Catalogue             Group                                                                 A side/B side                                                      Year

Number

KORS 1028       The Soul Throbs                                    Soul Girl/Change My Mind

KORS 1041       LRL and the Dukes                                Double Funk/I've Got To Tell You              1975

KORS 1043      Taifa Jazz                                               Crossing The River/I Hold My Guitar

KORS 1049       Slim Ali                                                 Help/Wait

KORS 1051       Slim Ali & the Hodi Boys                         Tell Me/Gimme Something Love               1978             

KORS 1052       Slim Ali                                                 Rain/Papa's Land                                    1977

KORS 1053       Sam Kimachia and James                       Groupie Girl/Crescent of the Moon            1978

RBS 040           Coco                                                     ShonaKhona/Why Can't We Live Together

JUP 2               Silver Convention                                   Get Up and Boogie/Son of a Gun

BMK 001          Myriam Makeba                                      Malcolm X/Malaika                                  1977

The presence of Slim Ali and the Hodi Boys on KORS 1051 marks the KORS prefix singles as dating from the late 1970s, though I know nothing about the Soul Throbs. I also can’t explain why the dates on the labels of two of the Slim Ali records are out of sequence.

RBS 040 was distributed by AI, the successor company to AIT, which suggests this single dates from the mid to late 1980s.

Coco, I believe, were South African, though the only reason I have for this is that Shona Kona was a slogan used much later in an ad campaign there to encourage kids to take up sport.

The B-side is not a cover of the classic Timmy Thomas tune either.

KORS 1041 turned up on Ebay in February 2010 and the seller knew his stuff, explaining that the tracks were licensed from the Brown Dog and Minaret labels in the USA. So it seems to have been a label for licensed songs from abroad and English-language releases by East African bands.

BMK 001 is another record that appeared on Ebay, selling in December 2011. Why Miriam Makeba’s name is misspelt on the label is a bit of a mystery.