The Rex label dates back to the 78rpm years. It was started up by the Crystalate Gramophone Company in 1933, and was taken over by Decca, along with the rest of Crystalate, in 1937. In 1948 Decca put the label into hibernation; it was reawakened in 1965 as the label of Decca's Dublin subsidiary Irish Record Factors, under manager Michael Geogheagan, and from that point it served as a vehicle for Irish music. Numbering was in an R-11000 series for singles, while EPs, of which there were few, had their own EPR-5000 numbers (2). Rex tasted success in 1970 when Dana's, 'All Kinds Of Everything' b/w 'Channel Breeze' (R-11054; 3/70) topped the Singles Chart on the back of its success in the Eurovision Song Contest; her follow-up, 'Who Put The Lights Out' b/w 'Always A Few Things' (R-11062; 1/71) also charted, reaching the No.14 spot, but that was as good as it got. The label seems to have expired in the early 1980s, after Decca was bought by Polygram. Joe Cuddy's 'Any Dream Will Do' b/w 'Close Every Door' (R-11090; 3/74) never entered the charts but it proved a steady enough seller to remain on catalogue and to deserve re-pressing by Polygram, which resulted in injection moulded copies (4). I don't usually include scans from the '80s but as that one has the original year of release on it, 1974, I thought it was worth adding out of interest. One label design served throughout (1), and demo copies were marked in a similar manner to that of other Decca-associated labels (3). There were two more 'Rex' labels in the '80s, but they are outside the scope of this site. The discography below only covers the 1970s, and is holey towards the end: many of the gaps appear to be down to records being issued only in Ireland.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.