Tommy James/Shondells-"Crimson And..."

Since I was just analyzing the (poorly mastered from mp3) tracks on "The Classic Sixties Collection 1969-70," I think the comment for "Crimson And Clover" on this disc may need to be changed.

I did a comparison with the copy on Time Life's AM Gold, and the edit is identical to the one on Classic Sixties. The problem is that the AM Gold disc says "a noble attempt at recreating the 45 version but unfortunately this is not the real 45 version" while the Classic Sixties disc says "45 version." One of these comments must be incorrect.

I don't have the AM Gold CD, but the history of the 45 version on CD goes as follows:

I suspect Bill Inglot made the first edit which took the album version as the source, and tried to create a single version as best as he could. But since the second instrumental section is missing from the LP version, he simply repeated the first instrumental section and did a creative edit on some of the guitar hits to be "similar" the the single version. This was on the original "Billboard Greatest Hits 1969" It may have ended up on some Time Life CDs too, they tended to share sources with Rhino.

Then after Rhino bought Roulette they had access to the Tommy James multi-tracks and they were able to mix a stereo single complete with the second instrumental section. Rhino may have replaced this version on later edition of CDs like Billboard's Greatest Hits 1969.

Finally the 40th anniversary CD came out with mono versions of most songs, including "Crimson and Clover".

However NONE of these versions match the exclusive fade out from the original Crimson and Clover 45, (Even the 40th anniversary CD isn't right). At the end of the original 45, all instruments fade completely out except for a lone "bell" at the very end.



Edited by Bill Cahill

Bill, that's really interesting! Thanks for sharing that behind-the-scenes info.

I'd call it at 3:23 on my copy. That bell is so low it's tough to tell when the reverb of the bell is over, but I believe it makes it to 3:23, but just barely. Mine has the B side of "Some Kind of Love". I think some have a B side of "I'm Taken".

Bill Cahill wrote: Mine has the B side of "Some Kind of Love". I think some have a B side of "I'm Taken".

I have 2 copies of this, a promo and a stock...the promo has "(I'm) Taken" as the B side, the stock copy is the same as yours. I've never compared the fade on C&C between the two.