The Trust would like to thank Ricky Ford for sending in his memory of EMI. Ricky was an EMI recording artist as has shared a little about his time with the label.

It was 1961 in Bristol a truly daring and controversial musical called A MAN DIES was produced, it was the first RocknRoll religious musical. It was produced at St James Church Lockleaze. Soon we played The Albert Hall, Bristol Colston Hall, ABC tv but most importantly Norrie Paramor recorded the score at Abbey Road 1964. That was an amazing experience for us. The entire cast, four piece group, Valerie Mountain and myself arrived at Abbey Road Studio 1 at 9 am one Sunday morning. The session lasted all day. Both Valerie Mountain and myself couldn’t believe we were singing in this iconic place. Norrie took us all to lunch, he was such a lovely man that day remains one that I’ll treasure always.

For me EMI was more than a recording company. They were so brave and diverse. Its archive is so much more than just the fabulous Beatles, its a social and amazing record of ALL music and spoken word.

When our LP came out it was great to hold this big vinyl disc with no less than the COLUMBIA label. Then, just over a year later I was back in studio 2 cutting a single on Parlophone with John Burgess, studio time was like gold dust and so the single had to be cut in just over an hour, my band and I just couldn’t believe that we were there. The day of launch in Manchester Square was great fun they put out plenty of drinks and nibbles  followed by a recording of the 208 EMI Spectacular with Shaw Taylor and Muriel Young. My idol as a singer was Richard Tauber and to think little old me did a record on the same label as this EMI icon…