The ever-vigilant Richard Morton Jack has forwarded me
another magazine article about the early days of Sentinel, this time from a
copy of Music Business Weekly, dated May 9th, 1970. It includes the first
details of distribution and record sales that I've read in connection with the label, though the
figure mentioned is predicted, rather than actual. 20,000 seems like quite a
high figure, but the album referred to in the article, "Sounds Like West
Cornwall", was all over the place throughout the 70s, so maybe 20,000 isn’t
beyond the realms of possibility. Many thanks to Richard for sending this piece.
Job Morris’ co-conspirator, John Hassell, seems like an
intriguing character himself, and to describe him as merely a studio owner
does him a disservice. He ran an independent recording/pressing facility in
Barnes SW13 though the 60s & 70s (just around the corner from Olympic
studios), recording & releasing much the same kind of records that Sentinel
would put out. However, his reputation as a disc cutter seems to have spread
far and wide, and according to the link below, he had a unique skill in cutting
reggae records (the huge bass frequencies being notoriously difficult to
control though the mastering process), resulting in the ex-World War 2 veteran
helping to shape the sound of British reggae in the late 1970s. Marvellous.
http://soundofthehound.com/2011/06/25/the-strange-origin-of-the-uk-reggae-big-bass-sound-john-hassell-recordings-barnes/
