A Reggae label; one with a comparatively long life and a varied history. The original Treasure Isle company was from Jamaica and was run by Duke Reid. A good number of its records were licensed for release in Britain by Island (q.v.) in the early and mid '60s, and came out on the Island label; Treasure Isle made its debut here as an actual label, via Island, in 1967. It moved from Island to Graeme Goodall's Doctor Bird / Pryamid stable in 1969. The Doctor Bird labels appear to have linked up with Trojan at the start of 1970, and Treasure Isle went with them. All was not well with Doctor Bird, however: it hit terminal financial problems towards the end of the year and went into liquidation in December. At that point Treasure Isle seems to shifted sideways and continued as one of the many Trojan family labels. It continued to issue singles throughout 1971 and 1972, but 1973 saw only one solitary release. Reid began to suffer from ill health; he sold Treasure Isle to producer Sylvia Pottinger in 1974 and died the following year, leaving an admirable catalogue of Reggae records as his legacy.
Treasure Isle's U.K. singles were numbered in a TI-7000 series, which stayed constant throughout the changes of allegiance; the numbers reached TI-7074 but not all of them were used. The same label design and colours were used throughout the label's life, but Dennis Alcapone's 'Wake Up Jamaica' (TI-7074; 5/73) can be found on a black-on-white label as well as a black-on-orange-yellow one. Manufacture of the first example shown above was by Orlake; that firm pressed most of Trojan's small-label records, and visual evidence suggests that it was responsible for the rest of the singles listed here. If you own one and want to check it, look to see if the matrix numbers on the run-off are separated by plus signs - that seems to be a distinctive Orlake characteristic. The presence of a narrow 'canal' a couple of centimetres from the spindle hole again appears to be specific to Orlake, as does a rough label surface with a smooth outer ring of various - usually small - widths; both can be seen clearly in the scan. The second scan shows a Phonodisc pressing of one of Treasure Isle's biggest-selling singles, 'Skinhead Moon Stomp' by Symarip (TI-7050; 1969), presumably made when the label was with Trojan - sometimes Trojan turned to Phonodisc to press popular records. Only singles from the 1970s are listed in the discography below.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.