A branch of a company called Audio and Design (Recording) Ltd, which was based initially at 7, High Street, Maidenhead; by November 1971 it had moved to St. Michaels, Shinfield Road, Shinfield Green, Reading, according to one of its adverts in 'Studio Sound' magazine. The company offered a recording and transcription service which was run by one of the directors of Audio and Design, Mike Beville; its records came out on the MJB label and usually had BEV prefixes. MJB appears to have started up in or around 1961; there is an advert for it in 'The Tape Recorder' magazine for June 1962, and the catalogue number of the first EP shown above, BEV EP-34, suggests that it had been responsible for 33 recordings prior to that one, which was recorded in April 1962. An advert in 'The Tape Recorder' for August 1965 says that MJB specialised in "the production of microgroove records from Professional and Amateur recordings (Acetate copies; mono and stereo pressings), studio, mobile, 'off the air' and all recording services". The company continued to advertise in Trade magazines; the latest advert that can be found online came in 'Studio Sound' for June 1974. According to an interview with current ADR owner Ian Harley on the KMR Audio site Audio and Design enjoyed success with a limiter that the company had developied in order to improve the quality of its records, so it stopped offering a recording service and concentrated on selling that limiter - and later other equipment - to the recording industry. No date is mentioned for the cessation, but given that the adverts appear to have stopped in the middle of 1974 some time not long after that seems likely.
Generally catalogue numbers of MJB's records appear to have shared the same numerical series - both sides of MJB records had their own consecutive numbers - but there were different prefixes for singles (BEV SP), EPs (BEV EP, BEV LLP) and albums (BEV LP); some EPs can be found with 'BEV LP' prefixes. There also seems to have been an 'AD SP-100' series for singles; at least one example exists, AD SP-112 / 113, 'Dirty City' b/w 'I've Got It' by This Kind, which was pressed for John Graham Recordings and has a date of the 1st of January 1967 on it. The 'MJB' prefix also appears to have been used, but it's difficult to guess how often - MJB recordings were private pressings and were generally made in small numbers, so while the catalogue numbers grew reasonably high examples of the records online are few and far between. There was also a separate MJB-2000 series, which seems to have been a late development. MJB made records for other companies, and its 'BEV' prefixes can be found on a number of other labels, such as the one shown in the fourth scan; the most commonly found are those on Ralph Tuck Promotions, by The Singing Postman. Like the Ralph Tucks, they tend to be from the 1960s, but there's a possible 1970 one in this site: see 'Globe'.
As a rule there are no dates on the majority of MJB records, but an EP by Richard Smart and David Bull, 'Give Me A Face' (BEV LP-1183) is reported to be from 1969, so anything with a smaller number is presumably from that decade. At least one 7" can be placed in the '70s, however: an accompanying page of notes to an EP by the Royal Holloway Chapel Choir (MJB-2011 / 12) gives the date of the death of one of the composers, William Harris, as 1973, which puts that record (3) after that date. Given the lack of adverts for MJB after June 1974, mentioned above, 1974 seems a decent bet. The catalogue number of that EP was MJB-2011. On that basis MJB LLP-2006 / 7, a double pack of EPs featuring a concert by the Pupils of the John Stocker Middle School, may well also be from our decade. As for the label design: it stayed basically the same throughout, with variations in the sizes of the logo and the wording. It did however come in a variety of different colours, of which yellow and dark blue seem to be the most common. A selection can be seen on the 45cat site.
Copyright 2018 Robert Lyons.