American, based in Los Angeles. Doré - sometimes referred to as just 'Dore' - first saw the light of day in 1958 in its native land. It and its sister-label Era were jointly owned by cousins Lew Beddell and Herb Newman at first, but 'Billboard' of the 8th of June 1959 reported that the two labels had split and that the former partners were heading one of them each, with Beddell being in charge of Doré. Doré continued to release singles until the mid/late 1980s. A few of its early singles were licensed to Decca for the UK and came out on the London label, the most successful of them being 'To Know Him Is To Love Him' b/w 'Don't You Worry My Little Pet' by The Teddy Bears (Dore 503; London HLN-8733; 1958), but it only made one appearance here as a label in its own right. The company responsible was Record Mart of Southend-on-Sea, who specialized in licensing and reissuing obscure Rock 'n' Roll and Rockabilly singles, and the record concerned was 'Showdown' b/w 'Boogie Woogie Feeling' by Tony Casanova. The reissue was manufactured in the USA, apparently through Doré themselves. It had the same catalogue number as the 1959 original but had the multicoloured 1971-81 Doré label rather than the original black-on-light-blue one; it also had 'This Release Initiated By "Record Mart" England' at the bottom. I haven't been able to establish a date for this UK version but Record Mart made a similar arrangement with the Antler label (q.v.) in 1975-76, resulting in singles with the same 'Initiated by' credit on them, so a date not far away from that seems reasonable. See also Olympic (Rockabilly), Yucca, Glee, and Record Mart's main label, RM. Thanks to Nicholas Hough for supplying the scan.
Copyright 2022 Robert Lyons.