Joe Rodie sent the excellent scans seen here of rare singles by an unknown Detroit area band, Sean and the Sheas, who released two 45s in 1966. Joe is looking for information on the group, but unfortunately I couldn’t provide any yet.

Sean and the Sheas first release is the upbeat soul-influenced “Come to the Party” backed with an adaption of the nursery rhyme, “Hi Diddle”.

This was Yorkshire Y-001-A/Y-001-X, with “Come to the Party” written by John Rankin and “Hi Diddle” credited to B. Cozad – J. Rankin. The writers must have been aware a new arrangement of a traditional song could be copyrighted. The label reads recorded in Detroit, Mich., but I don’t know which studio. The producer was John Rankin, and executive producer Henry Cozad.

For the second single, “Hi Diddle” repeated this time as Yorkshire Y-004-X while “Spiders” which I haven’t heard is listed as Yorkshire Y-004-XX. Terry Mohr wrote “Spiders” and he also appears as arranger on this 45, produced by Bill Cozad and John Rankin and this time oddly “Recorded in America”.

All songs published by Bico Music BMI, 1966.

The 45s have Nashville Matrix stamps and “95” etched into them. The “95” means they were pressed by Norman Archer at Archer Record Pressing, at 7401 E. Davidson in Detroit, as that was his account number at Matrix of Nashville. Archer handled many smaller Detroit labels, so despite the resemblance to the font used for Wheel’s 4 Records, Yorkshire was probably an unrelated label. There were several Yorkshire Records labels around the country at the time, but I can’t find any other release by this Detroit company.

With all the names on these singles I would think there would be some information on the group out there, but I can’t find any yet.

Thank you to Joe Rodie for the scans and motivating me to write about this group.