A Reggae label. Mark Griffiths writes that Ethnic issued records from 1973-83 and was run by Larry Lawrence; its 7" releases appear to have been confined to the first three years of that period. A report in 'Music Week' of the 17th of March 1973 said that the label was to be launched and distributed by Creole, the company which provided EMI with product for its Rhino label (q.v. all), and some eighteen months or so later 'MW' of the 21st of September 1974 stated that Ethnic was being run by Larry Lawrence, but those were the only references to the label in the mainstream Trade press of the 1970s. Catalogue numbers suggest that Ethnic issued more than forty singles, but some of the numbers seem not to have been used. Several different numbering schemes seem to have been used: they started out with ETH-1000, soon dropped a '0' to become ETH-100, and lost another '0' shortly after reaching double figures, becoming simple ETH-10.
The design of the Ethnic label changed several times, and labels came in a wide variety of colours of which only a sample are shown above. The 'Tree' design (1 - 6) lasted until ETH-21; it was joined by a 'Head' (7) as a one-off for ETH-16. With ETH-22 the 'Head' replaced the tree (8), and then for ETHs 23 to 30 the company's logo grew in size and migrated to 3 o'clock (9, 10). Finally, with ETH-34, the logo was given a decorative new font and was moved to the top of the label (11) - later pressings of ETH-26 also came in this design. In 1975 Ethnic was merged with another Lawrence-run label, Fight (q.v.), resulting in the formation of a joint label, Ethnic Fight (q.v.), which appears to have replaced Ethnic, at least as far as 7" releases are concerned. In 1978 the two constituent parts separated, but they seem to have concentrated on 12" releases from that point and are thus beyond the scope of this site. The few singles that I have seen in the vinyl have been Orlake pressings, and most of the others shown above look suspiciously Orlakey. Thanks to John Timmis for the fourth scan; all the other scans apart from the tenth and the twelfth come by courtesy of Robert Bowes.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.