A legendary West Indian music label, founded by by Siggy Jackson as a subsidiary of Emil Shallit's Melodisc Records company. Blue Beat's glory years were back in the early '60s; it was succeeded by Fab in the middle of that decade and it only qualifies for inclusion on this site because there was one release on it in 1972 (with a Fab Records catalogue number) and a few reissues on it in 1977. The dark blue example shown above dates from 1963; later re-pressings (2, 3) came in any number of different colours, as witness the page for Prince Buster's 'Ten Commandments Of Man' single on the45cat site , but they kept the original catalogue numbers and dates on the labels. The pale green label is from 1977. The 1970s release and reissues are listed below; according to 'Music Week' of the 10th of September 1977 the Folks Brothers single was licensed from Melodisc by Lightning Records (q.v.) and was issued by them. According to 'Music Master' the distribution of Melodisc's own re-releases was by Lugton and H. R. Taylor.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.