Michael Thomas' Website

The well-known chemist chain (originally based in Nottingham) is not known for selling records these days. However, in the early 1920s, some shops at least (maybe only the bigger ones?) were selling their own-labelled record. This was a 6½" disc in a B-1000 series, (The only record I have encountered of this size) and was recorded and manufactured by Vocalion in around April 1923. There were two catalogue series: one starting at B-1 and the other at B-1001.

The B-1 series are 5½" records and only one of these has been reported and it has the same titles as the equivalent (i.e. B-1009) in the other series but with different matrix numbers.  I could speculate that the two series duplicate each other, but that is only based on one example, so we'll have to see!

No artist credit is shown on the label.

Strangely, the three Boots records in my posession all have the label name scratched out, and this isn't unique as I believe others had reported the similar examples. Very kindly, my friends Steve Walker & Norman Field recreated what they expected the label would look like.

Just recently, I have received images from elsewhere of undefaced labels and also an example of a Boots' record sleeve. I include all these here, along with my original and the recreated example, with ackknowlegements below each one. You can see that Steve & Norman's expectation was pretty close to the real thing. The difference being the label name's letters not being solid. Most impressive!

Extra information from the files of the late Arthur Badrock.