A Primer On Scorpio And Rhino Vinyl Reissues

NB: This post was extensively edited in 06-2023 after a long conversation with mastering engineer David Cheppa, who cut nearly all of the Rhino and Scorpio reissues.

About 15 years ago, when I first started to get serious about collecting jazz, I discovered that there were a bunch of reissues of classic jazz albums that had no information about when or by whom they had been released. The distinguishing thing about these reissues was that they were extremely good replicas of the original albums; they used what appeared to be the same labels and jackets as the original releases, and the jackets had no bar codes, which was strange for albums made after the 80s. The kicker was that these LPs sold for about $15 each. Brand new Blue Note reissues for $15? Sign me up. 

I bought a few titles -- Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Cliff Jordan -- to see how they sounded. Everything about them looked great. The artwork and labels were very nicely done. The vinyl was 140-gram weight, clean and flat. How do they sound? Not great, but not bad. Although I had no original Blue Notes to compare them to.

Above are the front covers and Side 1 label for Hank Mobley's A Caddy For Daddy, originally released by Blue Note in 1966. The original release is on the left. On the right is the reissue from 2005. The biggest difference apart from the sound quality, (at least I assume) is about $335. A NM copy of the original sold a couple of years ago for $350. A new copy of the reissue will set you back about $15.

As I searched for more information about these new versions, I soon found out that they are referred to as "Scorpio" reissues. The consensus of most online audio forums is that they aren't bad, but are likely not sourced from master tapes, and some people have complained about quality control issues. However, a fair number of people say they are satisfied with the sound quality and happy with the price.  

So what is Scorpio? A Google search doesn't turn up much. They have a web site for selling music (scorpiomusic.co), but there is nothing about the company except for their telephone number and an address in Trenton, NJ. Discogs simply says that they are "A company which appears to deal in 'official reproductions' or 'limited editions' of past works. Licenses gained via the labels or 'rights-holders'. Often issued by Rhino Records."  

From what I was able to find, Scorpio was originally a music distributor that specialized in wholesaling cutout records to dealers. They would buy up hundreds of thousands of cutouts from record companies for pennies on the dollar, and resell them to record shops in bulk. Billboard magazine, the music industry trade journal, regularly carried ads by Scorpio promoting their cutouts "With prices starting at just 50 cents." They invite dealers to call them for more information.

But how did they go from reselling cutouts to repressing/distributing classic jazz albums? Interestingly, the Princeton Record Exchange in Princeton, NJ, one of the country's oldest and largest record stores (and perhaps not coincidentally located about 15 miles up the road from Scorpio headquarters in Trenton) has this odd homage on their web site: "Scorpio Music Distributors has been wholesaling music since 1969, and for the last 16 years has grown to become the largest reissuer and distributor of Vinyl LP's. If you are in the business of selling vinyl and do not buy from them, you are missing out on profits and in these times in our industry that is not something to miss."

If Scorpio has been in the reissue business for 16 years (depending on the date of the information on the Princeton web site), that would mean they started reissuing vinyl sometime in the late 1990s. But it's still difficult to track down which albums they have reissued, because there is no indication anywhere on the jackets or labels that Scorpio is the manufacturer. Could there be some other way to tell which albums Scorpio reissued?

I'm glad you asked. It turns out that of my 100+ Scorpio reissues (and dozens more that I looked at on Discogs) almost all were mastered by David Cheppa at Better Quality Sound in North Hills, CA, and pressed by Rainbo Records, just up the road in Santa Monica (Rainbo moved to Canoga Park, CA in 2006). With that information in hand, I did a search on Discogs for releases cut by David Cheppa and pressed by Rainbo Records. Rainbo (which closed in 2020) was one of the largest record manufacturer in the U.S. Discogs lists some 30,000 Rainbo pressings in their database. 

One of the first Scorpio reissues

After looking at the albums in my collection and scrolling through hundreds of albums on Discogs, I noticed that nearly all the reissues that appeared to be Scorpios had a "3972" prefix in the runout. Coincidence?  I think not.  But to be certain, I reached out to mastering engineer David Cheppa in an email.  He kindly called me back, and we talked for about 45 minutes. [Cheppa is an extremely nice guy, generous with his time, and had a million stories about the record business.] 

Cheppa told me that the prefix was a client account number that Rainbo Records assigned to the manufacturer in order to identify the client for billing. 3972 was the account number that Rainbo assigned to Scorpio.  Cheppa told me he etched the prefix into hundreds of sides. I told Cheppa that a lot of people thought that Scorpio was just a distributor, but he said that was not correct, that Scorpio started doing their own reissues in the late 1990s.

Knowing that 3972 was Scorpio's account number made things much easier.  A search for "3972" and "Rainbo" on Discogs returns 241 hits. Based on that list, the earliest Scorpio release appears to be a 1998 reissue of Ray Ayer's 1973 soundtrack Coffy, originally on the Polydor Label (above).

There are a couple of more Scorpio reissues in 1999, and then more than 200 during the course of the 2000s. (However, the total list of Scorpio reissues is likely two or three times that number, since a great many listings on Discogs don't identify the pressing plant or include runout information.) Among the labels reissued by Scorpio are Blue Note, Buddah, Muse, RCA, ABC, Cobblestone, Vee Jay, Inner City, and New Jazz. However, it's the Blue Notes that are the most conspicuous, and the ones that most people are interested in.

By rough count, Scorpio reissued close to 100 Blue Note albums over the years, beginning in approximately 2002. Many of them are rare titles that are hard to find,  even as reissues, and even harder to afford, if you're looking for original Blue Note pressings.

By this point, you may be wondering about Rhino and how they figure into the equation. What's the Rhino-Scorpio connection? While Scorpio appears to have begun its reissue program in 1998, Rhino Records had been in the reissue business as far back as the mid 1980s. According to Discogs: "Rhino Records started as a record store in 1973 in Westwood California, U.S.A. They released their first recording in 1975, "Go To Rhino Records" by Wild Man Fischer, which was a small success. Early on Rhino featured mostly novelty, surf, local new wave bands, and a couple of reissues of out-of-print records from other labels. By the mid-1980s, the label was releasing a lot of reissues. In 1985 the label made a distribution deal with Capitol Records, which lasted until 1992. As part of the deal, they had access to the Capitol back catalog, and they started releasing reissues of the old Capitol albums . . . In 1992, when the deal with Capitol was ending, Rhino got an offer from Time-Warner. By entering this deal, half of the label was sold to Time-Warner, and WEA became the new distributor of the (Rhino) label. Warner put Rhino in charge of reissuing the Atlantic back catalog. In 1998, Time-Warner bought the remaining 50% of the label."

So, in the mid 1990s, Rhino begain reissuing selections from the back catalog of Atlantic Records. By the late 90s, Rhino had branched out to include reissues by other labels owned by Warner/WEA.  In 1998 -- the year that Scorpio began its reissue program -- Rhino reached a deal to make Scorpio Music the exclusive distributors of Rhino releases.  Coincidentally, 1998 was also the year that Rhino began to use Rainbow Records to press its reissues.

The 1998 Rhino reissue of The Meters album Look-Ka Py Py, which originally appeared on the Josie label, is the first evidence I can find of a little white sticker (above) that appears on many Rhino reissues (but not on Scorpio reissues!), indicating that Rhino is the manufacturer and Scorpio is the distributor. I couldn't find any information about how Rhino and Scorpio hooked up, but since Scorpio was/is one of the biggest vinyl distributors in the country, and was also selling a range of popularly-priced, mostly jazz reissues, it seems to make sense.

At first glance, Rhino and Scorpio reissues are nearly impossible to tell apart. They are mostly mastered at the same studio (David Cheppa's Better Quality Sound), pressed by the same mastering plant (Rainbo Records), and use identical white cardboard jacket stock and the same white paper dust sleeves (presumably supplied by Rainbo). The releases look and feel nearly identical. But it's fairly easy to tell them apart if you know what to look for.

First, if the release is on a label owned by Warner/WEA, then it's a Rhino release. If the label isn't in the Warner's stable -- like Blue Note or Prestige -- then it's a Scorpio. And more definitively, the etched runout prefix is a dead giveaway. As I mentioned earlier, Scorpio's client account number at Rainbo Records was 3972.  By 1999, Rhino had its own Rainbo client account number: 5032, as confirmed to me by David Cheppa.

So, the mystery is mostly solved. Rhino and Scorpio both had reissue programs, with Scorpio being the distributor for both. Scorpio, however, reissued music from lots of different labels, including -- most importantly -- Blue Note, which led to speculation that Scorpio reissues might be bootlegs or unofficial releases. David Cheppa assured me that is not the case. He told me that Scorpio paid for the rights to all its releases. Which makes sense, because otherwise, they would've been sued into oblivion by now. [I have seen some reports that Scorpio was sued by the estate of Sun Ra for alleged unauthorized releases, but have not been able to find any information about the validity of the charges or the outcome of the suit. However, I would note that a number of Sun Ra albums are still available on the Scorpio order site.]

What about the sound quality of these Rhino and Scorpio reissues? It's worth emphasizing that since Rhino reissues are all on labels owned by its parent company, it's fair to assume that they have access to the best available original source.  [Of course, that doesn't mean that they always work from the original master tapes.]  Scorpio, on the other hand, is dependent on the rights holder to provide the source material. Cheppa told me that quite often the source he worked with was not the original master but a later generation copy. He said that while he was occasionally tempted to use some EQ or decompression to improve the sound, Scorpio didn't want (or perhaps wasn't authorized by the rights holder) to do any remixing, so he simply made the best cut possible with the source he was given.

Brand new Rhino and Scorpio reissues are widely available for $15-20.  As long as you are aware of what you are buying, I think these reissues are a very good deal. As I mentioned above, unless you have $350 to shell out for a nice original Blue Note pressing of A Caddy For Daddy, then a $20 Scorpio copy is a reasonable substitute. 

The problem, of course, is that a lot of buyers don't know what they're getting. Serious Blue Note collectors can spot a reissue or a later pressing a mile away. But people who don't know any better might think that Scorpio reissues are original Blue Note pressings. The jackets are often nearly identical, and there is no indication anywhere on the jacket that Scorpio is the manufacturer.  How is a novice collector supposed to know that what looks like a mint original Blue Note is actually a budget reissue?

I see evidence of this problem on Discogs, where many Scorpio Blue Notes are going for $30 or more.  Since you can often still find them new for $15, that's not a very good deal. And it tells me that either the dealers aren't aware that they are reissues (doubtful), or they are hoping that inexperienced buyers won't know the difference (likely).  Unfortunately, the information on Discogs's release pages often doesn't mention if a reissue is a Scorpio version.

But fear not, if you know what to look for, it's relatively easy to tell Rhino and Scorpio reissues from other versions. To begin with, Rhino reissues often have the little white sticker on the back (above) that identifies them.  They also often will have a gold/black hype sticker on the front like the one in the photo at left.  And of course, the labels are all owned by Warners/WEA. 

 

Scorpios can be more difficult to identify since their involvement is not mentioned anywhere on their reissues, and they do not use any hype stickers.  In addition, Scorpio reissued titles from many labels.  However, if you find a new Blue Note or Prestige or New Jazz title in the shrink with the original album art and no bar code that costs about $20, you can be pretty confident that it's a Scorpio.  And in the case of Scorpio's Blue Note reissues, all of them list the address on the back of the jacket as 304 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10010 (below). Blue Note was indeed at that address briefly, but this address never appeared on any original Blue Note releases. The same address (shortened to 304 Park Ave. S, NYC) also appears on the Scorpio Blue Note labels. (See the label photo at top.)

 

 

If the album you're looking at is used, or if you can find out the runout information, it's usually easy to tell if it's a Rhino or Scorpio reissue. In nearly all cases, the etched runout will show either the Scorpio client prefix 3972, or the Rhino client prefix 5032. 

   

 

Both will also have a Rainbo Records catalog number, which is in the format of S-XXXXX (above). [The S sometimes looks like a 5]. In addition, nearly all Rhino and Scorpio reissues have mastering engineer David Cheppa's scrawled signature, which is nominally "DC BQS" (David Cheppa, Better Quality Sound). However, Cheppa's signature is often completely illegible. Sometimes it looks like De RES, or Do BC, or just Dc or De, or maybe just a random scrawl. Cheppa told me he has mastered more than 100K sides (including singles), so at a certain point, he seems to have decided that penmanship wasn't all that important. Here are some examples of Cheppa's signature, all of which are actually DC BQS:

 

 

Finally, you can check the the size of the pressing ring on the label, which for Rainbo is either 31.7mm or a double ring of 31.7/70mm. No historical Blue Note originals have either of those. (NB: Blue Note releases in the recent Tone Poet and Classic Vinyl series are pressed at Record Technology International, which also has used 31.7mm and 31.7/70mm pressing rings.)

Overall I am very happy with all the 200+ Rhino and Scorpio reissues I own. The sound varies from OK to quite good. As Cheppa said, it all depends on the source he had to work with. The vinyl is a standard 140 grams (some Rhinos with the black/gold stickers are 180 grams), usually flat (though I have gotten a few warped disks), and the surfaces are mostly quiet with only the occasional random tick or glitch. The artwork on the jackets and labels is generally clean and sharp.

 

Bottom line: For many rare Blue Note releases, Scorpio reissues are as close as I'm ever going to get to owning an original. Sure, I could just buy the CDs, but for me, playing an LP is always more involving than listening to a digital file or a CD, even if the LP isn't an audiophile pressing.

Enjoy the music!