s--I even have some from the '80s.  (Fake Disco, anyone?) For all I know, the things are still happening in one form or another.  I think most collectors would be surprised at how many showed up in the 1960s and 1970s, periods when the young rock audience was allegedly too hip to buy such things.

Anyway, TunePAC was the star of the last post, and today's five labels are from the same mysterious group, apparently located in Chicago.  The five labels are JEB, Irene, Owl, Folk Music, and Record PAK.  Just why the cheap groups, including this one, insisted on generating so many sub-labels, I have no idea.  We collectors tend to explain the cheap sub-sub-labels as a scheme to trick buyers into purchasing the same tracks under different names or credited to different folks, and that was part of it, yes.  But I think part of the goal was to make each group look bigger and badder than it actually was, which is a con that would have only worked within the trade.  Only other groups in the industry would know, for example, that JEB and Owl were from the same group--unless, of course, an angry buyer figured out that his JEB copy of Come on to My House was the exact same track as the Owl label's Come on-a My House.  Then again, both tracks are credited to the same singer--Jean Ryan--so was there in fact an intent to deceive?  After all, we know that cheapo labels were careless, as a rule.  Maybe this group simply forgot it had already issued the four tracks on JEB, and went ahead and stuck them on Owl.  The junk operations saved money on quality control by not having any--in this group, the label typos alone confirm this.  Take the one I just mentioned--Come on to My House.  Or, better yet, the title of our sixteenth track--We Kiss in the Shadows. Priceless.

The Irene label's omission of the comma from My Truly, Truly Fair is nothing by comparison.  You'll notice that I accidentally included the comma on the rip itself.  My mistake.

Anyway, as little as I know about record marketing or its history, logic tells us marketing was way more complicated before the days of clicking on an item and paying for it with PayPal.  It's possible that you had to sell yourself within the trade as well as to potential buyers.  You had to get your stuff into the stores--in the case of the junk labels, into drugstore racks and such--and who knows what hoops an aspiring cheapie line had to jump through?  Not me, clearly.

Four of these labels appear to have focused on pop hits, while the other two--Folk Music and Record PAK--focused on country.  Why two labels for country?  Again, logic is absent.  Another reason to love these things!  And, of course, we don't know that there weren't more labels in this group. Maybe a couple more are lurking out there on eBay or in a dusty flea market bin, just waiting to be found and exposed to a world which has already had enough bad Guy Mitchell knock-offs.

Last post, I praised the performers on TunePAC, but there's some less than stellar singing and playing this time around.  For instance, there's the unidentified artist singing through his nose on Loveliest Night of the Year.  (I guess he figured, if it worked for Vaughn Monroe....)  And the organist on that same side, who does a solo version (!) of My Truly, Truly Fair, is none other than Milt Herth!  An actual "name" in this label group--someone I'd heard of and who I assumed was a musician to be reckoned with.  In fact, his style is corny beyond belief.  I listened to a couple of Decca and Capitol tracks by Herth on Youtube, and it's the same skating-rink sound.

On the other hand, Jean Ryan's Come on-a/Come on to My House is terrific, as is the small jazz group on How High the Moon, especially the person on accordion.  Whoever they were, it's too bad they were handed a name like "Music Makers."  Yes, they're making music.  Duhh.  I guess it's the price you pay for showing up on labels called JEB and Owl, and I'm sure the price they were paid wasn't much.  And the country singers are okay, and their backers better.  When ripping, I juggled the first four tracks between the JEB and Owl labels, picking the less worn of the two.

Let me insert an extra observation here--as if cheap-label history wasn't already complicated enough, there's a problem with the "sound-alike" label that collectors, including myself, use so often when talking about these things.  In fact, quite a number of so-called sound-alikes made no attempt to sound like the originals.  Many did, many didn't.  For instance, JEB/Irene wisely made no effort to copy the sound and arrangement of Les Paul and Mary Ford's How High the Moon (good luck with that), though they did give us a very nice version.  Plenty of sound-alikes weren't, especially early in the fake-hits game, but of course I'll continue using the term, simply because it's standard, and because we know what it refers to.  One thing all of these exploitation labels and tracks shared in common was the desire to steal a portion of the major labels' market.  They were parasites.

The JEB/Irene/Owl group (Owl group!) really had little chance of success, and it appears to have lasted only about two years.  Which was beating the owls--I mean, odds.  But it left us with some highly enjoyable relics!

All of these are 78 rpm EPs ripped by me from my collection:






LINK:   JEB, Irene, Owl, and more





Come on-a My House/Come on to My House--Jean Ryan (JEB/Owl Records 5005)
Shanghai--Jean Ryan (Same)
Too Young--Bill Scott w. Dan Belloc and Orch. (Same)
How High the Moon--Music Makers (Same)
So Long--Phylis Brown, The Neighbors (Folk Music 107)
Tennessee Waltz--Phylis Brown, The Neighbors (Same)
Hey Good Lookin'--No artist credited (Folk Music 136)
Half as Much--Al Harmon (Folk Music 146)
Salty Dog Rag--Steve Thompson (Record PAK 149)
Wild Side of Life--Steve Thompson (Same)
Easy on the Eyes--Rusty Gill (Same)
The Gold Rush Is Over--Prairie Ramblers, vocal: Wally Moore (Same)
Loveliest Night of the Year--Milt Herth (Irene Records 502)
My Truly Truly Fair--Milt Herth (Same)
Sweet Violets--Danny Baker and Bunny Roberts (Same)
We Kiss in the Shadows--Robin Reed (Same)
Waitin' Just for You--R.B. Gibson (Folk Music 131)
Down Yonder --R.B. Gibson (Same)


Lee