CLARION RECORDS

Category: Australian independent label Date: 1966-1978 Location: Perth, WA Ownership: Martin Clarke, Keith McGowan House labels: Clarion, Action Distributor: Festival

History

The Perth-based Clarion label, established ca. 1962, was co-owned by Martin Clarke and 6PR DJ Keith MacGowan. Like his Sydney namesake and contemporary Martin Erdman, Clarke developed a passion for music and sound recording as a youngster. His built his first recording studio in his mother's home as a teenager; he began his career working as a turntable-panel operator with Perth radio stations in the 1950s, while still at school. At the age of 21 he set up Western Australia's first purpose-built recording studio in North Fremantle; a few years later he sold that facility and purchased an old house at 272 Hay Street, East Perth, which he converted into the Martin Clarke Recording Studio. 

Clarke installed the best recording equipment he could buy, including a top-of-the-line Neumann record cutting lathe imported from Germany. The ability to produce his own master discs was a crucial advantage, giving Clarke total control of the final sound -- it ensured that sub-standard masters were not being used for pressing Clarion's records, and avoiding the risks of damage or loss of master tapes in transit and production.

"No one in Australia did that, it hadn't been done before and hasn't been done since."

Just like Erdman's Du Monde label in Sydney, Clarion was dedicated to local Perth acts and it did much to support the thriving local music scene there in the Sixties and Seventies, but it had a wider national impact thanks to the national breakthrough of several of its acts, notably Johnny Young. The first single issued on Clarion was "Jag Drag" b/w "Little White Star" (right) by Peter Piccini & His Orchestra, released in 1962. The A-side was an instrumental; the b-side was a song with monologue, about the recent space flight of John Glenn, which made reference to Glen having seen the lights of Perth from orbit. Piccini was a noted accordionist, keyboard player and composer-arranger, who later became musical director for the Nine Network. He did arrangements, conducted and played on many Clarion recordings.

Clarion evidently went into abeyance for several years until 1966, when it was revived, with Clarke acting as producer, engineer, A&R manager and (in the early days) distributor. Prior to reactivating Clarion, Clarke set up the shortlived Action label, but only three singles were released on this imprint. 

The first group of releases from the mid-Sixties (personally distributed by Clarke) were mostly recordings by local Perth TV personalities, and these had only limited success. When Clarke began tapping into the booming Perth pop scene sales began to rise as he recorded and released local acts such as The Times, Russ Kennedy & The Little Wheels, Roy Hoff & The Off Beats, Glen Ingram, Clem Croft, The Times, the early singles by The Valentines, and Clarion's most successful artists,  Johnny & The Strangers, who became nationally known under their later name, Johnny Young & Kompany.

A distribution deal with Festival Records deal led to a national release of some of the singles that had already been successful in Western Australia, like "The Skye Boat Song" by Glen Ingram, and songs by Robby Snowden, Johnny Young and others. Over the next few years sales were strong and the label earned three gold record awards, including a Gold Album award for the Johnny Young LP Young Happening.

Clarion was one of the most productive independent labels of the period, with 120 singles, 20 EPs and 20 LPs issued between 1962 and 1978. Clarke also released about fifty singles on the Martin Clarke Recording Studios label, as well as countless one-off specialty recordings. The label's biggest national hit was Johnny Young's double-sided hit "Cara-Lynn" / "Step Back" (May 1966), which went to #1 in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney and topped the new Go-Set national Top 10, shooting Johnny to national stardom. Young's recordings featured prominently on the Clarion catalogue until mid-1969 and releases include several tracks written by the Bee Gees, with whom Johnny became good friends. 

Among other notable releases was Ray Hoff & The Offbeats' "Tossin' and Turnin'" -- which must rank as one of the wildest Australian pop singles of the Sixties -- Glen Ingram, Toni Lamond, Perth's "pop prince" Robbie Snowden, folk singer, Play School host and children's entertainer Don Spencer, Perth band Fatty Lumpkin (which included ex members of Bakery) and songwriter Bill Millar. Clarke and Millar also collaborated on one of Clarion's most remarkable singles, the outrageous pyschedelic confection "Even Stevens" / "Hypnotic Suggestion", which they released under the pseudonym 'The Vegetable Garden'. Clarion also recorded the first singles by The Valentines, which featured future AC/DC frontman Bon Scott and singer and music journo Vince Lovegrove as co-vocalists.

During 1970 Clarion released two singles by Perth band The Birds. According to Alec Palao's liner notes for the Clarion Call CD, this group was a trio that included a couple of English roadie-musicians who had previously worked with guitarist Ron Wood, who (with brother Art) had played in a UK band of the same name in the mid-60s. Apparently the Perth Birds simply appropriated the name and passed themselves off as the (emigrated) UK Birds in order to get a contract with Clarion, and they even recorded two tunes that the UK Birds had already covered.

Clarion's releases tapered off sharply after 1970, with only a handful of singles issued each year in 1971, 1972, 1973, and 1974. The label was briefly reactivated for one final single in February 1978, after which the label was wound up.

Martin Clarke left Perth in 1989 and moved to England, where he had family. In the early 2000s he licensed the rights to Clarion/Action catalogue to the British reissue label Cherry Red, who compiled the CD The Clarion Call. It's an excellent overview of the Clarion singles of the Sixties, mixing well-known hits with more obscure material, including the demo version of Johnny Young's breakthrough hit "Step Back", recorded in a Perth hotel room by Johnny, and accompanied by The Easybeats.

Discography

Clarion used its own cataloguing system (prefixed MCP-) for its first dozen releases, (some of which are yet to be identified) but in 1966 the manufacture and distribution of its recordings was taken on by Festival Records on a national basis and all subsequent Clarion recordings were issued using the standard Festival catalogue system. From the early 1960s until early 1973 all records released and/or distributed by Festival were issued using its "K-1000" series catalogue number, which is the reason that the catalogue numbers for labels like Clarion, Sunshine and Spin do not run in numerical sequence. Each label was identified by its own prefix -- Festival's own prefix was FK, and the other labels it distributed were identified with two- or three-letter prefixes -- in the case of Clarion, its prefix was "MCK". Several singles in 1966 were issued with dual catalogue numbers, after which all Clarion releases carried Festival catalogue numbers. The Sep. 1972 single by Tex Croft was the last single issued with the "MCK" prefix and Clarion's last few releases (like all other Festival-distributed labels) used the new K-prefix catalogue system introduced in early 1973.

Singles

EPs

Albums

References / Links

Thanks to Andy from globaldog productions for corrections and additional information.

Hank B. Facer
Museum of Indigenous Recording Labels
http://mirl.hypermart.net/mirl_page_2.htm
MIRL Discography No 27, June 1982

Clarion Gold Exhibition
Fremantle Light and Sound Discovery Centre, Western Australian Museum
http://lightandsound.net.au/ClarionCallExhibition.html

Ian McFarlane
Encyclopedia of Australia Rock & Pop (Allen & Unwin, 1999)

Globaldog Productions - Clarion 45 Discography
http://www.globaldogproductions.info/c/clarion-oz-main-festival-series.html

Vernon Joyson
Dreams, Fantasies & Nightmares - Australia (Borderline Books, 1999)

Cherry Red Records
http://www.cherryred.co.uk/rpm/bam/variousartistsclarion.htm
http://www.cherryred.co.uk/crzone/licensing/clarion.htm
http://www.cherryred.co.uk/crzone/newletters/september/1.htm

Peter Piccini wesbite
http://www.users.bigpond.com/piccini/

RPM Records - The Clarion Call
http://www.cherryred.co.uk/rpm/artists/variousartistsclarion.htm

Martin Clarke commemorative webpage
http://www.showworld.com.au/stars_files/martin_clarke.html

State Library of Western Australia
http://innopac.slwa.wa.gov.au/record=b2433489
- features several excellent photos of Martin Clarke at his Perth studio, taken in 1968

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