Record Mart

RM was the label of Derek Glenister's 'Record Mart' shop in Southend-on-Sea. It dealt in reissues of obscure Rockabilly / Rock 'n' Roll records. Its singles were all pressed in the USA, which gave them an authentic period look; several early singles were manufactured by Monarch and have 'MR' in a circle in the run-offs. RM's dates of operation were 1975-c.81; for a time, beginning in 1978, its records were given national distribution by Lightning. Many of the singles had no date on the label; if dates were given they've been included in the discography below.
Catalogue numbers, which were in an RMA-1000 series, reached at least RMA-1045, but some of them may not have been used. There seems to have been a 'DeLuxe' series of singles planned, with numbers in the RMDL-2000s, but only one record appears to have been released in it. One label design was used throughout, with minor variations; at least five of the first seven releases can be found with either red (1) or black printing, while from RMA-0007 onwards the print is in black (2) - it may be that black-printed versions of the early singles are re-pressings. From RMA-1038 onwards two horizontal black bars were added to the labels; some earlier singles can be found with these bars, presumably as a result of re-pressings. On occasions Record Mart had re-pressings made by the American companies which were responsible for the original recordings; these were pressed with the labels of those companies but with a credit to Record Mart - see Glee, Antler, Doré, Yucca and Olympic (OR prefix).

Very few, if any, Elvis fans know about people like Narvel Felts or would even be interested in him or any of the obscure Rockabilly, r&b, blues etc. And some of these artists encountered Elvis in those glorious 50s days - especially during the Sun era.

Yes, the Rockstar album you speak of is great. Btw i know Derek Glenister who was involved with Rockstar Records, he had a record shop in Southend-On-Sea i bought some great records off him over the years.

I have not contacted Derek for years, but I used to order lots of stuff from his mail order service, which of course was connected to the record shop you mention, "The Record Museum". He also had a label called Record Mart ("RM"), which reissued lots of obscure rockabilly stuff in 45 rpm, 7 inch format. Later on, or almost simultaneously, he started Rockstar Records with Tony Barrett, who was the owner, although Derek was a very close collaborator. I wonder what happened to Rockstar. The last release I know of was in 2009 - the Eddie Cochran instrumental CD called "String Fever".