Park Foundation Music App

Home > Labels

Chung Hwa Records

Profile

ChungHwa Records is a label from Taiwan, catering for US and Australian soldiers stationed there. At the time they were legal pressings, not intended for export. The releases are mostly copies from US or Japanese releases, often with altered colors, and include a wide array of styles. Information from billboard article: Pressed in Taiwan to cash in on the 35,000 or so GI's that were stationed there between the 1950s and 1970s. The albums were usually pressed in batches of about 500, with no two batches looking or sounding the same (ie different covers, vinyl colors). Covers were usually recycled, meaning art for a totally different album was on the reverse side of the paper (covers were thin paper wrapped in cellophane). For context, Taiwan was the pirate capital of SEA (followed closely by Thailand and the Philippines). In Taiwan circa 1970 there were reportedly over 45 (modern equipped) pressing plants churning out 200,000 pirate albums per month (that's just the number pressed for export to other parts of SEA!), up from 150,000 per month back in 1963. Pirate pressings outsold legit pressings 5 to 1. They were sold openly in legit record stores alongside equivalent legit pressings...usually for 1/5 or 1/4 of the price of the legit copy (in 1970 a pirate LP cost around US$0.70 whereas a legit Singaporean EMI pressing of the same album cost around US$3.50).* *Source= Billboard article 14 Mar 1970.