Toshiba Musical Industries - Toshiba EMI Era (1968-1977)

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1968, Japan's 1st own press, by Toshiba Musical Industries

Toshiba Musical Industries (will be renamed to Toshiba EMI sometime in early 1970s) released a number of Blue Note LPs in the late 1960s. However, they were not Japan pressings: but Toshiba imported U.S. pressings and simply added Japanese stickers. Sometimes they added OBI and paper insert to the imported U.S. pressings.

The 1968 is the first year when Toshiba Musical Industries finally released their own pressings. Surprisingly it was NOT an LP issue but 45rpm single release. I heard that this series didn't sell well, so these titles are now really collectable.

1969-1971, Japan's 1st own LP press, some contains Unreleased Mateirals, by Toshiba Musical Industries

Finally, Toshiba Musical Industries started to release 16 LPs (NR-8800 series) pressed in their own plant. This series has NR prefix.

Sometime in the early 1970s (as far as I know it was in 1973), Toshiba Musical Industires changed its name to Toshiba EMI, so some of these copies have "Toshiba EMI" imprints on the liner-notes and back-cover. For example, the copy (which I took scanned photo as seen below) of NR-8832 has "Toshiba Musical Industries" imprint on the OBI, while the label and the cover have "Toshiba EMI".

This series, complete with OBI, is really collectable nowadays.

cover and OBI of NR-8845	centre label of NR-8845

centre label of NR-8845 (closeup) “MFD. UNDER LICENCE BY TOSHIBA MUSICAL INDUSTRIES LTD. IN JAPAN” this may indicate the pressings in 1970-1973	centre label of NR-8832 (closeup) “MFD. UNDER LICENSE BY TOSHIBA-EMI LTD. IN JAPAN” this may indicate the pressings in 1973-1976

A facsimile of bottom part of the OBI. The Japanese Kana letters in yellow colour means "Blue Note Records", while other white-coloured Kanji letters stands for "Distributed by Toshiba Musical Industries Co. Ltd.".

1976-1977 "Blue Note Jazz" Series, some contains Unreleased Materials, by Toshiba EMI

Then in the middle 1970s, Toshiba EMI released a number of Blue Note LPs. Although I sorted these titles by release number, the actual release sequence was "at random" : at least, I confirmed that the very first release was LNJ-80064.

Some of them includes "unreleased materials" at that time.

I haven't confirmed all titles yet.

cover and OBI of LNJ-80100	centre label of LNJ-80100	centre label of LNJ-70080 (promotional issue)

the Japanese letters in the rectangle, "Mihon", whose literal translation would be "factory sample". Other three Kanji letters are "Hibai Hin", which means "not for sale".

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