Boddie Recording Co.

Recording studio, mastering, and record pressing facility located in Cleveland, Ohio, active from 1958-1993, owned by Thomas Boddie and Louise Boddie. In addition to offering custom pressing and recording services, the Boddies also administered their own Luau Records (2), Bounty Records, Soul Kitchen, Soul Mine (2), Plaid Records (8), Cookin Records (5), and Caribi Records labels. The in-house publishing companies were Tomlew Pub. and LaMas Productions. Sometimes the company is shown as Boddie Recording Inc. and Boddie Recording & Mfg. Co. Recordings pressed, mastered, or recorded at Boddie can be identified by a stylized "BR" in the run-out, coupled with a letter prefix and a four-digit job number. The letter prefixes found on the label or run-out are usually shorthand to represent the actual label the record appears on (i.e. B = Bounty, C = Caribi, etc). Additional run-out markings include a "M" to denote mastering, a "R" to indicate it was recorded at the Boddie studio, or a "P" to represent a custom pressing job. From http://www.buckeyebeat.com/bounty.html : The numbering system used for these records is pretty simple. The first Bounty and Luau records were pressed at Kaybank. Starting with 5588, Boddie started numbering records using sequential catalog numbers. The number previous, 5587, had been assigned by Kaybank, so it’s just the luck of the draw that numbers started there. This 5xxx numbering continues into 1969. When Boddie started pressing records at his house, he began to assign each press with a number starting with the year. The first two numbers of the pressing number are the last two digits in the calendar year. This system was used for the Bounty and Soul Kitchen records, as well as custom pressings. Some of the custom pressings have the Boddie number and a separate label catalog number (a good example being some of the BOS records). A few of the custom presses have the number in the dead wax only. Most of the years, Boddie would restart the count with yy00 or yy01, for example the first record pressed in 1973 would be 7301. Between 1970 and 1971, the numbers were just rolled over. The last ID’ed pressing in 1970 is 7043, while the first one from 1971 is 7145, so the missing xx44 record would be the crossover point. This numbering system lasted until 1986/7 when Boddie stopped pressing records. Very few records (around 10 a year, it seems) were done from the early 1980s on. A comprehensive overview of the company's history and output can be found on Boddie Recording Company: Cleveland, Ohio.