Charly Records????

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

This record company has a huge catalogue of great blues, dub, reggae, and jazz recordings. Lee Perry, Lightning Hopkins, etc etc etc. Strangely, it looks like they dumped hundreds of releases on the market on one day in 1999...where are they now? What happened?

― Gaz, Wednesday, 11 February 2004 02:51 (twenty-two years ago)

don't know but i've got their nina simone story compilation album, which I played non-stop for about a month, a few months ago. my favourite nina albums are all weird compilations. first one i bought was some damed australian pirated thingy, now that i think about it

― Marnie, Wednesday, 11 February 2004 03:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah all the Mayfield albums on Charly are hard to find.

― Patrick South (Patrick South), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 03:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Do Charly have legit releases?
I've always thought of them as a bootleg label, but for all I know this might just be some of their releases (like those horrible-sounding issues they did of Magma and Gong albums)

― Øystein H-O (Øystein H-O), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 03:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Call me dumb, but how do bootlegs make it into record stores?

― Marnie, Wednesday, 11 February 2004 03:28 (twenty-two years ago)

weren't they the ones who were re-releasing all the old BYG albums? or at least a lot of the byg 80s issues of those albums are on charly

― JaXoN (JasonD), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 05:48 (twenty-two years ago)

hazy memories, but I think they were/are a British company that there were some licensing discrepencies for... i.e. some of the stuff may've been legit elsewhere, but wasn't in the US or maybe it just wasn't at all.

Or am I thinking of Edsel? I don't know. Whatever became of charly, didn't they basically morph into some other name after the troubles of '99 times?

I don't know. hazy as I say.

― nick ring (nick ring), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 06:12 (twenty-two years ago)

hi nick!

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 06:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Did a quick google search. here's the first relevent item--from the bomp list in '96.. I was on it at the time. I think it's still going -- chelsea? (hi!)..

anyhow, here's the quote:

Charly lost a lawsuit initiated by MCA Records over the use of the Chess Records catalogue. Basically, MCA bought the catalogue from Sugarhill Records in 1995, but it seems that Sugarhill had some previous side deals with people like Marshall Sehorn's Red Dog Express company. Several U.S. court decisions over the years had established MCA's legal right to the catalogue, but Charly had always ignored these, saying that they had no legal standing in Britain. The British case was finally decided at the end of April, and there was a long article about it in Billboard on the first week of May. Yes, I agree that Charly was a good source of reissues, but I also think that they got what they deserved!

― nick ring (nick ring), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 06:17 (twenty-two years ago)

yes, bomp chelsea
i think chris and i gave you a ride home from Terrastock one year (i hope i don't have that wrong). otherwise just hi, because i never noticed you here b4.

anyway, yeah this label, charly, were they the ones doing the Burl Ives thing?

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 06:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Guess thats why they dumped the whole catalogue on one day, eh! Where are they now...hiding in a basement in Streatham, most likely.

― Gaz, Thursday, 12 February 2004 01:52 (twenty-two years ago)

seriously fantastic stuff, and as it came through at bargain prices because of the legals (i'm guessing)(ie cheapy shops got it throught the usual overstock/deletions/recievership route) i've got heaps of it!

― mullygrubber (gaz), Thursday, 12 February 2004 02:04 (twenty-two years ago)

That was Jean-Luc Young's company. I knew about him through other friends in London. Anyone know where he is now? Last I heard he was 1) getting sued and 2) off to Hong Kong.

― Thea, Thursday, 12 February 2004 02:17 (twenty-two years ago)

OT to chelsea:

yah, one and the same. Got a ride down to LA w/ you after T2. If my memory is correct, I sat next to Mr. Tony Dale and he played a tape of what I think became the second Salamander album on Camera Obscura.

Thanks again much for your hospitality.

OnT:

I have a number of the blues reissues that I got pretty darn cheap a while back. some fine stuff.

Ok, so if Edsel and Charly aren't connected, is there any such story about Edsel?

― nick ring (nick ring), Thursday, 12 February 2004 10:24 (twenty-two years ago)

tony dale is a credit to australia

― the surface noise (electricsound), Thursday, 12 February 2004 10:38 (twenty-two years ago)

good Funkadelic records are on Charly!

― Pablo Cruise (chaki), Thursday, 12 February 2004 11:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember being told a story (ie I HAVE NO PROOF OF THIS IT MIGHT JUST BE A LOAD OF BLATHER) that someone connected with Parliament / Funkadelic tried to stop Charly's reissue programme but Charly just went ahead and did it semi-legally, flooding the market with product and rendering the lawsuit moot (there was no point spending money on pursuing the case because the product was out there anyway).

The amazing run of Southern Soul reissues on Charly in the 80s is pretty much responsible for my love of that music. For that, bless them.

― Tim (Tim), Thursday, 12 February 2004 11:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Now everything is being re-issued and re-packaged but back in the olden days Charly were about the only ones putting out vintage R&B, Blues, Rockabilly and, as Tim said, were pretty much responsible for getting a lot of people into those scenes. They have my undying respect.

― LondonLee (LondonLee), Thursday, 12 February 2004 13:39 (twenty-two years ago)

esoj otm about Tony Dale--a fine man (and his s.o. is a fine supplier of chocolates to the bereft-of-chocolate-at-just-the-moment-they-need-it)

― Orbit (Orbit), Thursday, 12 February 2004 19:30 (twenty-two years ago)

It's hard not to respect the sharing of rare music -- except that the artists on those records never saw a dime of the millions Jean-Luc reaped from his releases. Millions.

― Thea, Thursday, 12 February 2004 19:56 (twenty-two years ago)

two months pass...

Kind of bad news to hear about the reported end of Charly Records, I was surfing the net right now to find them about distributing new product releases by: Kleeer (now reformed and back together, the original Atlantic Records group lineup), Joe Bataan (he is riding high as a guest vocalist with LTJ X-Perience "When The Rain Begins To Fall," a new single on the VampiSoul label, now Joe is armed with his own latin soul funk lp and a live lp recorded in Los Angeles); Betty Wright presents "Bombshell" (hot female hip-hoppper, recorded before Betty's multi-million selling production of Joss Stone), blues singer
"Angelo Alexander Sings Bessie Smith," the unreleased Marvin Gaye PSA of "Washington, Washington," Motherless Child CD, featuring their UK single "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child," etc. Now that Charly is gone, contact me or forward to any UK/France/Germany soul-funk-jazz distributor ready for some action with these solid releases.---Mark Matlock/Andromeda International Records androintl@earthlink.net

― Mark Matlock, Saturday, 24 April 2004 17:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Joe Bataan (he is riding high as a guest vocalist with LTJ X-Perience "When The Rain Begins To Fall," a new single on the VampiSoul label, now Joe is armed with his own latin soul funk lp and a live lp recorded in Los Angeles)

I saw him last summer and wasn't too impressed, but I hope he has gotten back into form.

― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 24 April 2004 17:45 (twenty-one years ago)

I posted an article about what led to his recent return to performing:

Joe Bataan: Search & Destroy

― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 24 April 2004 17:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Charly Records released last year in Brazil a LOT of double cds - the bob marley jamaican records, blues and jazz artists (nat king cole, john coltrane, albert collins,...), reggae and rockabilly compilations, a funkadelic compilation, a small faces compilation, the immediate records singles,etc.

i bought a LOT of these cds. the song quality is not that great, but each double album was priced very low - 2 dollars in Brazilian money!

The majority of brazilian people do not know any of these artists. That is why these kind of releases are not very common in here. I must be the only person who bought these albuns...

― elvis is dead, Saturday, 24 April 2004 18:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Lots of good avant jazz on Charly - (Mr.) BYG stuff.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Sunday, 25 April 2004 09:45 (twenty-one years ago)

i wish they wouldn't splash their ugly big red logo over the covers, though. it seems to lend their releases a certain cheapness. also, sound quality not so great. i've always thought there were a handful of other reissue labels (many of them in the uk) that were preferable, although charly does sometimes give you a lot of value for the buck.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Sunday, 25 April 2004 11:49 (twenty-one years ago)

sixteen years pass...

Hi,

I was production manager at charly records during the chess court case. I bailed and left before the result!

― Georgelondon, Tuesday, 4 August 2020 16:09 (five years ago)

Sounds like you got out while the getting was good, then!

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 4 August 2020 16:12 (five years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.