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| Former Plastic Products Quonset huts at 1746 Chelsea Avenue in Memphis Source: Google Street View |
Buster Williams' Plastic Products Company
The Hub of Rock'n'Roll in Memphis
The Hub of Rock'n'Roll in Memphis
Many independent, small and private record labels from 1955 onwards used such big custom pressing services as Rite from Cincinnati or RCA's pressing plant from New Jersey. One of the smaller independent pressing plants was Buster Williams' Plastic Products from Memphis, who served the whole south in the early 1950s. Among the now famous record labels which pressed records at Plastic Products were Sun, Meteor, Hi, Fernwood, Atlantic, and many others.
Robert E. "Buster" Williams originally hailed from Enterprise, Mississippi, where he first worked as a peanut salesman while still in his teens and later owned a drug store. Williams was already an experienced business man when he set up Plastic Products in 1949. He had worked as a distributor for Wurlitzer jukeboxes in the Memphis area and by the end of World War II, had founded Music Sales distribution together with Clarence Camp (husband of Celia Camp, future co-owner of Home of the Blues Records) on 680 Union Avenue in Memphis. Soon after its founding, the company began distribution for many independent labels, including Gilt-Edge, Mercury, Excelsior, Exclusive, National, Sterling, among others. An office in New Orleans was established and Music Sales became a successful record distributor in the south and south-west.
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| Billboard ad from its March 9, 1957, issue. "Shipments made from PLASTIC PRODUCTS, Memphis, and SOUTHERN PLASTICS, Nashville. |
A talented entrepreneur and engineer, Williams sensed that there was a gap in the record market and founded his pressing plant "Plastic Products Incorporated" in Memphis on 1746 Chelsea Avenue. On this property were four Quonset huts that housed the plant's offices, shipping and printing operations, compounding equipment and the actual presses. At the start, much of the used equipment was designed by Williams himself. Actually, it started with one Quonset hut but soon, Williams extended his operations and more huts were added. Plastic Products rapidly became the favorite plant among many independent labels in the south. When Sam Phillips founded Sun Records, he began using Buster Williams' plant as well as Music Sales for distribution.
Hi, Fernwood, Meteor, Stax, Atlantic, MGM, Chess, Holiday Inn, and many other, much smaller, labels pressed their records there, too. Williams, a self-made entrepreneur, knew the difficulties independent labels had to deal with and offered lavish credits for these companies. By 1956, Plastic Products was pressing for 49 different record labels and turned out more than 65,000 records a day. The plant therefore played an important role in the development of popular music, especially in creating and spreading rock'n'roll. Nearly all of the Memphis based labels would press their records at Plastic Products in 1959, though it made up only 10% of the whole outcome at that time.
The same year, Plastic Products was so busy pressing records that the orders exceeded the capacities of Williams' plant in Memphis by far. He built another plant in Coldwater, Mississippi (a little south of Memphis), which became known as Coldwater Industries. A third plant was built in the early 1970s near the Memphis Airport to manufacture 8-track tapes. Around the same time, Eastern Manufacturing in Philadelphia was acquired by Plastic Products as well.
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| Billboard September 12, 1970 |
By 1973, the end of Plastic Products was in sight. During the past years, Stax Records had become Plastic's biggest customer but when the label experienced financial problems, it could not pay the incoming bills from Plastic Products. A strike at Coldwater followed in 1975 and Plastic Products never received a majority of the sum the company had demanded from Stax. Finally, Buster Williams' son, whose interest lay rather in oil industry than in record pressing business, closed the pressing plants altogether.
Buster Williams passed away in 1992 at the age of 83 years. About a year later, his son sold two of the Quonset huts and later also sold the remaining two. In 2012, a marker was erected at 1746 Chelsea to keep the history of the "hub of rock'n'roll" alive. Some of Williams' children were present at the ceremony but according to Memphis part-time music historian John Shaw, the family is still reluctant to open up their archives which prevents a detailed history of the pressing catalogue.
11 comments:
Howdy my friend, this is pure coincidence... I posted this night a "Plastic Products" item and the invoice... "When great spirits...." !!!
Saw your post today, crazy! I heard of that record, always thought it was a repro. But it's from the 1970s, right?
Right! It was pressed in 1975 as the invoice said...
Strange thing, two Memphis 1950s rockers on a 1970s incarnation of the Erwin label...
The address was 1746 Chelsea Avenue rather than 746. In 1959, pressing demand exceeded the capacity of Buster Williams' quonset huts on Chelsea, and he built a new, modern pressing plant in Coldwater, Mississippi. For some reason, this plant was called Coldwater Industries rather than Plastic Products, but orders were still handled under the Plastic Products name. Both plants operated into the early 1970s. Briefly a third plant near the Memphis International Airport was opened in the early 1970s to handle eight-track tape manufacture. The problem for Plastic Products seemed to be the Stax label's financial turmoil. Stax came to be their largest customer, and by 1973, Stax wasn't paying their bills. Plastic Products cut them off, and Stax purchased a small pressing plant in Concord, Arkansas in a desperate attempt to continue to press records and release product. Meanwhile, Plastic Products could not get the funds it was owed by Stax. A strike at the Coldwater plant in 1975 was the final straw, and Buster's son closed the entire company. Unfortunately, his interest was oil, not music, and since the plants closed, he has refused all requests from researchers asking about the Plastic Products firm or his father. For many years the Coldwater plant was abandoned yet full of records, and the occasional fanatic was arrested trying to scale the fence. By some accounts, the plant was used in the filming of "Great Balls of Fire," and supposedly, in anticipation of that event, all the records in the building were discarded. What became of the presses is unknown, and as far as I can tell, no master listing of jobs has ever been uncovered, although the family may have retained it. Since they refuse all requests for interviews, the world will likely never see it if it exists.
@jdogg Thanks for this enlightening info! It seems I have to redo this post, it needs some polishment for sure.
The small plant in Concord, Arkansas, you mentioned was actually Wayne Raney's Rimrock pressing plant, which pressed many small local labels from Arkansas.
Is there a way of dating Plastic Products pressing from the matrix number on the label or the run-off etchings ? Like you can with Rite pressings?
Actually not - at least no way known to me. You can identify PP pressing with some certainty by looking at the font on the labels, e.g. the Clearpool and Stomper Time labels are prime examples. I haven't recognized a consecutive master numbering system, which is due to the fact that PP did not offer mastering services (at least not to my knowledge). The clients had to master their recordings at different facilities and ship them to PP. But don't take it for granted, I'm not an expert on record manufacturing processes.
That expalins why there no dating list on 45cat Thanks Dean
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