Something of an oddity, this one. Dervia has a New York address at the bottom of the label of Mark Holder's 'Where There's A Will' single (D-005), and the typefaces used have an American look to them: everything points to an American issue - apart from the solid, dinkable, centre. All the 45 rpm US pressings I've ever seen have had large spindle holes; small-holed dinkable centres seem to be a British thing. The few other Dervias I have traced have been West Indian records; they too have been by Mark Holder. Mark Griffiths writes that the British Dervia was associated with Russell Coke's 'Magnet' Reggae label (q.v.), that it featured Soul records from the USA, and that the Holder single was its only release. A matrix number, scratched out but still readable, on the run-off of the 'B' side, 'A Rocking Good Way' by Mark Holder and Dee Dee Benton, reads MA-010 B, which suggests that it was initially scheduled to come out as the 'B' side of Holder's, 'Something Good', which had that number. 'A Rocking Good Way' had its own catalogue number, D-006. Perhaps the D-005 and D-006 numbers were the same as those of an overseas release. The Magnet connection indicates that this single came out in 1973 rather than the 1972 which appears on the label. Dervia was more productive in the West Indies, where it continued to make records until at least 1975; a Mark Holder album, 'All The Way' (KSV-D1) came out in the UK on the KSV / Dervia label in 1978.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.