Label Guide: Tops

Tops Records was a Los Angeles-based budget label (similar to Pickwick) owned by Tops Music Enterprises, founded in 1947 by Carl L. Doshay and Sam Dickerman. The company began as a reseller of used jukebox records before the actual record label with own productions started in the early 1950s. Most of the releases were re-recordings of recent popular hits with unknown sound-alike singers, hardly collectible today for anything more than a document of its time or the typical 'sex sells' coverart ("cheesecake") that was popular with these junk records, sometimes even with famous actresses like Kim Novak or Jayne Mansfield as cover stars.

In the mid-1950s, Tops started producing the first albums with "name artists", either formerly popular singers and combos, or newcomers, such as John Williams and Andre Previn (read more). In 1958, the label was sold to PRI (Precision Radiation Instruments, a company known for producing Geiger counters). Two years later, Tops Records was sold again, this time to Bob Blythe, the original maker of ball point pens (BB Pens).

All these corporate changes, with new people in charge that had no proper experience in the recorded music business, led to Tops' eventual bankruptcy in 1962. Its assets, including the huge library of recordings, were sold to Pickwick Records, the label that had been its main competitor throughout the 1950s.