T.K. Disco Was Pure Independent, But International Distribution Assigned to Columbia

Henry Stone with Mark Moormann, director of The Record Man

“I always did everything independent. The only time I was involved with a major is when I was involved with Columbia Records for my worldwide distribution yknow. Not in the states. Cause you cant collect your money around the world unless you go with a big company.

Even though they beat me out of a lot money from Nigeria. Oil money that I never saw my piece of.

Columbia distributed for me in the UK, France, Germany. All over the world. They have their own Columbias. Columbia and RCA Victor. They’ve got their own setup.

So when I released a record here, and I released a record around the world, it hadda be pretty much the same time.

I hadda give em a few days leeway cause it took them time to get into production. When I put out a new KC and The Sunshine Band record I hadda put it out four days in front. I sent it to them in New York and they’d send it all over the world…they had an outlet in every major country around the world

Maybe not some of those 3rd world countries yknow like UK or Germany France Denmark Sweden yknow Japan, not China, not Russia either at the time.

Everything came out around the world at the same time. Oh yeah. Once we got established. But not in the very beginning yknow.

In the 70s I had some good people round me. I had Steve workin’ in the studio. Steve Alaimo, which was good. He was great. I had good accountants. I had good people. I had the two best promotion men in the world.

My accountant was Jack Kratish. He started to work for me in my early Tone years. He was workin for an accountant firm, used to do my books, and it got so he liked the idea of just handling my books full time. It got that big ya know.

He was my chief finance officer. CFO. Millions of dollars involved. I couldn’t handle that shit.. I didn’t want to. I wanted to make records. Producing records, man, that was my thing.”

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