The first Eagle to appear in the '70s was a Reggae label; a subsidiary of Jama, it issued records from c.1975-77. Mark Griffiths gives the co-owners of the label as Pat Rhoden, Tito Simon and Earl Martin. Unusually, for much of its existence Eagle's records didn't have the company's name on the label. Three out of the first four Eagle singles had paper labels (2), EAG-002 being the exception; that record, and some copies of EAG-001, had injection moulded labels (1). Injection moulding (3) became the norm with EAG-005. For some reason the eagle on the injection moulded version was pictured looking in the opposite direction to the one on the paper label. The original heraldic eagle was replaced by a natural-looking one from EAG-34 onwards; the company's name appeared on the label for the first time, and a Phillips-style grid of lines was adopted (4). Phonodisc was responsible for the injection moulded pressings; pressing of EAG-004 appears to have been by C.H. Rumble - it had laminated paper labels. Catalogue numbers were in an EAG-000 series for the first nine issues; they gained an extra 0 from EAG-0010 on and off until the end, which seems to have happened with EAG-37. For a time Eagle and the other Jama labels were given nationwide distribution through Transatlantic. Thanks to John Timmis for the first scan
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.