Take 6

Take-6 Enterprises, Incorporated, was located at 6565 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Take-6 issued albums exclusively for radio stations to use as promotional items, giveaways, or sales. Occasionally they were sold in stores, but only locally. Since the albums issued were all local items not meant for national distribution, Take-6 used the opportunity for a huge overlap in songs from album to album, with Take-6 licensing a relatively small number of songs and reissuing them over and over. The albums themselves were not reissued per se, but the songs were mixed and reordered so that two albums may differ only by one or two songs, although the song sequence was quite different. Album cover art was reissued, however, as several of the albums have the same basic cover art, modified to meet the needs of the particular station, even to the extent of working drawings of the deejays into the cover scenes. The quality of these albums was good but not great. The most interesting things about these albums were the local hits that made it to a single album each. "Splash 1" by the Clique, "Take Me Back" by the Flock, "Midnight Hour" by Michael and the Messengers, "The Witch" by the Sonics, "99th Floor" by the Moving Sidewalk, and several others found their way onto albums for the first (and in some cases, last) time. There was even a find for stereo collectors, as "Walk Tall" by 2 of Clubs showed up in true stereo for the only time ever, on back-to-back compilations from Cincinnati and Denver (#2029 and #2030). By 1969, Take-6 was in increasing competition with other labels doing the same thing, like Lost Nite and Post. Their limited list of oldies offered was also getting somewhat stale by then, and after issuing about 50 albums, they ran out of steam. (Info by Mike Callahan, Dave Edwards, and Patrice Eyries)