Posted by Allen Chandler on September 7, 2014, 9:03 pm
Hi Larry I have two 78 rpm records of Four Walls b/w I Know and You Know. One record was pressed in Canada the other in the U.S. On the Canadian release there are several drop outs in the audio at the beginning of Four Walls and the song I Know and You Know is an alternate take. On the U.S. release of I Know and You Know Jim makes a mistake with "just playing around just making excuses and doing me wrong" which does not rhyme. Later in the song Jim sings it correctly "just playing along just making excuses and doing me wrong".
Why did Canada release a record with drop outs in the audio in Four Walls and use the alternate take of I Know and You Know while the U.S.used the take with the mistake, seeing Jim was a perfectionist.
Re: Four Walls
Posted by Larry Jordan on September 7, 2014, 11:42 pm, in reply to "Four Walls"
Jim had absolutely nothing to do with the final decisions on the release of his records. In fact, he often was kept in the dark as to which song RCA was going to put out, and they would typically send him a telegram if he was on the road to tell him which one they had decided to issue.
Of course, he collaborated with his producer, Chet Atkins, as to which songs he would record, but even Atkins did not have the final say. RCA headquarters in New York did.
Jim was also habitually upset with the way his label manufactured his records, believing they did not press them "hot enough." He chronically fussed that when one of his songs came on the radio, he had to turn it up to hear it because the volume was too low. It was a running complaint with him.
RCA apparently had a lot of people working for it and its licensees with a rather low IQ. Including the idiot head of the company who at one point decreed that priceless recordings by stellar artists should be erased and re-used, just to save on tape. So many historic recordings were thereby lost.
Re: Four Walls
Posted by Allen Chandler on September 9, 2014, 10:38 pm, in reply to "Re: Four Walls"
Hi Larry
Yes I know Jim had no say so in which songs were to be released. My question was why did RCA in Canada release Four Walls with the audio drop outs in the beginning of the song and use an alternate take of I Know and You Know while RCA here in the States used the one with the mistake. I thought I read that they test play a record to make sure the audio is good before they mass produce it.
Re: Four Walls
Posted by Larry Jordan on September 10, 2014, 7:38 am, in reply to "Re: Four Walls"
Drop outs could have occurred at any point in the production process, when duping the tape to creating the stamper, or there could have been defective vinyl. Obviously there was a problem with quality control somewhere along the line. As for their using an alternate take, since Jim did not record the song for RCA Canada, it stands to reason New York must have sent them the wrong master, rather than Canada choosing the wrong "take."
Re: Four Walls
Posted by David MacBeth on September 10, 2014, 6:52 pm, in reply to "Re: Four Walls"
As I have said before,RCA had Elvis,EVERYONE else was of lesser 'importance'!