THE OTHER MAPLE RECORDS
Johnny Brantley's Maple Records seems to have been preceded by another Maple Records -label (see Discogs), also active in New Jersey but in the late 1960s instead of the early 1970s. This previous "Maple Records" doesn't have anything to do with Jimi Hendrix at all but I wanted to share a fun story on how I became aware of it's one time existence. Both as an example of how easy it is to draw the wrong conclusions and to prevent possible future Maple Records mix-ups...

In June 2025 I was looking for a release date for a 1971 Maple Records LP when I came across a small listing published in Cash Box. Being a magazine for music business professionals Cash Box often included information on the publishers, producers and artists of various records. For a single release of Brian Hyland’s cover of Leonard Cohen's "So Long Marianne" the 3 July 1971 -issue of Cash Box gave this address for the company handling the publishing for the song:

Stranger BMI c/o Maple Records
P.O. Bx 297 Maple Shades N.J.

"Stranger Music BMI" was Leonard Cohen's publishing company but for some reason the address here was given as "care of" Maple Records, New Jersey.

This was of course quite a surprise, I had never heard of any connection between Leonard Cohen and Johnny Brantley. I though I'd ask someone in the know and contacted a prominent Cohen fan but he had never heard of such a connection either and wasn't able to explain the Maple Records -address for Stranger Music BMI.

Next I asked Peter Strömbäck whether this would be something that he could ask Johnny Brantley’s daughter Pam Brantley about (see his earlier interview with Pam Brantley). Peter however came back with an interesting theory about the address.

Peter had found another New Jersey record label called Maple Record, this label had released five singles in the 1960s with the last listed year of release on Discogs being 1967. Many of the songs on the singles had been composed by someone called "Stanger" and published by "Stanger Music BMI". So Peter suggested that Cash Box might simply have made a mistake: had they accidentally taken the contact information for Stanger Music BMI instead of Stranger Music BMI?

I figured that if Peter's theory was correct then the Cash Box 1967 annual directory should have the address of "Stanger Music BMI" in it. And lo and behold, there it was:

Stanger P.O. Box 297 Maple Shade, N.J.

The address was the exact same one given by Cash Box in 1971 for Stranger Music. So Leonard Cohen had absolutely nothing to do with Johnny Brantley and his Maple Records. A Cash Box editor had simply by accident looked up the contact info for Stanger Music BMI instead of Stranger Music BMI and copied this incorrect address in the information listing for the Brian Hyland -single. Just a one letter difference between the names of the two companies and what a mess 54 years later.

By pure co-incident (from the "Hendrix" point of view that is) George Stanger in addition to running a publishing company named after himself also had a record label called Maple Records - which again by pure co-incidence was located in New Jersey. It looks like Stanger's Maple Records probably had folded shortly before Brantley started his own.

The lesson here, once again, is that one should never jump to conclusions but instead always double and triple check everything...