Link: THE GREAT JIM REEVES 8 CD SET
In the days before stereophonic recording and reproduction were invented, commercial recordings were only in mono. Think of a radio with one speaker. The sound originated from one small source.
Movies were the first to introduce stereo, in which the high and low frequencies of a recorded piece could at least be divided and dispersed across more than one speaker, to give the aural illusion of dimension.
The first stereo LPs were not released until 1958, and even after Jim began recording on equipment that was capturing three channels (with one of these typically reserved for the vocals), engineers at RCA (and other labels) were mixing these down to mono because that's all that radio stations and jukeboxes were playing. The sound was one-dimensional and "flat."
There were even documented cases where the original three-track masters were lost so all that was left was the mixed-down mono.
Anyway, when RCA and other labels wanted to issue stereo albums using mono masters, they came up with a gimmick -- "electronically reprocessed stereo." This, of course, was in the days before computers.
The technique involved creating some spatial distribution of frequencies, typically by sending the low frequencies to the left channel and the high frequencies to the right channel. If they'd stopped at that, it might have sounded pretty good.
However, someone also got the idea to add very short-space time "delays" (not echos) and phase distortions of the mono signals. This unfortunately created a very "echo-ey" effect like the vocalists were singing in the bathroom. It was pretty awful on some of Jim's recordings.
But this didn't just affect Mr. Reeves. For a long time in the 1960s, even Elvis' classic '50s tracks were only available this way -- in "electronically reprocessed stereo."
Nowadays, in the digital age, there are tremendous new resources at our command which can help us improve old recordings.
For example, when working on "The Divine Ms. Cline," -- the release VoiceMasters produced with H&H Music Ltd. in England featuring 20 of Patsy Cline's masters plus some unreleased live material -- we did not have the original three track masters available. But we took pristine vinyl and then identified and zeroed in on the frequencies of certain instruments to turn them up or down in volume. I was able to give Patsy a "vocal boost" to separate her from some overwhelming original backgrounds that obscured her beautiful voice. (Hear samples at: http://www.patsyclinemusic.net)
Anyone who has purchased that CD can compare, for instance, the original versions of any of her songs to the redone ones on my CD, and without any doubt at all you will be able to hear her much better on the new release.
I was VERY proud of the fact that on a discussion board that attracts heavy traffic consisting of many music industry professionals (including other producers and engineers), as well as scores of intelligent audiophiles, there was a recent discussion of the Patsy CD, in which the presumption on their part was that I had worked from the three-track original masters! My team and I got a chuckle out of that. We regarded that as a high compliment because we managed to even fool the experts, who thought we had "started fresh" with clean tracks that were then orchestrated with beautiful new music.
Fans and professional music critics have also made the same observation regarding the new 8 CD set, "The Great Jim Reeves" which I produced. Over and over and over we see people commenting on how they have never heard Jim's voice with such clarity and beauty before!
We worked on these tracks laboriously for months, fine-tuning every little aspect, dropping an entire channel when possible to get rid of as much of the original instrumentation as we could so as to allow for a new, better musical arrangement to be substituted.
Even on tracks I did not overdub, like "I Won't Forget You," you will hear Jim with astonishing new warmth and clarity. The same with "Welcome To My World" (although I added oboe to that).
It is very gratifying to be able to take old tracks and polish them up and make them shine better than ever before.
Those of Jim's fans who don't bother to buy any of the new CDs I've produced, thinking they already have the music and nothing could be better than the originals, are really missing out.
Because we have exposed Jim's voice in places where you never heard him before. The Country Music People article by David Allan points out that -- aside from Patsy's original -- he has never heard a better version of "I Fall To Pieces" than the new overdub on "The Great Jim Reeves," featuring Jim with Kenzie Wetz.
Compare the original version (from the "Touch of Velvet" album) with ours. Our arrangement is deliberately more "country sounding" with fiddle and steel guitar, etc. than the pop original. When Jim starts to sing, you hear him SO MUCH BETTER than you ever could on the RCA original where he was backed with the string section and saxophone. And yet -- miraculously -- you won't hear a trace of the original backing.
(I'm sure at least one of the loonies who is always dogging my heels will rush to point out that there were a few "voice isolation" tracks floating around on Jim, but they should re-listen to those if they have them; they will find those were NOT all that clean and there was an awful lot of leakage into Jim's mic. But all of that is GONE on our tracks. We did not use any of the old RCA isolation stuff. On the other hand, I have no intention of revealing any of our proprietary secrets as to how we accomplished such stunning results. I worked with some incredibly skilled people. The "cherry on top" was the expert mastering by one of the top engineers in the nation -- Scott Barnett).
You need to do yourself a favor and buy this set. 8 CDs, over 170 tracks, SPECTACULAR SOUND.
We've come a long, long way since the days of "electronically reprocessed stereo."
Click the link below to hear samples and to order... (And don't forget about the wonderful CD "Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney: The New Recordings," which has sound that is out of this world. You can hear samples at: http://www.good-music.biz/bing.html)
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