A small independent label, launched by Billy Russell, Billy Carruthers and Michael Lingard, who ran the Bluebird Record shop in Church Street, London W2. Blue Inc. appears to have been a varied label, with items in a mixture of styles including Reggae, Disco / Dance and New Wave on its catalogue. One of those Reggae singles, Richard Ace's version of the Bee Gees' 'Stayin' Alive' (INC-2), made it into the Top 75 for a couple of weeks in 1978, but not by much. Catalogue numbers reached INC-14, though INC-9 seems not to have been used; several of the singles appeared in 12" form, with INCT or INCD prefixes. The company doesn't seem to have released any records after 1981. Distribution of the first single was by Spartan; WEA handled the second, which had a note to that effect at the top of its label (2). Pinnacle then took over for a few months, and the reference to WEA disappeared (3); INC-4 was picked up by Pinnacle and re-released by them as PIN-75. With INC-6 and INC-7 Blue Inc returned to WEA, again briefly. Two different kinds of label were used: those on the first single were mid-blue with the usual 'rights and forbids' text reduced in size and surrounded by stars, moons and planets (1); for the second and subsequent singles the blue darkened, the logo evolved, the cosmic scene became more complex, and the 'rights and forbids' moved to a band on the perimeter (2, 3). The people at Bluebird Records ran another label from 1983-c.87, 'Bluebird', but it is beyond the scope of this site; there's a singles listing on 45 cat .
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.