by paterson » Fri Sep 21, 2018 6:29 am
Sweet Plum is a bit of a head scratcher. 12 of Sweet Plum's 16 releases have a connection to MUCH Records/Productions. I always thought that Sweet Plum was probably owned by MUCH. Sitting On a Poor Man's Throne was released twice in 1973, first on the MUCH label and then on Sweet Plum (both versions were distributed by London Records.) Later material on Sweet Plum was distributed by A&M, but MUCH had also moved distribution to A&M late 1973 into 1974.
April Wine never appeared on the MUCH label even though the first three albums were produced by Much Productions and the band was signed to MUCH. All of this material, singles and albums were on Aquarius.
MUCH artists like Sea Dog, Mantis, Tony Kingston and of course Copper Penny all had releases on Sweet Plum as well as MUCH. Most of these were not re-releases of material like Sitting on a Poor Man's Throne. Could it be that MUCH was experimenting somewhat to see if their artists would have more success on a secondary label that was not so closely tied to CHUM radio? The logos for 1050 chum and MUCH records are very similar.
Just thinking out loud here but would other broadcast groups that were in direct competition with CHUM stations across the country have some hesitation programming music from a label which was owned by this competitor? I am not implying this was rampant but it might have been potentially an issue and possibly MUCH was testing to see if it made any difference to the acceptance of a song. Sitting on a Poor Man's Throne had more success on the Sweet Plum label but I don't know if there was much of a gap between the two releases.
I was wrong about Pagliaro being the only MUCH artist to have international releases. As Richard Skelly mentions above, April Wine had material released in the US and some releases on the PYE label, and Copper Penny also had releases in the US. In fact Sitting On a Poor Man's Throne received a lot of airplay on CKLW and was picked up by various US stations in the mid-west.