The second Scotia label of the 1970s appears to have been a fairly long time coming. It received a possible mention in the Trade press in 'Record Retailer' of the 20th of March 1971, which said that a company called Scotia Investments was forming Scotia Music and intended to launch its own label. A month later 'RR' of the 17th of April reported that Scotia Investments had bought publishing firm Mother Mistro music and that it intended to launch the Fire label for Pop and the Smoke label for Contemporary material (q.v. both) in the next few weeks. Shel Talmy had been made managing director of Scotia's music division. The report added that there was also to be a third label, for MOR; no name was mentioned, and the label seems not to have materialized. Had the intention been to name it Scotia there would have been legal difficulties as there was already a Scottish company issuing records under that name - see 'Scotia (1960s - early '70s)'. Fire and Smoke were launched but they disappeared very quickly leaving little trace.
Some five years later, 'Music Week' of the 16th of October 1976 indicated that Scotia Songs, a part of the Scotia Investments group, intended to broaden its operations by starting its own label - up till that point it had been primarily a publishing company. Again, however, nothing seems to have come of the plans at the time. It wasn't until 1979 that a new label emerged, this time called 'Scotia' - the Scottish Scotia had been 'stagnant for some time' according to 'MW' of the 9th of July 1977, which presumably cleared the decks for the name to be used. By 1979 the parent company Scotia Investments had become a leisure conglomerate. 'MW' of the 21st of April broke the news that Scotia Songs was launching its own label, with distribution by EMI. Bob Bloomfield, managing director of Scotia Songs, was to be in charge of record production for the new label, under chairman Peter Frolich, and the first three singles had been scheduled. Those singles duly appeared, over the course of the next few months, but sadly as well as being the first three they also turned out to be the only three. They were numbered in an SCO-10 series, which started at SCO-17 for some reason. The final single, The Brothers' 'Mauritius Farewell' b/w 'Loving You' (SCO-19; 7/79), had a matrix number of GD-013, which suggests some kind of link with the Gold label (q.v.) - GD-013 is missing from the Gold discography, and the date, 1979, fits as well. The two earlier singles had SCO matrices rather than GD ones. Demo copies were marked with a narrow black 'A' (2); thanks to John Timmis for providing that scan. Distribution was by EMI's Import division.
Copyright 2010 Robert Lyons.