Bergenfield yellow/ black fireworks label – all titles Reference Set

PRESTIGE ORIGINAL PRESSINGS VOLUME III: MONO, THE BERGENFIELD YEARS

Prestige Bergenfield Years

In August 1958, Prestige moved offices from 446 W. 50th St. NYC to 203 South Washington Ave., Bergenfield, NJ. The change was marked by the second yellow/ black fireworks label, with the Bergenfield address. From PR 7142 to PR 7325 is a straight run of 180-odd titles issued on the second yellow/black fireworks label, and of course, many reissues.

At PR 7326, in 1964, Prestige adopted a new label design with the trident logo. Mono editions effectively ceased around 1967 but the Bergenfield address remained in use until 1971, when the Prestige label was sold to Fantasy Records

The extended reference set includes the mono label of each title, some other detail on the way, but it does not attempt to identify individual original covers.The earlier Illustrated Guide to the NY. Yellow/Black label (1956-Aug.58) can be seen here: Guide To Prestige Original Pressings / NY label .

. VISUAL REFERENCE GUIDE TO BERGENFIELD ORIGINAL PRESSING MONO LABELS

All titles PR 7142 – 7325 (1958-64)

In the Bergenfield Label Visual Reference Guide there are around 180 titles in all; ten “pages” with twenty titles per page, showing the Side A label. Label pictures are sourced partly from the Discogs Master Release, but not infrequent gaps supplemented by other sources, including Popsike, and Ebay some specialist vinyl sellers in Japan. Each page can be viewed at full screen, with each label still readable.

Note:The text “HIGH FIDELITY” is sometimes spelled “HI FIDELITY” and occasionally “HI FI” or “LONG PLAYING MICROGROOVE” according to the whim of the compositer that day. Otherwise the label typesetting and layout follows the set formula. The A and B sides are are a suffix to the catalogue number, until towards the end of the yellow/black series, a later form SIDE 1 and SIDE 2 appears

Internet label picture sources are not a reliable guide to exact label colour. Colour variation may be differences in the original paper stock between first label print runs and subsequent printing, but also the influence of varying colour temperature between tungsten, flourescent or daylight souces, and over/under-exposure resulting from use of camera automatic setting on black vinyl..

These are the label of the original Prestige release. If you have a record on a later label, NYC takes precedence, then Bergenfield, then Blue/Trident, you have a later edition.

A few titles towards the end of the series are not found on yellow/black, probably prepared for issue at a slightly later date than the catalogue number sequence suggests.
Here on, the blue/Trident is the only Prestige mono label, the trident moving from 3 0’clock to 12 o’clock on stereo editions.There doen’t seem much value added in extending the visual reference another few hundred releases on Blue/Trident, basically they all look the same above.