How about something like:
SELECT mt.*
FROM MyTable mt INNER JOIN
(
SELECT id, MIN(record_date) AS MinDate
FROM MyTable
GROUP BY id
) t ON mt.id = t.id AND mt.record_date = t.MinDate
This gets the minimum date per ID, and then gets the values based on those values. The only time you would have duplicates is if there are duplicate minimum record_dates for the same ID.