[78-L] TOPS artists (was Bud Roman..Who he?.. )

[Jeff Sultanof]

I once interviewed Cy Leslie, who started Pickwick, Design and a whole batch
of other budget labels. A fascinating man who impressed me as being a very
up-and-up businessman. Whatever records he put out he had deals on
(including Frank Sinatra) or he'd purchased the labels outright (Tops). He
made a deal with Capitol to get the rights to issue recordings that were not
in print. This is how he wound up issuing a number of sides Capitol never
issued, and he put out Sinatra albums using tracks that Capitol deleted from
their catalog. He also engineered the deal where CBS Video obtained home
video rights to the MGM catalog, and he described to me the separate deal he
made with CBS TV to get the rights to put "The Wizard of Oz" out on VHS and
Beta, since the TV network had exclusive broadcast rights at the time.

He was very proud of the Pickwick operation.

Jeff Sultanof

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 8:37 PM, Steven C. Barr <stevenc at interlinks.net>wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dan Van Landingham" <danvanlandingham at yahoo.com>
> > The Jonny and Jack you mentioned:were they Johnny Wright(married to Kitty
> > Wells)and Jack Anglin?Anglin was killed in a 1963 car wreck that Patsy
> > Cline attended at the time of her death.I had a TOPS
> > 45 of "Why,Baby,Why" and it was as good as the version I heard by George
> > Jones.I don't see much
> > country on TOPS but I do see alot of '40s-'60s country on albums leased
> by
> > Pickwick on labels like
> > Design,Stereo Spectrum and several others.I believe Bill McCall,at Four
> > Star Records,leased those
> > masters to Pickwick.The artists were the likes of Jimmy Dean,Patsy
> > Cline,Maddox Brothers and Rose,
> > Charlie Ryan(of "Hot Rod Lincoln" fame),Wynn Stewart and Slim Willett of
> > "Don't Let the Stars Get in
> > Your Eyes" fame from '53.Bob Sandy is the only TOPS country artist that
> > comes to my mind at the pr-
> > esent.
> >
> Pickwick (et al) seems to have reissued (legally or otherwise...?!) whole
> bunches of recordings
> originally from fifties-era "indie labels" and other "unlikely to sue"
> sources! I recall (but no longer
> own) an LP which near as I could figure came from mid-thirties
> transcriptions...I aurally verified
> that the tracks were NOT taken from the ARC recordings of the tunes...!
>
> And it does seem possible that they could have used the various tracks that
> appeared
> "semi-anonymously" on the various multi-track 78's of the fifties...?!
>
> Steven C. Barr
>
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