Anybody happen to know how to find the recording or release year for these Sam Fox pieces?
It seems like 1973 was when they started putting copyright dates starting with SF 1028. But that’s near the end of the known run.
I cannot seem to find dates for the earlier SF numbers.
Assuming that the Synchro Library of Recorded Music is related, they put their dates on the 78 releases as late as 1959 which would still leave quite a long gap.
I've heard some of the Sam Fox cues were in use for drive-in cinemas in the 60's, so it probably starts somewhere in the early-to-mid-60's with SF 1001? Just speculation, though, unfortunately. It seems to have become "Synchro-Fox" c. 1973.
One of the Loren R. Wilfong cues on SF 1001 was copyright registered in 1963, so that'd be my guess.
Curiously, according to a 1959 edition of Billboard Magazine, Synchro Music was set up as a partnership between Sam Fox and Southern Music(!). The same source claims that Sam Fox was, in 1959, run by Keith Prowse and Peter Maurice of KPM.
Contemporary records indicate Sam Fox' different branches have ended up various places; Sam Fox Australia under Southern Music Publ. Co. and Sam Fox Musikverlag (Germany) under Peer-Southern while Sam Fox Publ. Co., Inc. (USA) and Sam Fox Publ. Co. Ltd. (UK) seems to have remained independent.
That is correct, you can hear tons of Fox cues (known and unknown) over those ubiquitous little films made for drive-ins if you type in "hey folks it's intermission time", or "drive-in intermission" or anything in that same vein in YouTube. A lot of those cues are among my personal "holy grails", one of these days I might post clips of them in the Track ID section.
I've always kinda felt there was a connection between Fox and Southern, since the Brussels New Concert Orchestra recorded cues for both labels, and also because composers like Joseph Cacciola who wrote cues for Fox later turned up writing cues for Southern.
Same with KPM. There's undoubtedly a connection between KPM and Fox in my mind, and that article seems to back this suspicion up. As I've pointed out before, there are Hi-Q albums with KPM material with an "SF" prefix (D-93/94, at least one "L" album, I forget which other ones), and there's a few Bill Loose cues on one of the Fox 1000 series albums that ended up being re-released by KPM (curiously, none of them were retitled).
Another thought: what if some of the earlier SF 1000 series albums have some re-released tracks? SF 1012 has a few honky-tonk piano arrangements of public domain tunes from Vic Lamont which are obviously older than when they were released as "Winter Tales" was used by Hanna-Barbera in 1958, well before the likely release date of these earlier albums, wouldn't be surprised if some of the other tracks on them are either re-releases of older tracks or of foreign library material.
