Someday We'll Be Together Motown Double Gold Record Award

[DWSheffer]

Since SWBT seems to be a topic of conversation in the DRATS section lately, I figured I'd share this acquisition I made a year ago. This is the double gold record award presented to Johnny Bristol for the song. The man I purchased it from in Detroit had acquired the award through the purchase of Bristol's delinquent storage unit around 25 years ago, he couldn't remember for sure. I don't feel there were too many of these double gold record awards given out by Motown, so a double from any artist is a rarity. These were made by Disc Award Ltd. in Los Angeles and as many know, since Motown was not an RIAA member at the time, these are called "in-house" gold record awards. They were awarded by the company as a way of recognizing a record's sales achievement and are not "official" gold record awards. In my opinion they're much cooler than RIAA awards and are much more rare, as they were only given to the artists and people directly connected with the record. RIAA awards were given to almost anyone with some claim to the records success it seems.

The only photo I've ever been able to find of a double gold set being awarded is with Barney giving Marvin his awards for "Grapevine". Motown used a different award company in the mid-60's, but changed to Disc Award Ltd. in the late 60's and used them through mid-70's from what I've found. I figured the forum would enjoy seeing this award up close. The award did not come with a presentation plate, so I had the engraver my company works with match the exact font used on awards that have them. I wanted to make sure the history of who this award belonged to was not lost and proper recognition was given to Mr. Bristol.
Darin