For This I Thank You

[thommg]

I was at a flea market today and found a 3 CD set called For This I Thank You: Motow R&B, Popcorn and Rock 'N' Roll on a label named Fantastic Voyage. I have never heard of this and never heard of the label. It's a nice fold out set with a full color booklet featuring the labels from many of the songs contained on the CD's. This is all early Motown - 1959 - 1962 stuff. Anyone have any background on this release?

[longtimefan]

This CD was one of many that were released in Europe on various labels when the US copyright on songs from the early 60s ran out. That regulation has since changed by extending the number of years for a copyright to be nullified from 50 to something like 75.

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[longtimefan]

Here's another CD [[like above) that is a nice collectible.

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[robb_k]

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I imagine they were all Belgian releases, because they are "Popcorn" songs, and Belgium had the loophole in their law that recognised only 50 years of copyright, and didn't recognise the additional 25.

[calvin]

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I imagine they were all Belgian releases, because they are "Popcorn" songs, and Belgium had the loophole in their law that recognised only 50 years of copyright, and didn't recognise the additional 25.

I found that Fantastic Voyage has a website, and the company address is in London.

Copyright laws were standardized across the EU many years ago [[at the latest with the 2006 directive). The 2011 directive changed the copyright length to 70 years for recordings first released in 1963 or later. Recordings first released in 1962 or earlier had 50 years, and those copyrights have expired.

These are apparently fully legal public-domain releases, and I see that both pictured above are available from Amazon UK. The second cd above states that the songs are all from 1959-1962. There are many such public-domain releases now, but buyer beware - these are vinyl rips of varying quality [[the officially-released digital masters have their own sound recording copyrights). I've bought a few public-domain releases, but generally only when they had music which was not available "officially" [[eg "The Anna Records Story").

[jack020]

http://www.soulbrother.com/label/soul-jam/ [[http://souljamrecords.com/)

http://souljamrecords.com/

Nice selection!

[mysterysinger]

There are a great many of these types of releases that have some combination of the early Motown tracks as well as complete artist albums and more. The market seemed to be overwhelmed with them and there have been some outstanding collections of Motown and other label output. They're vinyl drops and perfectly legal [[at the time) and a lot are from the UK.

Our very own Hotspurman and the Hallmark label did a good job of releasing this type of product and making complete albums available again [[Motown and otherwise) that probably would never have seen the light of day. One Day Music are experts at this game too. Actually very good value but a recipe for track duplication between the various collections.

[thommg]

I found that Fantastic Voyage has a website, and the company address is in London.

These are apparently fully legal public-domain releases, and I see that both pictured above are available from Amazon UK. There are many such public-domain releases now, but buyer beware - these are vinyl rips of varying quality [[the officially-released digital masters have their own sound recording copyrights). I've bought a few public-domain releases, but generally only when they had music which was not available "officially" [[eg "The Anna Records Story").

The website is www.fantasticvoyagemusic.com and it does seem to have quite a few of these early releases.

The sound quality is pretty good on this For This I Thank You [[but I'm only part way through disc one). Most of the titles included are songs I'm not familiar with and I'm really enjoying them. The thing that surprised me was the packaging. Other titles I bought through the copyright lapse do not have as detailed or as nice a package as this one. The booklet is full color with single labels and there is a short bio of the performers and the songs included.