Boogie Times Records is not one of the original labels of the boogie era. It did not exist in 1981, had no hand in cutting the first wave of 12 inch club records, and never had an office in New York or Los Angeles. What it did instead was arrive twenty years later and refuse to let the era's deepest cuts stay forgotten.
A Collector Turns Label Owner
Philippe Lecauchois, a lifelong funk collector born in the 1960s, spent years hunting for obscure American funk and boogie 12 inches he simply could not find in French record shops. In 2002, working out of northern France, he decided to stop searching and start supplying, founding Boogie Times Records to license, reissue, and press the rarities that had fallen through the cracks of the original American labels. The operation has since relocated south, now based in the Vaucluse.
Boogie Times Records
Built from one collector's personal search for American funk and boogie rarities unavailable in French shops. Licensed and reissued obscure 12 inches the original labels had let fall out of print, growing into a small family of related imprints over two decades.
What started as a single label grew into a small family of imprints. Lecauchois went on to launch Saph Records as a sister label, and more recently established Phil Boogie Times, extending the same mission: find the tracks that time and major label indifference had buried, clear the rights, and get them back on wax and CD for a new generation of collectors and DJs.
Most reissue labels chase the hits nobody forgot. Boogie Times Records built its catalogue chasing the ones almost everybody had.
The Great Collectors Series
The label's best known project is the long running "Boogie Times Presents The Great Collectors" compilation series, which ran to at least eighteen volumes between 2005 and 2010, gathering obscure American funk, boogie, and modern soul 12 inches onto CD for collectors who could never track down the originals. Discogs credits confirm that a number of these volumes, along with other Boogie Times releases including The Cool Notes' "The Unreleased Demo's" in 2012, were remastered by Tony Massera.
Boogie Times Presents The Great Collectors
A running archive of obscure American funk, boogie and modern soul 12 inches, gathered onto CD for collectors who could never find the originals. Several volumes carry remastering credits by Tony Massera.
Beyond a Single Series
The label's catalogue reaches beyond funk and boogie proper into the wider world of rare American dance music, including compilations like "Best of Macola Records", revisiting the same Hollywood pressing plant and label already covered on this blog for its role in early 80s electro-funk, and "Best of VAP Records", another deep dive into a catalogue most listeners had never had the chance to hear properly reissued.
A Different Kind of Preservation
Unidisc Music, covered elsewhere on this blog, built its catalogue by buying up entire label libraries outright, Prelude, De-Lite, SOLAR, at industrial scale. Boogie Times Records works from the opposite direction: one collector, one license, one forgotten 12 inch at a time, built from a personal record collection rather than a corporate acquisition strategy. Both approaches end up serving the same purpose. The obscure American funk that neither the original labels nor the major reissue houses bothered to protect found a home anyway, this time carried by a collector in France who simply refused to let it disappear.
No major label was ever going to reissue half of what Boogie Times Records put back into circulation. It took someone who cared enough to go looking one record at a time.
