Elton John - Annabella Umbrella Very Rare One Sided Studio Acetate Demo Disc

	£		641
	$		849

Elton John - Annabella Umbrella One Sided Acetate Single. Recorded 1970.

This is a very rare unreleased UK IBC Recordings Single Sided Demo Acetate pressing by Elton John from 1969, ORIGINAL UK ACETATE

This is a real find, a single sided 1970 studio acetate of the song ‘Annabella Umbrella’ the song is one of many demos Elton recorded for Dick James Music from 1968 to 1970 that were never officially released (This song and many others have appeared on a collection of bootleg albums called ‘The Dick James Demos’ this song is on Volume 3)

This is one of the few demos Elton recorded that was not one of his own songs, it was written by Adrien Avon and Demon Spiro (There is a Russian site that lists the writers as Valerie Avon and Harold Spiro) Elton recorded the legendary ‘Dick James Demos’ Between 1968 & 1970 a couple were early versions of songs that would end up on his early albums but most, like this one, have never been released.

Even the title of this acetate is shrouded in a bit of mystery, the label of this acetate just has the name ‘Annabella’ typed on it and it does not even have the artist name and the Dick James Sessions Bootleg also lists the title as Annabella but the song was given an official release by Cliff Richard on one of his EP’s under the title ‘Annabella Umbrella’ and most of the better fan sites including eltonography.com, that has list of virtually every song Elton recorded lists the song as being called ‘Annabella Umbrella’ there is no exact date for when the session was recorded but it is generally assumed it was 1970.

This track was never released on any of Elton’s albums or singles.

This will probably be your one and only chance to get this unreleased Elton John acetate as very few were pressed, and most were lost or thrown away after the producer and artist had listened to them.

The tracks are: ‘Annabella Umbrella’ the B side is blank.

The acetate was pressed by IBC Sound Recording Studios at Portland Place, London.

As this is an acetate, it does have some marks as you would expect. As these obviously were not for "retail sale" the quality is not for commercial use, from what I understand they were not made to be played loads of times and were very rarely kept even by well-known artists, they would have probably only been played a few times and then thrown away

There would have been only a few copies of this pressed for the Band, the Studio personnel and of course Elton himself to judge the recording. One really interesting fact about this particular acetate is it was not recorded/pressed at the correct speed when you listen to it Elton’s voice sounds slightly ‘high’ (but unmistakeably Elton) if you look on You Tube you can hear the song as it is on this acetate and where someone has kindly corrected the speed.

This is really one of those ‘one off’ auctions where another one of this particular Elton John song will probably never turn up as these discs were not made to be kept, sometimes the artist would keep his song or an engineer but normally the copies were lost, thrown away or just forgotten about once they had been played a few times and the proper release was out. I came by this copy in a job lot of records I purchased from a collector who I am guessing had something to do with the music industry as it included several demos, acetate’s and first pressings.

I have played the disc all the way through and there are no jumps. The condition is good there are a few marks and very light scratches that do not affect the playing quality of the disc (having said that as most people will know all acetate’s, even mint un played ones have an amount of ‘noise’ on them as they were not pressed to the standard of the finished disc but just to give the artist and producer an idea of how the finished product would sound) in fact it’s in great condition considering it’s a 48 year old acetate that was only made to play a few times! there are 2 small ‘chips’ on the edge of the disc where the lacquer has come off showing the metal plate underneath that all acetate’s have, again this make no difference to the playing of the disc as the are on the very edge of the lead in groove, there are no chips, marks or bad scratches on the disc itself.

It has not been cleaned by me and I would suggest that the winning bidder has it done professionally due to its rarity

Due to its rarity the item will be sent recorded delivery. The cost of the post has gone up in the UK but for this item I will only charge the price of standard post (but will obviously be sent recorded)

Thanks for looking and good luck!