TMO

Talent Mirror Organisation

The Talent Mirror Organisation was established in 1966 by John McKenzie and myself with the aim of helping local artists to become recording artists. 26 recordings were made featuring artists such as The Big 4, The Insects, El Toros, The Rising Sons, Judy Allen, The Blue Ricks and Edries Fredericks. Unfortunately, two recordings by El Toros have been lost, but I’ve recently found a copy of the backing tracks without the vocals. Local recordings were released on the Mirror label. Recordings produced for Raj Music were released on the RAJ label, while Diamondtone was the label used by the Record King Group. TMO was also involved in distributing a record made by Wally Samuels and The Metros from Pietermaritzburg; My Prayer backed with The Skye Boat Song. Attempts are being made to get a copy of this. All TMO recordings were made at Virginia Lee Studios, with Jimmy Moss as the recording engineer, or at Tom Meehan Studios with Cyril Kaye as the engineer. TMO produced recordings for Virginia Lee’s 1967 Durban Song Festival with backings provided by The Insects. During a trip to London John McKenzie negotiated with Chris Blackwell the rights to distribute some of the catalogue of Island Records in South Africa. He also negotiated with King Records in Ireland to release their recordings and with President Records of America. Overseas recordings were released on the Reflection label. Records from President were imported and retained the President label. TMO entered into an arrangement with Ster Records to distribute their recordings in Natal, while Ster would wholesale TMO recordings in the other provinces. John McKenzie and Bing Kinsey also wrote articles for Music Mail, Music Express and Popular Music magazines.

John McKenzie and Bing Kinsey