The Argo label was founded in 1951 by Harvey Usill. It focused mainly on English music of all styles and periods and built up a large catalogue of Classical and Spoken Word albums, amongst other items. In addition to the English material, what is now known as 'World' music was catered-for by a series of 'Living Tradition' albums. Argo was acquired by Decca in 1957, though Usill remained in charge of the label. Most of Argo's releases were LPs or EPs, and it only issued the occasional single; if you stumble on an Argo single in a charity shop nowadays it'll probably be by Folk group The Yetties. Argo's EPs first saw the light of day in 1960, and were numbered in an EAF-0 or ZFA-0 series; the prefix varied according to whether the record was mono (EAF) or stereo (ZFA) - some records were issued in both forms. The labels, too were different: blue for mono records (6), bluey-green for stereo ones (7). A number of EPs were devoted to train sounds; in fact from 1968 onwards all the EPs were of train sounds. They appeared under the Argo Transacord banner and were sufficiently distinctive for me to give them their own page (q.v.).
Argo singles as such first appeared in 1970; 'Record Retailer' of the 25th of July noted that the 'Classical / Spoken Word' label was trying its hand at Pop and had issued its first single on the 13th of that month. Singles had AFW-100 catalogue numbers; the series reached AFW-125 but several of the higher numbers appear not to have been used. Red labels (1) were used until AFW-112, with black ones (2) from AFW-113 onwards. The same label design was used throughout, for EPs and singles alike, except that in 1974, with AFW-114 and ZFA-154, the old ellipsed logo was replaced by a Decca-family-type boxed one (3, 8) - re-pressings of AFW-113 and ZFA-153 also had the boxed logo. Initially demo copies of singles had issue labels with the appropriate markings added (4), but they kept their red colour after the issue labels turned black (5). Usill left to co-found ASV records when Decca was taken over by Polygram, in 1980. The Argo label is still in existence today, as part of Decca Classics.
Address in 1978 : 115, Fulham Rd, London SW 3.
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Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.