Submitted photo The band Morly Grey — from left, Bob LaNave, Mark Roller and Tim Roller — are shown in 1972 with their album “The Only Truth.” Original copies of that album now sell for thousands of dollars.

Local music fans of a certain age will remember the band Morly Grey.

The rock power trio from Alliance performed regularly in Mahoning Valley from 1968 until 1972, playing such venues as Packard Music Hall, The Apartment, Zodiac Club and The House That Jack Built and sharing stages with Bob Seger and Mitch Ryder.

Collectors of records from that era definitely know Morly Grey, led by brothers Mark Roller, bass and lead vocals, and Tim Roller, guitars and backing vocals. Original pressings of its 1972 album, “The Only Truth,” regularly fetch four figures. On the collecting and cataloging website Discogs.com, there are two copies, one in Switzerland and one in Spain, currently for sale. The asking price for each one is more than $3,000, plus shipping.

Fanaticial collectors still will want the original, but “The Only Truth” now is available without securing a bank loan as the latest release from Peppermint Records. The project started by Peppermint Recording Studios owner Gary Rhamy and musicians Dean Anshutz and Anthony LaMarca to preserve and reissue music from the region has released compilations featuring local acts and LPs by such bands as Glass Harp, Left End, Blue Ash and Bull Run.

Peppermint was one of two studios used to make “The Only Truth.”

“We started at Cleveland Recording Studio,” Mark Roller said. “A lot of hits came out of there, Grand Funk (Railroad) and stuff like that.”

When the studio relocated to Painesville and became Suma Recording Studio, the band’s manager looked for somewhere a little closer to record, which is how the band ended up at Peppermint on Indianola Avenue in Youngstown. They also switched drummers during that time.

“Paul (Cassidy) the drummer, he had issues,” Tim Roller said. “He was a manic depressive, and he would go off the deep end. That’s why only half of it was done. Then we ended up having to get Bob LaNave. He was the second drummer, so he’s on one side of the album, and Paul’s on the other.”

Side two of “The Only Truth,” including the 17-minute title track, was recorded in one marathon session at Peppermint that started at 10 a.m. and didn’t wrap until 3 a.m. the next morning.

“We ended up just laying on the floor at three in the morning listening to the final product,” Mark Roller said. “That was a good memory of Peppermint, then later over the years we did other stuff there.”

The name Morly Grey came from the band looking at a box of crayons. When one of them held up a grey crayon, the drummer said, “I know a girl in Cleveland named Morly Grey.” The Rollers never met that band’s namesake, but they did have people come up to them at shows and tell them they knew her.

The band broke up the same year “The Only Truth” was released, but the brothers continued to make music together as the Roller Brothers Band and in various other groups. For several years they were managed by Pat Padula, who led the show band Sir Bentley and owned the club/restaurant of the same name on Mahoning Avenue NW in Warren in the late ’80s and ’90s.

They had no idea their lone Morly Grey album had such a loyal following until years later they were playing a gig in Alliance and a collector came up to them and asked if they knew Mark and Tim Roller.

“He had heard of the album, and he wanted to get his hands on a bunch, because he thought maybe he could sell them, so it kind of went from there,” Mark Roller said. “He started getting it into the collector world, and all of a sudden, I’m getting phone calls from Seattle saying, ‘Hey, you got any Morly Grey albums?’, or ‘What kind of Amp did your brother use on this song?’ And we were surprised that it just kind of grew from there.”

“(The collector) tracked down our crooked manager from before in West Virginia, who had 125 of the albums in his attic or something,” Tim Roller added. “He bought them for five bucks a piece. And then he very carefully (started selling them), and I think that that’s really what kind of kickstarted it.”

Bootleg copies of “The Only Truth” have been released overseas — the Rollers inquired about taking legal action but were told it would cost more to sue than they could hope to recoup — and a CD and vinyl reissue was released by Sundazed Music in 2010 ($100 is cheapest available copy of the 2010 vinyl on Discogs).

The Rollers said LaMarca initially approached them about doing a re-release through Peppermint Records, and after a couple of meetings with LaMarca, Anshutz and Rhamy, they signed a contract. They said they prefer the new release compared to the 2010 version.

“They (Sundazed) remastered everything from the get go, and I never thought it was quite as good of a mix,” Tim Roller said. “This is actually the original mix. They remastered that, but they didn’t remix it. It’s actually got a better sound, more like the original.”

Rhamy said his goal was to preserve the original’s sound as much as possible.

“With this particular project, we were fortunate to have all of the original two-track master stereo tapes available to us, and they had been preserved very well,” Rhamy said. “The first process was to get those transferred digitally so that we could work with them and optimize the sound. Once we do that, then we can deal with enhancing the sound or maybe making adjustments that weren’t so easily made after the mix was done back in 1972.”

In addition to traditional black vinyl, 100 copies of “The Only Truth” were pressed on “Coney Sauce Swirl” brown vinyl, a nod to the Roller brothers’ love of Jay’s Hot Dogs. They’d picked up a bag of hot dogs whenever they were coming to record at Peppermint.

There are no plans for a Morly Grey reunion show, but the Rollers said they’d like to do an album signing event, and they are pleased by the reception to the new release.

Rhamy agreed.

“It’s gratifying to know that music and bands that I thought were good and worthy of recording back then are still being viewed that way today, years later,” Rhamy said. “It’s really nice to see that vote of confidence … It just helps remind people of all the wonderful music that’s come from this area, and all the wonderful musicians I’ve had a chance to work with over the years.”