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jimct
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| Posted: 17 May 2007 at 12:30am | IP Logged
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When I think of the last early 70s label holdouts to begin releasing commercial 45s in stereo, the Bell label always came to mind for me. Up until their last label hit, Barry Manilow's "Mandy", released at the tail end of 1974, I don't think I knew of a SINGLE Bell commercial 45 EVER issued in stereo - until now. I have two commercial 45 copies for the Vicki Lawrence hit. Both have listed times of (3:36) and actual times of (3:35). The first, with a large, bold title/artist font, is mono, and has deadwax of "BELL 1549". My other copy, with a very light type, small title/artist font, is stereo, with a deadwax of "BELL 1549-S-1-1-1". No stereo/mono designation appears on either of the two labels. While this new information, and that of my similar "Brother Louie" discovery, do not require a database comment or adjustment, I thought this info would be of value to those who like to know what was issued on the original 45, mono or stereo. Especially between 1968 and 1974, the labels were slowly moving from "all mono" to "all stereo" commercial 45s, and hits from these years must be listened to, on a case-by-case basis, to confirm the correct original M/S 45 information.
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 05 November 2009 at 11:54pm | IP Logged
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A belated thanks for posting this, Jim. I had forgotten all about it. I wanted to look up the mono/stereo situation with this song, since her "Night the Lights Went Out" album has just finally been released on a factory-pressed CD by the original production company, Garret Music Enterprises, very nicely remastered. Glad to know at least some single pressings were stereo, since the mono mix has never appeared on CD.
Edited by Brian W. on 05 November 2009 at 11:55pm
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EdisonLite
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| Posted: 06 November 2009 at 12:39pm | IP Logged
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A year ago, I bought a Vicki Lawrence U.S. CD of her "Night The Lights..." album, which I don't have in front of me, but as I recall, the label was Toucan (which I think is the label for amazon, myspace, or iTunes - I forget. Probably amazon.) And the sound quality was really good. Brian, is this a different CD?
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 06 November 2009 at 8:12pm | IP Logged
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EdisonLite wrote:
| A year ago, I bought a Vicki Lawrence U.S. CD of her "Night The Lights..." album, which I don't have in front of me, but as I recall, the label was Toucan (which I think is the label for amazon, myspace, or iTunes - I forget. Probably amazon.) And the sound quality was really good. Brian, is this a different CD? |
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The Toucan Cove was a CD-R, burned by the Amazon On Demand service. I bought that too. I never was sure if it was burned from .wav files or .mp3s, so I wanted to buy the new one.
But yes, it is a different mastering.
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TomDiehl1
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| Posted: 06 November 2009 at 9:59pm | IP Logged
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The Amazon On Demand service uses commercially released but now out of print cds and reproduces them....the sound quality is very good on the ones ive heard, as if its a straight cd copy or off of high quality digital copies.... if not wavs, than very high bitrate mp3s....
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 07 November 2009 at 12:00am | IP Logged
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TomDiehl1 wrote:
| The Amazon On Demand service uses commercially released but now out of print cds and reproduces them. |
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In the case of "Night the Lights Went Out," the CD had never been commercially released... only as a download.
Yes, the "On Demand" CD did sound good, but like I said, I couldn't be sure they didn't just burn it from the MP3s, so I wanted a real, factory-pressed CD.
Edited by Brian W. on 07 November 2009 at 12:01am
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 07 November 2009 at 12:03am | IP Logged
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But I guess I just (finally) got my question answered from Amazon (this info wasn't there when I checked about a year ago):
Quote:
| CreateSpace works with many of the leading music labels, television networks, film studios, and other distributors to make these titles available to Amazon.com customers. All products are manufactured from original source materials (e.g., for audio products, uncompressed CD-quality audio). |
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2 00326640&ie=UTF8
Edited by Brian W. on 07 November 2009 at 12:05am
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Yah Shure
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| Posted: 07 November 2009 at 11:02pm | IP Logged
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jimct wrote:
| Up until their last label hit, Barry Manilow's "Mandy", released at the tail end of 1974, I don't think I knew of a SINGLE Bell commercial 45 EVER issued in stereo - until now. |
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Great find, Jim! A belated thanks for the detective work!
While my Monarch-pressed stock copy of Vicki's hit is mono, there was another 45 I picked up later in 1973, the #19 AC/#111 BB "Lovin' Naturally" by Sandalwood that was the first Bell stock 45 I ever saw that was labeled as "stereo." Like the Lawrence hit, this was also a Snuff Garrett production.
Who knows why Bell dragged their commercial stereo 45 feet? What, were they holding out in the hopes of charging more for stereo vs. mono 45s? :) A year after TNTLWOIG was a smash, the label issued a single that could very easily have been another Vicki Lawrence record. The artist's first name even was Vicki and the title mentioned the name of a state. But Vicki Britton's "Flight 309 To Tennessee" couldn't repeat the more-famous Vicki's success, and the single only made number 36 on the AC chart. And while the promo 45 was stereo/mono, the commercial 45 was back to mono.
While Vicki's TNTLWOIG and its follow-up, "He Did With Me" made their way to Bell's Flashback reissue series as FLB-82, it didn't stay there for long. It and Vanity Fare's "Early In The Morning"/"Hitchin' A Ride" (FLB-60) were both dropped by the mid-'70s. By 1976, both titles were back in print and in stereo, but not on Flashback. Instead, they were on Soma. Soma?? As in the Castaways? Yep. Though misspelled as Vanity Fair, Soma 5000 joined Vicki's Soma 5248 in one of the oddest pair of reissue 45s.
I was working at Heilicher Brothers at the time, so I asked the singles buyer, Tom Prenevost, how these two oddballs came to be. Although the company's in-house Soma label hadn't issued any newly-recorded records since 1968, it had still kept a few reissue 45s in print. Tom said that in this case, there was still strong retail demand for these two otherwise-unavailable records, so Heilicher's licensed and reissued them on its own label. Most of these were distributed through the company's Pickwick International distribution and J.L. Marsh rack jobbing subsidiaries. That Snuff Garrett logo still looks mighty strange on a Soma label. Too bad Soma wasn't still distributing the (George) Garrett label from the "Surfin' Bird" days. :)
BTW, there were no other Soma 45s between numbers 5000 and 5248. Those two just happened to have been the stock order numbers on Heilicher's oldies 45s retail inventory lists, so it made sense to number the actual records accordingly.
And speaking of Snuffy Garrett: He still thought enough of those two failed Bell singles to recycle them as country tunes in the '80s. He produced "Lovin' Naturally" with David Frizzell and Shelly West, and Shelly's solo reworking of "Flight 309 To Tennessee" peaked at number four.
Edited by Yah Shure on 03 February 2012 at 9:36am
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EdisonLite
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| Posted: 07 November 2009 at 11:25pm | IP Logged
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Interesting news about the Vicki Lawrence CD-R on Toucan Cove. And even better news - I checked the file (of one of the album cuts) in WaveLab and determined with 100% certainty that the file did NOT come from an mp3 (or a WAV of an mp3; in other words, this file was never derived from anything that was ever an mp3 previously. It's origins are WAV files. Mark Mathews (of this board) taught me how to distingish an mp3 from a WAV in Wavelab (and he found out quite by accident - it's a weird side effect from running "DeNoiser" over a file and seeing how the processor reacts.) Anyway, even though these Vicki Lawrence CDs are actually CD-Rs, they never came from mp3s, just from WAVs (and I might add ... from tape sources, not vinyl!)
When they transferred the master tape to digital, they obviously created WAV files first, and from there they created mp3s to sell as downloads on amazon, but LUCKILY, they were SMART enough to save the WAVs and use them for people buying the CD-Rs. "Save the WAVs" - sounds like a good campaign slogan!
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 08 November 2009 at 1:53am | IP Logged
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EdisonLite wrote:
| I checked the file (of one of the album cuts) in WaveLab and determined with 100% certainty that the file did NOT come from an mp3 (or a WAV of an mp3; in other words, this file was never derived from anything that was ever an mp3 previously. It's origins are WAV files. |
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Good to know, but still beware of some of the Amazon On Demand titles. For example, the two Archies titles are disc dubs, according to some customer reviews. Never hurts to read the Amazon reviews before buying.
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EdisonLite
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| Posted: 08 November 2009 at 8:40am | IP Logged
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Absolutely. In fact, whenever I'm buying a CD containing music that's never been on CD before, I usually look at the customer reviews on amazon to see if anyone complains it's from vinyl.
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KentT
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| Posted: 06 January 2010 at 7:03pm | IP Logged
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A note: One pressing of "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia" used Stereo promo stampers and is true Stereo. Most commercial Bell originals are in mono.
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Paul Haney
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| Posted: 13 January 2011 at 3:27pm | IP Logged
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Bumping this up for the recent Fifth Dimension discussion.
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Top 40 Music on Compact Disc : Chat Board
Topic: Vicki Lawrence-"The Night The Lights..."
