American; the label of United Artists Music, United Artists' publishing arm. Avalanche made its debut in the USA in the Spring of 1971, but it didn't cross the Atlantic until the following year. According to 'Billboard' of the 9th of January, which reported on the planned launch, the new label was intended to be called 'New Morning Records' and its name was awaiting copyright clearance; presumably that clearance was never obtained, and a new name had to be substituted. The article said that Mike Stewart and Murray Deutsch of United Artists Music were the people in charge, and added that part of the motivation behind the launch was that instead of having to hawk demo records around to other companies UA Music would be able to release them itself. The new label was expected to debut later that month; and the first single came out as planned. Some fourteen months afterwards, 'Music Master' of the 1st of April 1972 reported that Avalanche was to be launched in Britain within the next few weeks, and was to be handled by United Artists; manufacture, sales and distribution over here were to be by EMI and would be covered by UA's current agreement with that company. Noel Rogers, the head of United Artists Music, would be in charge of the new label, which was intended to only feature material that was published 'in house'. 'BB' of the 8th of April added that the idea behind Avalanche was that the prospect of getting their records released around the world would encourage songwriters to publish their work through United Artists Music, and said that the first single in the UK would be 'I Should Have Been A Lady' by Ed Welch. The launch duly took place, as noted in 'BB' of the 29th of April.
Avalanche had a good go at fulfilling its promise of getting records released 'worldwide', and items from its catalogue appeared in France, Germany, Australia, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Venezuela, Canada, The Netherlands, Portugal and Spain as well as in Britain and its home land; the number of releases was, however, modest at best in most of those other countries. The label failed to gain many mentions in the music press of the time. 'BB' of the 26th of August 1972 reported that Rogers had resigned as head of UA Music in order to concentrate on Avalanche; the article noted that he would still be coordinating the activities of the music division with those of United Artists itself, and that he would also continue to keep on acting as executive producer for Shirley Bassey's recordings. The following week 'BB' of the 2nd of September said that he had been appointed managing director of Avalanche. The occasional signing was commented upon: that of the Buck Ram Platters in 'BB' of the 9th of December 1972, and that of Alan Wauters, a staff writer for UA Music, in 'BB' of the 24th of April 1973. Sadly Avalanche appears to have more or less rumbled to a stop not many months afterwards - its final UK issue came out in May that same year, its final American one in August. For some reason Brazil's only two singles came out in 1974, the year after that in which the label seems to have been shelved everywhere else.
Avalanche's British catalogue contained a few singer / songwriter things, a smattering of soul, some Rock, an ARP synthesizer record by Todd McKilroy ('Wild Heather' b/w 'ARP Bach'; AV-67314; 10/72), and a collectable Glam version of 'Tea For Two' b/w 'I Know A Place' by Big T. (AV-67324; 4/73), but unfortunately, it didn't contain any hits. The numerical series used here, AV-67000, appears to have been used in all of the various European companies which put Avalanche singles out; several of the numbers were used for records which were not released in the UK. One label design was used throughout in Britain, though the first American label had a triangular 'mountain' shape with the word 'AVALANCH' running across the top and a slanted 'E' at the end; that design was also used in some other countries. Promo copies of UK singles had a medium-sized black 'A' and the release date added to the text (2).
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.