Rite Intro

RITE PRESSINGS

Although the Starday custom series is probably the most famous, and 
indeed the most collectable. Rite custom pressings from Cincinnati, Ohio 
were one of the biggest independent producers of custom pressed 45's 
vying for business amongst RCA and CBS to name only two. Where companies 
like RCA had full page adverts in Billboard advertising their custom 
division, Rite adverts were very, very small. Blink and you'd miss 
them!.  Obviously, Rite began on a shoe string budget with no bottomless 
pockets to help finance pressings, but it began to flourish during the 
late 50's and not only embraced the rock & roll explosion, but was right 
in the thick of things when the 60's explosion started. Rite is as 
famous today for it's 60's garage punk as it is for Rock-A-Billy & Soul discs.

Carl Burkhardt (owner) started small. He was willing to press 45's and 78's in 
small quantities for any artist desperate to make their own records. By 
the tail end of 57, he seemed to have ceased pressing 78's and 
concentrated on 45's and the occasional long player as well. Unlike 
Starday, Rite didn't have it's own "numbering" system, but used the 
"matrix" system like the majors. So the pressings run in matrix order 
instead of label release order. The earliest we've found so far is 
CP-1004/1005 by Tommy Wills on CLUB MIAMI Records from Hamilton, Ohio. 
Rite started it's CP pressings about the end of 1953, although he may 
well have had been pressing records long before then, for labels like 
King who needed to use companies occasionally to fulfill pressing runs. 
(Carl stated in a personal letter that he started pressing records in 
the late 40's). Rite pressed about 25 discs through 1955, but that 
increased to about 50 in 1956, almost a 100 through 1957 and then it 
skyrocketed from 1958. (On one day in 58, they pressed up Eddie Gaines 
"Be Bop Battlin' Ball - Summit 101, Lamie Brothers - Sunset Blues - 
Sunset 706 & Kid Killen - School Bus Tragedy - KYVA 707 - a busy day 
indeed!!). By 1956, artists from Pennsylvania and Kentucky were sending 
in their tapes and demos to be pressed up and a year later they were 
sending them in from all over the US. (Bobby Anderson - owner of Summit 
records (Ky) said he used them quite a lot because they were cheap and 
did the job quickly). At one point, the Starday Custom division were 
sending to Rite their "customs" to be pressed up, leaving some Starday 
customs with Rite CP matrixes!

Midway through 1958, Rite started using "account" numbers in the dead 
wax. These numbers represented the customer who was paying for the 
pressings. So any record with "RITE #113" in the dead wax would belong to 
the same customer (Bobby Anderson in this case). This is a useful guide 
to see if any record is a Rite pressing or not.

By 1962, they dropped the CP prefix from the matrix number and this is 
where the account number then comes in useful. For example, the St 
Lawrence label fits the time frame of releases and their matrix numbers 
and the release dates correspond, but they have no Rite customer numbers 
in the dead wax - therefore are almost certainly Rite pressings.

The other thing Rite was known for was poor sound quality. Although to 
be fair, it wasn't the companies fault if the artist sent them a demo 
made in their kitchen with very primitive equipment, but during the 60's 
the pressings seemed to deteriorate in overall sound quality. (Process 
Records were one of the main culprits). But the end of that decade 
though, things began to get a lot better thankfully. At least they 
weren't as notoriously bad as some of the CBS pressings with their 
alleged liberal use of second hand vinyl in the mix.

Malcolm Chapman  Nov 2002