[78-L] SUN Label 78s

[Michael Biel]

From: Clifford Bolling <78records at cdbpdx.com>
> The SUN label I refer to here is the Memphis, Tennessee label
> where you hear very early Johnny Cash and Elvis recordings. CDB

I think they all knew that -- they were just trying to fun you.
 
>> Greetings. I have several SUN label 78s that exhibit 2 different
>> font styles for the same song title and artist on different records.
>> One record will have bold small font, the other a tall regular weight
>> font. I assume these are the result of earlier and later 
>> pressings/printings. Is one style early and the other later? Which
>> is which? Thanks! CDB

Throughout the history of this label it was pressed in many different
pressing plants, sometimes several simultaneously.  Occasionally it was
because he didn't get his bills paid, and other times it was to get
copies into different markets with a minimum of delay.  I once spent an
afternoon at the Country Music Foundation Library where they had several
hundred Sun 78s and maybe a thousand Sun 45s, going through them to see
if there were any patterns.  There were no consistent trends except the
labels almost universally had distinctly printed shading dots in the
trademark logo.  Dots were not smeared or clustered.

Yes there are occasional counterfeits, but rarely are they of anything
but Elvis.  If the dots are smeared on an Elvis Sun, they ARE
counterfeits. There also are some Cinderella issues -- things that never
really did come out on Sun like the recordings only RCA put out, or
those color vinyl Elvis 78s.  These were noted at the time in the
collector press, but new collectors might not know about these issues,
mainly in the early 80s.

But to answer your question, they might not be earlier or later, they
might be contemporary of each other.

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com