Dawn Records was a subsidiary of Pye Records. Active from 1970 to 1975, it was set up largely as Pye's 'underground and progressive' label, a rival of the EMI and Phonogram equivalents, Harvest and Vertigo.
The most successful act on the label was Mungo Jerry, whose first two singles reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart. The label was also notable for releasing the 1970 and 1971 Donovan albums, Open Road and HMS Donovan. It also released records by Man, Paul Brett's Sage, Titus Groan, Mike Cooper, Heron, John Kongos (before he found greater success on the Fly label), Comus, Atlantic Bridge, Pluto, Atomic Rooster and the Mungo Jerry offshoot, the King Earl Boogie Band.
In October 1970, the UK music magazine NME reported that Dawn label acts Demon Fuzz, Titus Groan, Heron and Comus were due to take part in a series of UK concerts in November 1970. At all venues the price of admission was one penny.
Two other notable acts were Brotherhood Of Man in their Eurovision-winning line-up, who released their first album, Good Things Happening, in 1974; and Prelude, whose a cappella version of the Neil Young song "After the Gold Rush" (No. 21, 1974) was the label's only other UK hit single.
Famous quotes containing the words dawn and/or records:
“I know a little garden-close
Set thick with lily and red rose,
Where I would wander if I might
From dewy dawn to dewy night,”
—William Morris (1834–1896)
“Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,
And even old men’s eyes grew dim, this hand alone,
Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping-place
Babbling of fallen majesty, records what’s gone.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)