A legendary British independent label, started by Richard and Mike Vernon. Blue Horizon was dedicated to Blues and R'n'B; much was home-grown, but there was also a fair amount of material by American artists. For the first two years of its existence, 1965-66, the label was operated as a mail-order business. The numbers of records pressed were tiny, and singles from this period (1) tend to go for three-figure sums on the rare occasions when they become available. 1967 saw a manufacturing and distribution deal with CBS. The first two singles were released on the CBS label with the Blue Horizon logo in the middle of the label (2), but by the end of the year the famous blue label had arrived (3). Towards the end of the CBS era this blue label turned red, with black printing (4); the company sleeve turned red as well (7). Blue Horizon stayed with CBS until the 1st of April 1971, when Polydor took over; the change in manufacturers / distributors was marked by a change in numbering and in label design (5). The company released around sixty singles and one hundred albums; perhaps unexpectedly it enjoyed a measure of success in the Singles Chart, with Fleetwood Mac scoring three hits including the No.1, 'Albatross' (57-3145; 1968). Another British Blues band, Chicken Shack, registered twice in the charts the following year, with 'I'd Rather Go Blind' (57-3153) and 'Tears In The Wind' (57-3160). Blue Horizon was discontinued in the summer of 1972, when the Vernons decided to concentrate on independent productions in their Chipping Norton recording studio ('Billboard', 5th August 1972), but it was revived in the late 1980s. Three different numbering systems were used: the early singles had numbers in a 45-BH-1000 series, or variants of it; CBS-era singles were numbered in the 57-3100s (the early, CBS-labelled, ones shared CBS's prefix-free 3000 numbering), while Polydor singles had one of that company's seven-digit-beginning-with-a-2 numerical series, 2096-000. An informative list of Blue Horizon singles can be found at Mark Berry's blogspot, here.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.