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Posted by Larry Jordan
on August 1, 2009, 11:31 pm, in reply to "Re: Long Forgotten Gems"
Message modified by board administrator August 2, 2009, 12:51 am
Those demos were never done at or for RCA but Mary Reeves told me personally that she had loaned some copies to RCA to make safety dubs, even though she retained all rights of ownership. She was aghast when RCA subsequently licensed these to Bear, and complained the company did so without her prior knowledge or consent.
VoiceMasters acquired, through multiple sources, Mary's original tapes and transcriptions, which had been sold or otherwise conveyed to third parties over the years, in the process of which any and all ownership interests in the music performances were thus surrendered. (Even as late as 2003-2009, the compositions were not all protected by copyright, but in the case of those which were, they generate royalties for the copyright owners).
In a number of instances, VoiceMasters' tapes were arguably first generation originals because they contained more material than the edited versions which RCA overdubbed or which ended up being released by Bear. This is surprising because those 2 CDs from the Bear set which supposedly contain demos in their raw form are not all as original as you might think. (An example of this is "Crying Is My Favorite Mood." The VM version has Bill Pursell's 45-second piano bridge as it was performed on the original. We were the first to release this. The RCA and Bear versions were edited down and do not contain this.)
It's important to note that Mary apparently did not give RCA all of Jim's demos and other recordings. An example is "I'm A Hit Again," which RCA and their new owner, BMG, looked for for years. At one point several years ago, they told me that they did not have it in their vaults. Yet VoiceMasters was subsequently able to score the world premier of this and other songs by Jim. (The fact that RCA/BMG never had some of these in their possession meant they were thus not available to Bear for inclusion in the big boxed set which Bear continues to market as containing all of Jim's recordings!)
VM then proceeded to restore the audio and overdub these tracks. Those who say they prefer the original recordings haven't heard how bad some of them sounded before the remastering process. Besides various sonic imperfections Jim also made some mistakes. In the case of "Deep Dark Water," VM had to cut out an extraneous word -- Jim singing "someone one was sawing on the limb..." He appeared to repeat the word "one" twice. Mary had told me about this incident years ago, and laughed about it, and by some twist of fate I finally had to deal with it myself when producing the VM overdubs.
If you listen closely to our version of the song, you will see that we successfully concealed our edit with an overlay of new instrumentation. It was difficult to do because there was some underlying music on the original track which momentarily seemed to "jump" when we made the cut. I have been surprised that up to now, no fan has ever asked me about this, which indicates, I think, that we succeeded in camouflaging the problem without any fan detecting it!
By virtue of carefully adding the appropriate music to Jim's guitar and vocal recordings, we also were able to make them palatable for airplay today. Indeed, they are being heard on numerous commercial, public and satellite stations worldwide. Every time one of these songs gets played, the station airing it must pay a fee, and so this generates income for Sony and/or other holders of Jim's various song copyrights.
The raw demos would never have made it this far. To this extent, VoiceMasters' efforts to boost Jim Reeves' presence on worldwide radio has been a resounding success! Since we produce a quality product, that has only enhanced Jim's stature as an artist.
The critics who like to attack and belittle me never seem to see the big picture.
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