by paterson » Tue Aug 28, 2018 5:33 pm
Always interested that a radio company would stick their corporate foot into the record business in Canada. Looking at what little has been written about MUCH records it is often with a sort of condescending theme such as "they did this to fulfill their cancon obligations"...blah blah blah.. Typical Canadian "chip on the shoulder" attitude from some media types even back in the early '70's. Sadly not "much" has changed..sorry, couldn't help myself. However the MUCH name does live on to this day with the MUCH formerly MuchMusic channel.
MUCH released material from many artists, Rich Little, SeaDog, Mantis, Raphael Exchange, Rhonda Silver, Pagliaro, April Wine, Copper Penny; even some instrumental albums and more middle of the road material.
1050 chum in Toronto certainly didn't go to any great lengths to play songs from their corporate cousins. Rainshowers was only on the chum chart for 4 weeks and peaked at 20 in June of 1972 and had more success elsewhere in the country. The follow up Some Sing Some Dance only appeared for 3 weeks and peaked at 25 on the chum 30. April Wine had slightly more success with MUCH productions and even more after the group moved permanently to Aquarius/Capital Records after MUCH productions closed down.
Looks like MUCH Productions either produced or released about 50 singles and albums during it's 4-5 year life as a working company. The label was based in Montreal and this would likely explain the association with Michel Pagliaro and April Wine. They also released some material in French for the Quebec and some other French markets under the label MUCH International.
Pagliaro was the label's only major release internationally with material released throughout Europe, US and Japan on the Pye label. First record released on the MUCH label was Pagliaro's Give Us One More Chance in 1970 and the second single was We're Dancing Til it Blows Over by a group called Second Helping which was actually Pag as well.
I know that Standard Radio had the Canadian Talent Library (CTL) material which released a lot of MOR singles and albums but didn't normally have much distribution beyond radio stations that subscribed to the service. Did any other radio stations or companies in Canada own their own record labels that released material from local bands or artists? I know stations would often do novelty songs that were more "one off"s but I was wondering about something longer term.