whats the story w/ lp label Focus (dist. by Atlantic)- prestge copy-la

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

i was curious about what this was about, the only lp i ever come across is the earl hines trio lp, i dont know of any others. the cover art and print and back cover layout is all exactly like how a period prestige lp would have been, and its produced by don schlitten too. the label logo,very similar to prestige family logos.

would this lp label Focus, be considered part of the prestige family of labels (like status), or is it separate cause its distributed by atlantic. or is it essentially just a prestige lp dist. by atlantic cause it looks too similar -not- to be, the font on the spine for example is exactly the same. no way they could get everything like exactly the same w/o some help. and dons there. my guess is its some kind of deal between prestige and atlantic somehow, but i dont know what.

[Big Beat Steve]

Could this be a case like the Onyx/Xanadu labels where a lot of the record covers of their 70s/80s reissues have exactly the same layout like slightly earlier Prestige reissues (photo placement on front cover, text/track listing layout on back cover, etc.)?

Maybe the key to why this looks identical is Don Schlitten? (Like in the case of the Onyx/Xanadu labels)

[Stereojack]

Focus was owned by Mort Fega. Listing can be found here:

http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Labels/focus.htm

No connection to Prestige that I can tell.

[Bill Nelson]

My experience with the original Focus pressings gave me plenty of 'agita' -- the vinyl looks cloudy and plays with continual hiss.

Atlantic Record Sales Co., Inc. may well have distributed them but they were likely pressed at a subsidiary of Pickwick.

I've since gotten a Japanese pressing of McRae's 'Bittersweet' (Warner-Pioneer, 1980) and Dorough's 'Everything' on an Evidence CD.

The Wayne 'Tapestry' is nice but not essential.

[JSngry]

Maybe the key to why this looks identical is Don Schlitten? (Like in the case of the Onyx/Xanadu labels)

Yep. Look down there on that lower left spinal-ish column.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

i dont know about fonts and font history but i know some people could tell you exactly what those fonts were, and im sure theyre the exact same ones prestige were using. and the logo, omg. what were they thinking

[JSngry]

Dude it says right there down in the corner -

Design / Photo: Don Schlitten

Don Schilten had design chops and carried them with him.