American; out of Philadelphia. WMOT - word has it that the initials stood for 'We Men Of Talent' - was run by Steve Bernstein. It scored in the States with the likes of Blue Magic, Margie Joseph, and Fat Larry's Band, but only the latter got it into the Singles Chart over here, with, 'Zoom' (VS-546; 1982). WMOT came on to the scene in Britain in 1977, about a year later than it did in its home country; previous to that date its records were issued on the Atlantic label over here. It was part of the Fantasy group in the USA; in this country it came under the WEA umbrella initially, its - few - singles sharing a K-10000 numerical series with those of Atlantic. From 1978-79 the WMOT label as such seems to have hibernated; such of the company's material as was issued in the U.K. came out on other Fantasy-associated labels, such as Stax and Fantasy itself. Around 1980 the label woke from its apparent slumber and found a new lease of life; PRT was now responsible for its manufacture and distribution, and its singles were numbered in a new WMOT-100 series. A move to Virgin followed, c.1982, at which point the singles started sharing Virgin's VS-100 catalogue numbers. The company is reported to have hit legal troubles c.1984; the apparent absence of WMOT records from catalogues after that date suggests that those troubles may well have been terminal.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.