Cowboy Church Sunday- Open Up Your Heart

PopArchivist,
I can help you out here. 14-16 is all this recording ever
had. And really most of the audio is below 10k. It was
made in a home tape machine and the speed
manipulated so adults would sound like children. The 1957
Jukebox CD you mentioned sadly had noise reduction used
on it which is why the spectral print looks like that.

If you ordered the 2-CD set from Good Music Co. called "I
Believe" then you will see an accurate spectral print of
the master tape. The music stops around 15k and the rest
is just hiss. As a side note, you should have this CD set
anyway as it has lots of harder to find hits and great
sound (no NR). It was produced by Marty Wekser.

Note that not every recording from the 1950s (or earlier)
will have frequencies up to 20k. Another fact is not
every spectral print that peaks lower than 20k is
necessarily "lossy." Sometimes an engineer will simply
roll off the higher frequencies if they determine there's
no (or little) music there, just noise. Rememember that
all the highest frequencies we hear in music like
sibilance or hi-hats is concentrated between 10-14k. All
the musical tones above that are entertaining our
doggies, but not us.

Of course we all prefer to see tones up to 20k because it
makes us confident that nothing has been removed.

So be assured once you have the Good Music Co. CD, you
will have the song in the best quality that exists.

Personally, I'll take the Pebbles & Bam Bam version. :-)

MM

Edited by MMathews

MMathews wrote: Note that not every recording from the 1950s (or earlier) will have frequencies up to 20k. Another fact is not every spectral print that peaks lower than 20k is necessarily "lossy." Sometimes an engineer will simply roll off the higher frequencies if they determine there's no (or little) music there, just noise. Rememember that all the highest frequencies we hear in music like sibilance or hi-hats is concentrated between 10-14k. All the musical tones above that are entertaining our doggies, but not us. Of course we all prefer to see tones up to 20k because it makes us confident that nothing has been removed.

That's the thing, right around 20 Spek is possible because I was able to obtain each top 10 hit at that level for the top 10. This song stood out like a sore thumb because of its low Spek. Otherwise I can assure you that all 76 other top 10 hits sound great and are from CD source. Its good to confirm that I was not going crazy!

I can accept that any pre-1955 top 10 in my collection can be lossy more than the 1955 and on stuff. The further you go back in time, the harder it is to find the quality needed to find a cd source. I would not even think pre-1940 songs would really be available in CD quality or have high speks.

I know it's off topic but I was always wondering if anyone has tried to assemble the 1940-1954 top 10 and run into any problems? I know we all put that arbitrary cut off in 1955 but music did exist before that date. Even Billboard was around from mid 1940 onward!

Brian W,

I follow Whitburn's 1940-1954 Singles charts listing in the book he published in 2002 when I am assembling is that the sales chart you are referring to?

Right now its sort of a side project to assemble 1940-1954's top 10. I do think we should talk once I start getting further back. For now the 1955-2018 project will be taking most of my time up. I am always fascinated how OCD this board is in collecting but even I realize that the 1940-1954 stuff is harder to find on CD and in lossless.

What made you want to just do the top ten? I know in 1950-1954 there is enough to do the top 15.

Also if you happen to know where the #1 Where was I? by Charlie Barnet is on CD from 1940, much appreciated it is the only one #1 I am missing.

Edited by PopArchivist

Paul C, what is the best source of finding where all the top 10 are from 1940-1954 on CD since Pat's database only starts at 1955?

PopArchivist wrote: Paul C, what is the best source of finding where all the top 10 are from 1940-1954 on CD since Pat's database only starts at 1955?

I'm not aware of any such database currently existing. There used to be a Canadian online retailer, MyMusic, which had a great search engine. You could search for any song title, and it would list all CD's containing the song, including ones they were not selling. They seem to have gone out of business about five or six years ago. No current retailer that I know of has such a search engine.

Of my collection of the approximately 1615 songs that made the Billboard Best Sellers chart between 1940 and 1954, about 120 are on 78 or 45. These I have not come across on CD or digital download. (One advantage of not having particularly good hearing is that I can almost never tell any difference between a lossless and a 256kbps file.)

It's now generally accepted that the vocalists on "Open Up Your Heart" are songwriter Stuart Hamblen's wife, his two teenage daughters, and two of their friends with the tape sped up to make them sound like children. However, in The Billboard Book Of One-Hit Wonders, author Wayne Jancik makes no mention of any of this. He instead quotes 'music researcher and writer' Robert L. Synder, who 'in an exclusive interview' claims, "...There really was no group to it. 'Open Up Your Heart' was a solo record by this little girl named Carole Sue. She didn't get billing on the label, but she did on the sheet music. They were all probably some kids who attended the same church that Stu did, and he had this song and probably thought this girl had a good voice..." The song was first released on Hamblen's own Voss label and then either leased or sold to Decca, which is a bit curious because Hamblen himself was signed to RCA Victor. So more than sixty years later, there exist two completely different accounts of the origin of the recording.