underground sunshine--birthday

Ed:

Stardust is a somewhat mysterious independent label from Canada nobody really seems to know a lot about. I have a 10 volume series from Stardust called Treasured Tunes which consists of mostly hard-to-find chart hits from the '50s and '60s. They are all original recordings, no remakes or re-recordings, and the sound quality overall is pretty good. The thing is, the label doesn't provide any copyright or licensing information in the skimpy liner notes or on the back CD inserts, so I suspect these may be bootleg or "gray area" CDs. I'm guessing Stardust masters their songs from other CD sources and cleaned up vinyl.

To answer Ed's question only four years, nine months, and thirteen days after he asked it: The track on the Stardust CD is from fairly clean vinyl (a bit of distortion in the vocals during the chorus).

I bought the iTunes track Santi Paradoa mentioned and it is from very worn-out vinyl and sounds much worse than the Stardust CD.

The Stardust label is somehow connected to (and perhaps even owned by) the same people who own the Canadian mail order 45rpm firm Continental Record Company, from whom I purchased thousands of records when I first started collecting top 40 hits (and didn't care about getting correct U.S. single versions). I placed my first order with them in 1984. They also owned the superb re-issue label Underground Records, which during the 1980s re-issued many top 40 hits not available elsewhere. These were all properly licensed. In fact, tracks licensed from Capitol, Columbia, and RCA were eventually even manufactured for them by the Canadian arms of these labels. (After RCA discontinued most of their Elvis re-issue 45s, Underground licensed and re-issued most of them before even Collectables did.) I therefore don't think that the Stardust CDs are bootlegs, although they all seem to be mastered from either other CDs or vinyl.

Wasn't Intrepid a subsidiary of Mercury?

Paul C wrote: The track on the Stardust CD is from fairly clean vinyl (a bit of distortion in the vocals during the chorus).

The only version I've ever heard is full of distortion, which I presume was done on purpose. I dubbed it from a mint vinyl LP, but the distortion does not sound like vinyl distortion. It's like they cranked their amplifiers to "max" while they were recording.

I presume that's how the song sounds on all sources?