Otis Redding: Otis Blue LP 1965 GB 1st Press - Volt Records/Atlantic Mauve Label

	£		15
	$		20

This is a rare record. It's the first press in London of Otis Redding's 3rd record "Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul". I understand that there were two initial presses done in London in late 1965 - a stereo version and a mono version. This one is the mono version, suited to my family's old gramophone. This was a matter of months after the album was put together from a 24-hour recording session in Memphis in July 1965. It was on the face of it nothing special really. An album of mainly covers and 2 or 3 Otis originals and, presumably, to try and break into a wider market, Otis put a picture of a blond Caucasian woman on the cover. I'd heard some of his earlier stuff like "Pain in My Heart" and loved what he was doing but we knew nothing about him in England and did not even know what he looked like. That picture was no help at all. There's a very enlightening write-up on the back of the cover which redeems things a bit but it is basically a bad design of cover for what is one of the best LPs of the 20th Century which figures in so many people's top 100 or 200 LPs.
I would have had this for a Christmas present in 1965. It's one of the best records that I ever had. It is on the Mauve Grooved Atlantic label, used by them during the early 1960s and only superseded by the Plum label in 1966. People generally only caught on to Otis in the UK from 1966 after the quality of this record and his performances became well known. Thus not many discs were produced in the 1st Presses in the Mauve-Grooved style. Most early discs you will find are the Plum Label variety but they, I understand, are 1966/2nd press onwards. The mauve grooved version features the motif of a segmented wheel on the disc labels and in the Atlantic name display on the front of the cover. If you watch this wheel on the label as the disc revolves on the turntable, it becomes a ball, taking on a 3-dimensional character and appears to be spinning!
It was manufactured under licence from Atlantic by Decca in London and printed by the MacNeil Press at London SE1. It has the classic flip-overs of early 1960s UK albums (only 2 in this case) and laminated in "Clarifoil", a British Celanese of Derby product.
There is an accreditation to "Volt Records" with the Volt Lightning Motif under the track listing on the front cover and the Atlantic Motif at bottom right. These are two distinguishing features of the 1st press cover for the ATL5041 Mono disc. Otis was signed to Volt records, who appear from research to have been a sister company of Stax Records and it was in the Stax studio that the recordings were made with the Booker T Band and the Mar-Keys Horns. Stax and Volt were not record manufacturers or distributors however so they licensed Atlantic to mass produce and market the album. 
The other feature of the cover is that the card used in the production was quite soft and flimsy and has resulted in a tear and loss of some of the edging on the back of the cover. A great shame about which nothing can now be done. The cover therefore is in quite poor condition though actually apart from this, the rest is sound and firm.
The disc itself is broadly in very good condition. It is a good quality of vinyl weighing in at just over 150 grams. It has had a lot of plays over the years as you can tell from the "spider marks" on the label, but not many plays in the last 25 years. There is some background noise but given the volume of the music this is not intrusive. There are 2 minor clicks in "My Girl" and on the introduction to "Change Gonna Come", when the horns play a quiet introduction, there are about 6 clicks for the same number of revolutions. They are loud and quite intrusive but very short-lived. On play-through, there are no "jumps" or "sticks" on my equipment.
The inner cover is sound and of thick paper. There are no distinguishing features printed on this cover so I can't be sure that this is the original in which the record came, because sometimes with more than one disc out of the packets it would be easy to mix them. It is definitely from the time though because a "Cowlings Records" sticker sealed the top of the inner and this is the shop in Leicester (now long gone) where I bought most of my records.
It's well played but not worn-out album of timeless music and it proves that the best music is usually better the more spontaneous and "live" it is. The rarity of the first press suggest that I should post out by recorded delivery. I use top quality LP mailers and pack the items separately to avoid seam splits etc.