Telco
Telco was a subsidiary of the West Indies Telephone and ELectric COmpany run by Dr. Roy Sampath and Lennox D. Whiteman. Legendary arranger and saxophonist Frankie Francis was the musical director until around 1964, after which point guitarist Richard “Boyie” Lewis took over. The studio was located near Gorden & Maingot Streets (near the Eastern Main Road) in Mount Hope, Trinidad.
The studio was equipped with an Ampex 200 tape machine in the early days, which was used up until the early 1960s. Around 1963 an Ampex 600 was in use, which appears in a photograph on the back cover of TL 5022. The label had pressing facilities but no mastering facilities, so tapes were sent to the U.S. (typically the New York-based Audio Matrix, Inc. or Bell Sound) or Barbados to be mastered.
Telco had a license agreement with the American Columbia label. Some of the early releases were issued on the Columbia label, and are included here. Telco also had an agreement with the British label Pye Records to manufacture records for the local market.
474 records.
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