John wrote....

What happened to Scepter Records and its family of labels?

Jim replied...

They were owned by Florence Greenberg, and she sold them on to Springboard when she gave up around the mid-seventies. And of course, they went bankrupt and I cannot recall who got the stuff - Gusto Records I think.

Actually, I remember that she got very little for them, which was a pity, because back in the mid-sixties, she had been offered and turned down something like $ 5 million to sell the whole thing to a large conglomerate.

But she was one great lady - even though I think she was not all that interested in rock and roll as such but she seems to have had a great ear for a hit song and an eye for a good opportunity.

Scepter was not her first label - that was called Tiara and she started that just to record The Shirelles, because her daughter kept raving about these kids at school who could sing and had this great song they were performing at assemblies.

Florence did have a little knowledge of the music business, because although she actually ended up working for the Republican Party in New Jersey and later in New York, she had also started acting as a part-time agent for local songwriters, plugging their songs to hopeful stars each time she went up to New York.

Anyway, Tiara had an immediate hit with them on a song called "Met Him On A Sunday".

However, she was doing everything herself, and felt that the record could have been huge had she been able to get a proper distributor and pluggers so when Decca offered her something like $5,000 for the label and the group, she took it, and put the money into a new label, with a proper distribution system etc.

And then about six months later, Decca dropped the Shirelles, and they came back to her on her new label!

So she got $5,000, a new label, and her old group back, and Decca paid for it all!

She went on to have a couple of labels, one of which was Wand, and they specialised in leasing masters from indie producers.

She also took up songwriting, and he wrote "Soldier Boy" for The Shirelles, while her labels issued "Louie, Louie," by the Kingsmen; "Twist and Shout," by the Isley Brothers, "Walk on By," by Dionne Warwick, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," B. J. Thomas etc.

I don't think she ever received proper recognition - there was talk at one stage of Bette Midler making a film of her life but I don't think it ever materialised, and she died around fifteen years back.

And of course, she was another New Jersey graduate!