I have also just now managed to get "Bill Haney's Atlanta Soul
Brotherhood" Volume One on CD for slightly over $20.00, also from
Amazon Associates. Maybe the recent economic downturn has caused
dealers to lower prices? Both CDs are filled with great tunes by
singers and musicians I have never heard of except for Arthur.

I can't help but think it was a real uphill battle for artists
working with an independent producer and for independent producers
themselves. The producers have to put money up front to produce
recordings and hope to successfully shop the masters around to labels
with nationwide distribution. All this time and money have to happen
before ever selling a record. I can't help but think that most
labels would give lower priority to leased masters like these because
these same labels would just about have to give a bigger push to
artists they have under contract themselves. There is a bigger
investment here. That I would think would lessen the chance of a
record from a leased master to get heard and become a hit. At this
point its just about up to listerners or a symathetic DJ somewhere to
really push a record that no one else is paying any attention to.
That could help explain the lack of hits produced by Bill Haney
released on big labels like Stax, Atlantic or even Mala, in spite of
the obvious quality of the performances heard on many of his records.

Now, take Norman Petty as another very similar example of an
independent producer shopping masters around to big labels. At least
his was successul in getting big hits for about a half a dozen
artists in the 1950s and '60s, the biggest of which was, of course,
Buddy Holly.