North American Music Industries

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based record company established around 1972 by area industry veteran Lou Guarino. The label's own releases did hardly any chart activity, though one single, 1973's "She Didn't Forget Her Shoes (Johnny And Louise)" by the band Felix Harp, would gain cult status in later years through a cover version in 1975 (with the same instrumental backing track) by Reparata as "Shoes." In November 1973, NAMI acquired the former Capitol Records Pressing Plant, Scranton and reactivated the plant which Capitol had shut down that July, in the process inheriting the former clients of Capitol's custom pressing division (including Polydor Records and Dot Records), and adding a few others over the next few years including, ironically, Capitol itself. Upon NAMI's takeover, the pre-1963 variant of the "anvil" symbol that graced the deadwax of many a 1950-60 pressing from the Scranton plant returned to the deadwax of their pressings; it was also the only independently-owned plant to bear the 360 interlocking serrations (a.k.a. "gripper ridges") and smaller (3-5/16" diameter) size 45 RPM labels that were a fixture of Capitol's remaining plants. During 1978, NAMI also handled pressing for Columbia (whose own Columbia Records Pressing Plant, Pitman was on strike for part of the year) and Warner Bros. Records. For the latter, NM was the code used by mastering engineers to designate that the lacquer was to go to NAMI. The Scranton plant finally ceased operation around 1980.