freddie and the dreamers on mercury

There's no clear answer to your last question, Ed. More than perhaps any other record company during the 1960s, Mercury seemed to introduce new 45 label designs long before existing inventory of older designs had been exhausted.

The first time I encountered the '60s red label was when I bought "Do The Freddie." The older black labels and newer red labels appeared on current Mercury releases all the way into 1968, even after the orange pinwheel design had been introduced. That means the older black design remained in use over the entire three-year run of the newer red label! I don't know how many pressing plants Mercury/Philips had at the time, so it could have been a situation where only one plant still had the older black stock. Here in the upper midwest, I don't ever recall seeing any current black label stock on anything from "Do The Freddie" onward. But they were obviously showing up somewhere.

I have both black and red copies of "I Understand," as well as pink DJ, red and black copies of "A Little You (Mercury 72462.)

Why the change from black to red? For the same reason that any company changes its package or label design or logo: an updated, fresher, more-marketable look. By 1965, the black label wasn't as eye-catching and exciting as those on other labels like Motown or Capitol. The red Mercury label was definitely more "now" in 1965. Ditto for the change in the London Records design to the blue swirl that same year.

But a more-contemporary look isn't always the best move. Capitol's change from the trademark dome logo to the round "C" "target" and the later "Capitol"-at-the-bottom orange design weren't nearly as distinctive as what they'd replaced. It took nearly a decade before the company came to its senses and acknowledged that the iconic dome logo and script "Capitol" design truly defined the brand.

Likewise, the red-and-black Cadence label overhaul may have looked more contemporary in 1961, but it was far less iconic than the maroon-and-silver metronome design with the old-school font it had replaced.

Late 1963 was the transition from Black Label to Red Label designs though some leftover labels got used from the black era later.