"Coded Music Library" / BBC Testcard Music? / Mrs Margaret Brace --- SOLVED!!

[Moon Monkey]

Does anyone know what this is?

A search for "Coded Music Library" brings up precisely two appearances online, one referencing the other:

h++ps://www.rssconsultancy.co.uk/articleTCM.pdf

h++ps://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/comment/60908031#Comment_60908031

But that doesn't seem to be referring to the same entity as this catalogue, which doesn't mention the BBC and appears to be an Ember / Sparta Music thing.

"Margaret Brace" brings up a few hits; she did indeed work at Ember for a time.

Any ideas?

(It's still in the post, btw - will share more info / photos when it arrives!)

[Moon Monkey]

Well it's arrived and it's much more exciting then I thought it would be! I've been trying to post pictures all morning but the forum's been down. It'll have to wait till tomorrow now, sadly. Come back tomorrow, catalogue fans, for the exciting solution to this mystery!

[Moon Monkey]

Well, the "Coded Music Library" catalogue was full of surprises! First off, it looked A5 in the photos. It's not, it's approximately A4. And every bit as tatty as it looks!

I'm going to recreate my examination of this catalogue in thread form! Firstly I opened it up at a random early page and found this...



Crikey! Vedette! English listings for Vedette !

I apologise for the overuse of exclamation marks. And I'm not finished with them yet.

So, quite a few pages of Vedette listings, then we come to this:



Quite a few pages like this. No "additions" attached to any of them, sadly.

I wonder if there's anything else towards the end of catalogue...?

[Moon Monkey]

Bloody hell! Ember! Actual listings for Ember library discs!

I decided it was time to be a bit more methodical. I stopped randomly flicking through and had a look for actual contents pages. There are two - one at the start, the other before the Ember section:

[Moon Monkey]

Quite a decent helping of Ember discs there. And after those listings finish there are lots more empty pages "reserved for additions to our library". Only these pages aren't empty:



(My hands aren't normally that pink. Only when I'm really excited.)

Also, once my time machine is finished, my second port of call (after dinosaurs, obvs) will be to stop the previous owner of this catalogue discovering highlighter pens.

This is the final additional entry:



I'm not sure if there's a complete run up to that point; not had a chance to check yet.

[Moon Monkey]

And here's the back cover:



It's blue (it really is, despite what my phone's camera has done to it.) But the front cover was black!



But what's that, bottom right?

More blue. A blue cover underneath the black cover...

[Moon Monkey]

Bloody hell. This is an actual copy of the fabled Ember catalogue!
 
(Ignore the yellow tinge - it's just blue and white in reality. And the grey "foliage" effects are just leftover glue. Before it was vandalised, the cover would have been flat Ember blue.)

So where did the 'false' cover come from? It's professionally printed, so presumably from Ember themselves - but why? Why the "Code Music Library" rebrand? Why is there not a single mention of this anywhere online? Is the catalogue beneath the 'Coded 'cover the 1968 original?

Any theories, team?

[Lord Thames]

Well this is jolly interesting!  I might need to ask for a few pages from this, as I have some Ember library LPs with no tracklistings on them (why did they do that??)

ERL 3323 Have Band Will Swing is just a normal copy of this album by Dick Vance with Ember labels stuck on top of the Strand ones:  discogs.com/release/5189558-Dick-Vance-Have-Band-Will-Swing

[Moon Monkey]

Yes, happy to share. Probably won't be able to photograph anything till tonight but do let me know which pages you need.

[Moon Monkey]

Noticed earlier that this page is glued in too:



The glue's a bit more solid than it was on the cover so these pages can't easily be separated, but holding them up to the light reveals this:
 


The text appears to be the same - bar addresses, the Ember branding and Mrs Margaret Brace's usurping of poor Miss Pat Lee. ("Well known in publishing circles through her service with KPM, Southern Music and the Ember Library" according to this.)