FABLE RECORDS

Category: Australian-owned independent label Date: 1970 - 1984 Location: Melbourne, Vic. Owner: Ron Tudor (1970-1984) Subsidiary labels: Bootleg Distributor: Tempo (ca.1970-71?), Phonogram LEFT: "Curly" by Jimmy Hannan (FB-001, April 1970) the first Fable single.

History

Ron Tudor's Fable Records was the most successful Australian independent recording company of the early 1970s. It was also one of the most productive 'indie' labels of the period, issuing over 300 singles and dozens of EPs and LPs. Fable made a big mark in 1970-71 scoring a string of hits by new Australian artists, and throughout its history the company discovered and promoted local talent. The company enjoyed further success between 1972 and 1975 through its subsidiary label Bootleg, which racked up a string of hit albums and singles with artists including Brian Cadd, the Bootleg Family Band and Kerrie Biddell.

Fable and Bootleg released a wide variety of music from rock groups to mainstream vocalists; its catalogue also included theatre organ music, Christian gospel music by singing group The Proclaimers, comedy recordings by veteran entertainer Frankie Davidson, and occasional novelty items like Drummond's 'chipmunk' version of "Daddy Cool" and the quaint piano version of The Mixtures "In The Summertime" by film critic and honky-tonk piano virtuoso Ivan Hutchinson. Another Fable curiosity is the the single by Bert Newton and the Debney Park High School Band (the most recent Fable 45 we have located), a Xmas-themed release which reportedly reached #11 on the Melbourne charts. DPHSB drummer Bill Kio went on to become a professional musician and is now a member of Melbourne band The Wish.

Fable also had a long association with VFL (AFL) football, beginning in 1972 when it released a series of official VFL football club songs (adapted from 'standards' like "Yankee Doodle Dandy"). These were widely used at matches and for TV and radio broadcasts, and can still occasionally be heard on Triple J's This Sporting Life during their annual AFL Grand Final calls. In 1979 Fable artist Mike Brady released "Up There Cazaly", which effectively became the AFL anthem; it sold a staggering 250,000 copies, becoming the biggest-selling Australian single ever released up to that time, a feat that earned it a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

Company founder Ron Tudor (b. 1924) began his career in the music industry in the mid-1950s when he joined W&G as a sales representative, just as the company's new recording division was starting up. Over the next ten years he worked his way up through promotion to A&R and record production. Ron first recorded artists including Diana Trask, Ernie Sigley and The Seekers and was instrumental in getting The Seekers signed to W&G for their first recordings; he produced their first album, recorded just before the group left for the UK.

After leaving W&G in 1966 Ron spent two years working at AstorRecords, and in 1968 he left to set up his own independent record production company, June Productions. A year later, in late 1969, he founded Fable Records with start-up capital of just $2. Tudor also established the Fable Music Publishing. Since its creation, many leading Australian artists have recorded songs published by Fable Music, including John Farnham, Slim Dusty, Rolf Harris, Judith Durham, Anne Kirkpatrick, Olivia Newton John, Brian Cadd, Debbie Byrne, Max Merritt, Margaret Urlich, Natalie Imbruglia, John St Peeters, Marcia Hines, Col Joye, Diana Trask, Jigsaw, Normie Rowe, The Bushwackers and Colleen Hewett. 

An important factor in Fable's initial success was Ron's association with the Nine Network TV talent quest New Faces. Ron was a member of the judging panel for several years, and among the prizes offered to heat and series winners was the chance to record with Fable. Many New Faces heat and series winners recorded for Fable and several became very successful -- Liv Maessen, John Williamson, Stephen Foster, Dutch Tilders and Franciscus Henri were all New Faces 'discoveries' who launched their recording careers with Fable.

Fable was officially launched in April 1970 with a batch of five singles (all by Australian artists) and the success it enjoyed over its first nine months was nothing short of spectacular -- seven of its first twelve singles made the national Top 40, and of the forty-one singles Fable released between April and December 1970, seventeen became hits, including two national #1s (The Mixtures' "In The Summertime" and "The Pushbike Song") and four other Top 10 hits by Hans Poulsen, Liv Maessen, Jigsaw and John Williamson. 

Liv Maessen's version of "Knock, Knock, Who's There?", which reached #2 nationally, was one of the most successful Australian singles of 1970, selling over 50,000 copies and earning Liv the first Gold Record ever awarded to an Australian female performer. John Williamson also earned a Gold Record for his debut single "Old Man Emu". Another remarkable Fable feat was that the label scored thirty-six charting singles in Sydney alone during 1970.

Fable's second batch of singles, released in May, included The Strangers' "Melanie Makes Me Smile", John Williamson's "Old Man Emu" and Jigsaw's "To Love Means To Be Free", each of which became a hit. The Strangers and John Williamson both debuted on the Go-Set national chart on 18 July 1970, joining "Knock, Knock, Who's There", "Boom Sha La La Lo" and Pat Carroll's "All Kinds of Everything", giving Fable five singles in the national Top 40 in the same week! 

For several weeks in the period from July-October 1970, Fable was all over the Go-Set singles chart, with as many as seven singles simultaneously in the Go-Set Top 60. This included a joint #1 hit (shared with Mungo Jerry) with "In The Summertime", a #2 hit with "Knock, Knock, Who's There" and a #3 hit with "Old Man Emu". On the 3 October chart, there were five Fable singles simultaneously in the Top 20 -- The Mixtures at #1, Jigsaw at #3, John Williamson at #6, The Strangers at #16 and Liv Maessen at #17. Liv's new single "Snowbird" debuted the same week, giving her two simultaneous Top 40 hits.

The critical factor in Fable's chart breakthrough was the controversial 1970 Radio Ban, which began in May 1970, a month after Fable was launched. The Ban was the climax of a simmering "pay-for-play" dispute between a group of record companies and the commercial radio sector. After Australia's new copyright laws were proclaimed in 1968, a group of major labels (EMI, Festival, Warner, CBS and Philips/Polygram) decided to scrap their long-standing agreement with commercial radio, dating back to the late 1950s, in which they had agreed to provide radio stations with free promotional copies of new singles and albums. The record companies demanded that a new royalty should be paid on all tracks played on air; radio not surprisingly balked at the idea of a new levy, which was set at 1% of the total annual revenue of the entire commercial radio industry.  -- and when talks between the two parties broke down broke in April 1970 the 'gang' of labels placed a six-month embargo on the supply of free promotional records to commercial radio stations. The commercial stations responded by black-listing major-label product and refusing to list major-label titles in their Top 40 charts. 

Desperate for material, radio stations turned to smaller local companies like Fable and Sparmac, who had declined to take part in the Ban, and these enterprising independents made the most of this window of opportunity while it lasted. Fable in particular achieved considerable commercial success. During this time, Ron Tudor was being sent regular packages of new UK releases from London by his friend, former EMI house producer David McKay, and he optioned songs he thought would be suitable for his Fable acts. He had already scored a huge hit with the Liv Maessen version of Mary Hopkin's "Knock, Knock, Who's There?", and when he offered The Mixtures "In The Summertime", a song that had recently been a UK hit for Mungo Jerry. the band jumped at the chance to record it -- although Idris Jones declined to sing on it, feeling it was too 'poppy', so bassist Mick Flinn performed the lead vocal.

Fable's dream run continued through 1971. Early in the year it scored another Top 20 hit with a version of Cat Stevens' "Wild World", credited to the studio group Fourth House. This song (which competed with the Jimmy Cliff version) had been intended for Mike Brady (ex MPD Ltd), but an oversight during the recording of the backing track resulted in the song being pitched too high for Brady, so Ron Tudor called in former Wild Cherries lead singer Danny Robinson to overdub the lead vocal. A few weeks later The Mixtures' follow-up single "The Pushbike Song" became a major local and international hit -- it spent 12 weeks at #1 in Australia and also topped the charts in the UK, making it the first international hit to be entirely written, recorded and produced in Australia.

Fable's next big hit came out of left field. In late 1970 Ron concocted another anonymous studio band, which he dubbed 'Drummond', which was in fact the members of Allison Gros (Graeham Goble, Russ Johnston and John Mower) and anonymous session players. They recorded a cover of George Harrison's "For You Blue" as Drummond's debut release. It made no impression, but the second Drummond single -- a novelty 'chipmunk' rendition of Slay & Crewe's "Daddy Cool" -- turned out to be one of the biggest Australian hits of 1971. Shamelessly cashing in on the popularity of the band Daddy Cool (who had included the song on their hugely successful debut LP), Drummond's version hurtled up the Go-Set national chart, reaching #1 in just six weeks and knocking Daddy Cool's "Eagle Rock" off the top spot in mid-September. It stayed at #1 for eight weeks, charted for 21 weeks and became one of the biggest-selling local recordings of the year.

In late 1971 Tudor and Cadd set up Fable's new subsidiary imprint Bootleg. Brian had been inspired by the example of Leon Russell's Shelter label, and the way that Russell -- a former member of crack L.A. session team 'The Wrecking Crew' -- had organised a group of regular players around him for projects like Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen. In similar vein, Brian envisaged a regular Bootleg house band to back himself and all the other artists on the label, who he would also produce, for recording and touring. At the time, the roster included singer-songwriter Steven Foster, jazz vocalist Kerrie Biddell, and the harmony-pop group Mississippi. Bootleg quickly became the most successful independent record label in the history of Australian popular music, and it was rivalled in the long term only by Michael Gudinski's Mushroom. 

Over the next few years Brian Cadd earned many gold and platinum records as a solo artist and a swag of awards for film scores, title songs and TV themes, produced many other acts and wrote and produced some of Australia's most successful advertising music. His debut solo single "Ginger Man" (inspired by the J.P. Donleavy novel) established him as a major solo artist. It was a significant chart success, reaching #16 nationally on its release in October 1972 and charting for 18 weeks. His self-titled debut album reached #2, and spent 20 weeks on the album charts. Brian also won the composer's section of the final 1972 Hoadley's National Battle of the Sounds with one of the songs from the LP, "Don't You Know It's Magic". He performed it at the Tokyo World Popular Song Festival, where he won the 'Most Outstanding Composition' award; John Farnham recorded his own successful version in 1973.

In 1973 Brian put together the Bootleg Family Band to back himself and other artists on recordings and for touring; the group included many of the best Melbourne session musos of the period including drummer Geoff Cox, who has played on scores of Australian hits. He also oversaw the BFB's own recordings, singing lead vocals and playing keyboards on their version of Loggins & Messina's "Your Mama Don't Dance", which was another major hit that year, reaching #4 and charting for 17 weeks. Brian's second album Parabrahm reached #5 nationally, and spawned a string of successful singles: "Every Mother's Son" (March), "Silver City Birthday Celebration Day" (July) and "Keep on Rockin'" (October). The next single "Alvin Purple" (November) was the theme song from Tim Burstall's feature film of the same name. Brian wrote the score for both Alvin Purple (1973), and its sequel Alvin Rides Again (1975).

There were more hits through 1974 ­ the LP Moonshine (#16 in September), and the singles "Class Of '74" (April), the theme song from the TV series of the same name, "Let Go" (#14 in September) and "Boogie Queen" (December). By this time Brian had signed an American distribution deal and both Parabrahm and Moonshine came out on Chelsea Records in the USA and he toured the USA with the Bootleg Family Band during 1975.

Fable continued to score hits through 1972-73, including Matt Flinders' "Butterfly" (#4) Robin Jolley's debut single "Marshall's Portable Music Machine" (a #4 hit written and produced by Brian Cadd), The Mixtures "Captain Zero" (#5), the theme song from Bruce Beresford's The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie performed by veteran 'trad' jazz singer Smacka Fitzgibbon (#21), Jigsaw's "Mademoiselle Ninette" (#20) and Johnny Chester's perennial Mother's Day tribute, "The World's Greatest Mum" (#9). This was the last major Fable hit for some time, but the label bounced back in early 1975 with Bill & Boyd's "Santa Never Made It Into Darwin", which was inspired by the disaster of Cyclone Tracy and went to #1. The duo had further success with their next single, the defiantly sexist "Put Another Log On The Fire".

When Brian Cadd moved to the USA in 1976, Bootleg lost its main creative force and its fortunes rapidly waned. By this time enormous changes had taken place on the music scene -- Go-Set magazine had folded, colour TV had been introduced, the ABC's Countdown was ushering in the music video era and the new rock station 2JJ in Sydney was becoming a major new force in radio. Other local record companies were also eating into Fable's market share, notably Michael Gudinski's Mushroom label, which had shot to prominence in early 1975 with the record-breaking success of Skyhooks.

In the late 70's, together with other music industry leaders and key musicians Ron spearheaded the Australian Music Makers Association which lobbied government, lead rallies and media focus all around the country for an increase in the quota of Australian music on commercial radio. Over the course of three years Ron spent many hours in Australian Record Industry Tribunal hearings lobbying on behalf of the Australian Music Industry. His time and effort paid off for the industry with the quota being increased from 5% to 20% over a number of years.

When interviewed about the Radio Ban for a feature article by Toby Creswell, published in The Australian several years ago, Ron Tudor stated that although his refusal to take part in the Ban had helped to launch the label, it had damaging long-term consequences, and he claimed that Fable had been unofficially 'blackballed' by the major labels, with the result that his business was effectively strangled by the problem of getting its records distributed. The company struggled on into the early 1980s, scoring one last massive hit in 1980 with Mike Brady's VFL anthem "Up There Cazaly", the HSV-7 football theme song. Ron eventually sold Fable to John McDonald's Image music group in 1984 and the combined companies have since been relaunched as Fable Music.

Discography

All Fable and Bootleg singles and EPs were catalogued in the same numerical series, which started at "001", so numbering for each label is not always consecutive. Fable singles were prefixed "FB" and EPs were prefixed "FBEP", while Bootleg singles and EPs were prefixed "BL" and "BLEP". Fable and Bootleg LPs (which were all issued in stereo) were similarly catalogued in their own series, also beginning at "001" -- Fable titles were prefixed "FBSA" and Bootleg titles were prefixed "BLA". The Milesago page on Bootleg lists all the known releases on that label.

Curiously, almost all the Fable and Bootleg EPs were issued in two batches -- eight Fable EPs were released simultaneously in January 1973, and a mixed batch of two Fable and two Bootleg titles was issued in August that year.

Some Fable releases were titles licenced from overseas companies and issued under the "Fable International" banner, although it appears that there were only a handful of these releases, notably those by Phildelphia soul band Brenda & The Tablulations and American actor Dennis Weaver.

Singles (1970-1976)

EPs

Albums

References / Links

Hank B. Facer
"The Fable and Bootleg labels" - MIRL Discography No. 12
(Museum of Indigenous Recording Labels, Sydney, 1980)

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

Australian Singles List 1969-1972
http://www.jbpco.freeuk.com/AUSList/AUSList1.html

Theatre Organs .com
http://theatreorgans.com/southerncross/Victoria/Moorabbin.htm

Go-Set charts 1966-74
Compiled by Ed Nimmervol
http://www.poparchives.com.au/gosetcharts/index.html

Toby Creswell
"The Replacements"
The Australian Magazine, 20 October 1995

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