The Last Album Released in Mono

That first 8 track I saw with 2 tapes in 1969 was a cheap LOOKING underdash unit also. And the car was owned by a Scarsdale NY lawyer. That should tell you how expensive those pups must have been at the time, especially when I had yet to see any in Winnetka. He might have had a little better speakers.

I tried Clarion under dash Dolby cassette in 1975 after a subzero winter proved a tough go for my home stereo for car setup. But the Clarion had issues too, so I tried Audiovox in-dash in March, 1976. That lasted until "Stranger in Town" got permanently stuck in the player early 1979. At least I had good music until I could scrape the money for a nice Kenwood.

Even before 1975, I recall reading about Dolby cassette for car in Europe, I think made by Blaupunkt or Alpine, but the prices were absolutely ridiculous. My home ADS L810 studio monitors cost less. I think I saw it in Stereo Review, though it may have been just an ad. For all of that, I think 8 track hung on to a shrinking market share almost to the end of the decade, when Walkman would have killed it for good anyway.

I will say that one thing one never sees anymore (but once saw all the time) is glistening tangles of mangled tape in street gutters after PO'd motorists threw jammed tapes out their windows...

 

I liked Audiovox stuff so much I stuck with it. It wasn't extremely expensive and it always had the latest features and sounded great.
A tape head demag and cleaning every other year and the thing lasted me a long time.

 

Danish band Beatophonics released an album mixed in mono earlier this year.

 

This never made sense to me. That's like a DVD store refusing to carry any black-and-white movies.

 

Well, actually that would be more like a DVD store refusing to carry any black-and-white IF there were colorized versions on DVD also. When Ted Turner started colorizing classic films like "It's a Wonderful Life" as early as the 1980s, that is precisely what many film buffs feared. Siskel and Ebert called it "Hollywood's New Vandalism". Already, rights owners had begun requiring TV networks to air classic films in the colorized version only, or not at all. Turner actually embarked on trying to colorize "Citizen Kane" (!). Ultimately, there were many lawsuits over that title and others. In the end, colorization was largely abandoned, but likely only because of its great expense. Unfortunately, expense did not provide such a barrier in the case of fake stereo.

When I tried to buy "Sgt. Pepper's" in mono on day of release in June 1967, I was told "You want mono? Just put that stereo LP on your mono record player. Bingo. You got mono!". It wouldn't stretch imagination much to hear some DVD retailer 30 years later saying "You want black-and white? Just put that colorized movie in your DVD player, and turn the color control down to zero on your TV. Bingo. You got black-and-white!".

We all know that in both the former and latter cases, the differences would be easily noticeable to any who actually cared about sound or classic movies, respectively. But if most consumers wouldn't notice, and the labels, distributors and retailers were saved the expense of maintaining two parallel inventories of the same product at the same time, it was not hard to see that coming in the case of colorization. Even today, one cannot buy the original theatrical version of "Star Wars" (the one where Han Solo fired at Greedo FIRST) in a fully restored DVD version. Only the later Lucas-reworked version (Greedo fires first, ruining a great scene) is available in full glory, with the first version available only as the old laser disc transfer as a bonus supplement. Lucas won't allow it. Thus bootlegs of the original (and better) theatrical version abound. Ironically, Lucas himself had been one of the most vociferous opponents of colorization.

Luckily, colorization didn't gain much traction with consumers when it was introduced, largely due to the widespread vociferous protests of producers, directors, film critics and film buffs at the time. Perhaps their knowledge about previous experiences with mono in the late 1960s and vinyl in the late 1980s helped them see the handwriting on the wall. That could have happened with mono in the late 1960s, but it didn't. Not even a little bit. It DID happen, albeit to a much lesser degree, during the orchestrated vinyl phaseout of approximately 1988-1991. But at least there were a few more protests then, and if nothing else, give hip hop credit for keeping turntables alive during those dark days. And even then, one was still able to buy occasional new titles in vinyl (e.g., "Pearl Jam") if only one knew where to look. Tower Records maybe, but not at most shopping mall chain stores.

 

You gotta understand something. Stereo was hot at the time, it was what downloads are now.
Everybody wanted stereo. Stores didn't carry mono because music fans turned their nose up at it.
Stores carry what sells. Mono didn't sell then. In fact, mono became so unpopular that singles were in stereo too.

Mono was to stereo in the late 60s and early 70s what 8 tracks were to CDs in the 80s.

 

Somewhat true. Even I had no particular problem with it at the time (we had a stereo at home by then). I just didn't want to have to fight for the use of that one stereo (a Magnavox color TV console in the den) if someone just HAD to watch "Family Affair" or some other dreck on the TV when I wanted to listen. I wanted to be able to play the record on my mono player upstairs, or at a friend's house. But I thought, now that it's officially OK to play stereo records on at least newer mono players without damage, who cares? Like I said, what would a 14 year old in 1967 know about the uniqueness of mono mixes? So I bought only stereo after that. My only problem, as I've said before, was my inability to find "Procol Harum" in any version other than fake stereo, since that's all the dealers around here would carry after Sgt. Peppers in June, 1967. "Procol Harum" wasn't released until about September and apparently no exceptions were allowed for that.

At that time, contrary to what you said, stereo was gaining ground but mono was still selling quite well, for those who could find it. As one poster pointed out, mono Sgt. Pepper's outsold stereo in US on release, even though some stores (and all of them around me) no longer carried the mono version. That's a pretty far cry from music fans "turning up their nose" at mono. At least some of them must have had to crawl a mile on crushed glass just to get mono Sgt. Peppers, though I myself didn't bother. On the other hand, my fingers did do a lot of walking through the yellow pages just two months later, looking for mono "Procol Harum". No dice.

To be sure, mono would be on the way out eventually anyway, as more and more people WERE buying stereo players, over time. But the industry didn't want to wait until perhaps 1970, 1971 or 1972. Two parallel lines of inventory was costing money, so they forced the issue. Just like they did in the late 1980s with vinyl when people were still buying vinyl, though in shrinking numbers. Some didn't like shrill CD sound, and others couldn't afford the still fairly high player prices. As long as there was cassette, the youngsters with their Walkmans and boom boxes couldn't care less. As for the others who preferred listening to good sound at home, I know of too many acquaintances who didn't buy a CD player until they were finally forced to by the release of a title they could suddenly only get on CD. Some of them, unfortunately, were also tricked into buying "digital ready" speakers to replace the perfectly good speakers they already had, before I could warn them about THAT scam.

For myself, I started buying CDs of some older titles over a year before I bought my first CD player, as I feared some older titles going out of print on CD before I "upgraded". Little did I expect that some of those titles would be remastered 2, 3, 4 or even 5 times on CD later on. Still, my paranoia (born of my experience with the mono phaseout 20 years earlier) paid off, as that is how I ended up with Lee Herschberg non-RE1 Hendrix CDs, instead of the slightly later (and not so slightly dreaded) RE-1 no-noised versions, just for example.

 

I get that, but I don't know if that analogy fits. What if you're buying a Buddy Holly or a Hank Williams album? They can't help it if they weren't around for the new technology, and they still had albums in print. Whatcha gonna do then? Rechannel their mono hits into ster-....uh-oh. And you know what a mess that "simulated stereo" was. Boy, were there a lot of shallow people in the industry then.

Okay, I wasn't around during that era, but seems to me the 8-track and download analogies don't quite sum up the situation. To me, that'd be more like colorizing Citizen Kane because the DVD shops wouldn't sell a B&W flick.

When Shelby Singleton reactivated the Sun label in 1969, he released albums by Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, etc. in straight mono, but still put the word "stereo" on the covers just so he could get this music back in the shops. I'd say he had the right idea.

 

I was buying oldies music then. Some of it was mono. But I bought far more newer releases in stereo.
Of course there was a lot of dowop rereleased on 8 track, and there was a big market for it.
But that market was still a drop in the top 40 bucket.
Access to stereo playing devices was a BIG deal. People wanted stereo, just like they wanted color TV ( which was no longer cost prohibitive) about the same time the sales were shifting from 45 toward 33 /3rd.
My analogy is actually quite close.
There are those who are buying 30s and 40s music now too as downloads, but they are far from having any impact on what the industry does.
Which is my point. Demand for stereo in the mid60s on was very high. The industry didn't make things that didn't sell well. And mono just didn't.
As far as new releases, there are many times I went into a store and they only had the mono. I would pass and wait until I found it somewhere in stereo.
I was far from being alone in that.

Also, something that was often in mono, but it was sometimes mono with some badass reprocessing that added some bad delay to the mix, were bootleg 8 tracks that you would find at little just out of town back hollow stores.
A lot of those small stores had racks with popular artists 8 tracks that were very obviously bogus. They were cheap, as in WAY cheap.
Also neighborhood stores in cities had them. Back then big brother wasn't out trying to nail people, and local cops weren't responsible for enforcing civil law on stores that sold them.
But for the most part new 8 tracks were released in stereo if a stereo mix existed.
I remember seeing Simon and Garfunkel albums in both mono and stereo in record racks, but in 8 track I never seen a mono S&G album.

Music industry people were far from shallow. They were good at business and reading the market and providing exactly to consumer demand, as well as knowing how to generate consumer demand.
Many of them were popular musicians themselves.

 

Early classical and other (mostly acoustic) strictly miked stereo wasn't mixed, and sound was all in the mike placement, and the placement of the sometimes many instruments around those mikes. Once on tape, you had what you had, in stereo. And it was all good, from the first appearance of stereo on reel-to-reel after 1954, through the first LPs in stereo about 1958. That also included movie soundtracks, which already came in stereo, pre-mixed, as it were. The only problem was that mono players of that time used heavier stylus pressure and styli that were not designed for compliance to the stereo groove, resulting in damage to stereo records played on mono players. Stereo players were backward compatible and could play both. But most pop and rock performances were "multi-tracked" for mixdown to mono for the right sound, at first from only two tracks at the start, with one track for instruments, and one for vocals. You can't make a stereo image from that, though it didn't stop some from trying. Thus early stereo was dominated by classical, acoustic, live, soundtrack and Broadway Cast titles.

The first stereo at our house was Christmas 1963, one week after "I Want to Hold Your Hand" hit the charts in the US. It was a Magnavox "suitcase" portable, with suitcase in this instance meaning it was as big as, well, a full sized suitcase, with detachable speakers. By that time, mixing from four tracks then prevalent was still geared to mono, and mixing same to stereo was a new unlearned art. It was also not considered an important art, as the target market consumers were presumed to be teenage or younger, with mono players. And listening on mono AM car and transistor radios. So all singles were mixed to mono for that reason. The industry was pushing stereo, though, and demanded stereo album releases of titles that engineers of the time did not have a solid idea about producing, especially from four tracks.

Since the artists and producers did not care, having gone home after the mono mix was finished, the stereo mix was usually knocked off in an afternoon by someone not much above a glorified intern (granted, some such "glorified interns" doubtless would become the mastering greats of a later day). The youngsters rarely bought the stereo because they did not want their listening restricted to Dad's stereo in the den, if he even had one, but also wanted to listen on their mono portable upstairs, or at parties at their friends' homes. Hard panning and other wonky mixing strategies were the frequent result, if not Duophonic and other species of fake stereo. A stereo "soundstage" image was not one of the results. The good news: newer mono players were also by now designed to safely play stereo records without damage. Essentially they were designed just like the stereo players, but with a lighter weight mono cartridge, more compliant stylus, mono signal path, and just one speaker. But these were not that common in homes just yet, and too many older players remained in service. So the rule of thumb for consumers remained "Don't play stereo records on mono players, because you'll ruin them for stereo".

By 1967, stereo was gaining, but by no means in all homes. And fewer old mono players remained in service, many having been replaced by newer mono players. So now they started telling consumers it was OK to play stereo LPs on "today's" mono players "with confidence". That took care of lingering compatibility issues. Engineers were now mixing even rock music mostly from eight tracks, much easier than working from just four for stereo. And they were getting much better at it as well, with a better understanding of the stereo soundstage image they were trying to create, as opposed to mere gimmickry. Most stereo rock and pop LPs were finally sounding pretty good, but many artists and producers (e.g., Beatles and Stones) still targeted the mono mix. Brian Wilson and Phil Spector were even stauncher advocates of mono, but the music world was getting ready to leave them behind. And what we now know as the more sophisticated "classic rock" was getting ready to move to FM stereo album rock, leaving mono AM to teen idols (Bobby Sherman), bubble gum ("Yummy Yummy Yummy", "Sugar Sugar") and teeny boppers, after coexisting, uncomfortably, for several years. In Chicago, that change came in August 1968.

With stereo sales now starting to approach mono, the industry wanted to force mono out, eliminating the cost of maintaining two parallel inventory streams for the same product. Just like they didn't want BOTH eight track and Dolby cassette for portable and car listening, Beta and VHS for home video, vinyl LP and CD for home listening, SACD and DVD-Audio for hi rez, DVD and DIVX for digital standard definition, and HD-DVD and Blu-Ray for HDTV. In each case, one had to go. And in each case, one did, and not always in favor of the superior technology (see, e.g., Beta and vinyl). Some of the better technologies and formats abandoned for mass consumer use did survive as niche formats to this day, such as vinyl LP and SACD, even in mono, and Beta, with its superior tracking and writing speed still used by many TV stations and professionals.

In the end, it all boils back down to the original point of this thread. We are all on this forum in the quest for best sound available. That period of the mono phaseout during 1967-1969 raises the most questions for those who care about sound, especially given the unusually large number of essential titles released then. It began with mono usually being the authoritative "artist's mix" in early 1967 as before, and ending with mostly fold downs from stereo mixes by the end of 1969. But it's not that simple. US titles (and US pressings of UK titles) completed phaseout during 1967-1968, with mono becoming progressively harder to find in actual stores, starting as early as summer 1967. In the UK, mono phaseout was more skewed toward 1968-1969, with US titles being all fold downs after August 1968, and most UK titles by the end of 1969. And then there are the outlier exceptions (hello Deram), with some true mono possibly as late as 1970. And maybe some late period "enhanced" fold downs.

Why do we (and the OP) care? Because people who care about sound want to know which titles are worth pursuing in true mono, and which are not likely worth the trouble. I have already abandoned some fool's errands because of what I learned from this thread.

 

I think we all wanted better technology, especially when it actually proved to be better. I was an early adopter myself, in many cases I'll wager way ahead of you. Unless you were recording FM stereo off the air to reel-to-reel in 1968, to Dolby cassette at home in 1972, and Dolby cassette in the car 1974. Beta in 1979. DVD in 1998, and Blu-Ray in 2006. The promise of better performance always won me out. Stereo was no exception. As soon as I learned I could now play stereo LPs on mono players, I bought only stereo after that. I could play stereo LP on mono and get mono, but I could not play mono LP on stereo and get stereo. But I insist that the phaseout was forced early, mainly for economic reasons I already stated, not because of better sound. Same with the vinyl phaseout in 1988-1991. As soon as they could, they did, whether the public was ready for it or not.

And as far as "reading consumer demand", it was more a case of manipulating consumer demand, relying on the ignorant masses to carry the day. If Sgt. Pepper's mono outsold stereo on release, why did distributors and retailers make it impossible for me to get, great readers of consumer demand that they were?

As far as many being musicians themselves, that may be true. But the marketing suits were also there then, as now. Are you trying to tell us that the suits today decreeing loud brickwalled digital soup are music lovers? Puh-leeze. Truth is, it is never about the music with them, and it is always about the money.

 

During the rock era musicians had the labels by the balls, and the labels went with it. They knew they had to cave in order to not pass up a big fat golden egg laying goose. Guys like Ahmet Ertgen are memorialized because of his working with musicians rather than just being the suit guy that walks through the building a few times a week. Many of the suits were the same generation as the musicians, and the ones that were not were hep to what was going on in the music world. Herb Alpert was half owner in A&M. Chet Atkins was CEO at RCA. Guys like them had empathy for the artists and also knew how not to get too bsed by them.
And of course even the corporate labels and conglomerates were far smaller than now.
It was an entirely different situation.
It was always about the money for everyone, but during rock the suits knew that if they let the artists do their thing and supported them long enough for them to catch on, the money would come.
Now music artists are as often as not cookie cutter stampouts of each other.

 

Do you seriously think that ANY rock era musicians could have "had the labels by the balls" to any degree even approaching the way the Beatles did before the end of 1969 (by which time they alone among rock acts actually OWNED their own label)? Do you deny that Capitol (and Dave Dexter, who didn't even like the Beatles) did whatever they damn well wanted to, protests by the Beatles themselves be damned? That Sgt. Peppers mono outsold stereo in the US on release even though the labels, distributors and retailers were already starting to restrict the availability of Sgt. Pepper's mono in many main street stores? That Sgt. Pepper's mono STILL won out over stereo in initial sales even on a playing field the "suits" were already tilting? That through 1966 the Beatles alone consistently sold albums in numbers that would give them any leverage over the labels, with almost everyone else being mostly singles acts (Dylan and later the Stones excepted)? Will you next insist that the artists themselves, thus having the labels "by the balls", dictated that the labels start using noisy recycled vinyl for all of their releases? C'mon, man...

I will agree that the musicians had a very strong relative bargaining position by the time of Woodstock and afterward. By that time mono was already a fading memory. Rock was by then an FM format and an album format. In stereo. The war was already over. But you will never convince me that the music industry didn't start forcing the early phaseout of mono before consumers (or even the artists themselves, many still mastering primarily to mono) were actually ready. Just like you will never convince me that the vinyl phaseout of 1988-1991 wasn't orchestrated by the labels, no matter who had whom "by the balls". In the end, it sure wasn't the purchaser that had anybody "by the balls". As John Lennon would have said "I found this out".... In both cases, it was all about the cost of maintaining two parallel streams of basically the same product. One had to go. ASAP. Might as well make it the one still popular, but trending down, rather than the one trending up. And if some consumers had to run out and buy a CD player before they really wanted to, well, boo-hoo, boo-hoo.

All of this is really beside the point anyway. The question posed by this thread concerns which albums from that era (1967-1969) exist in a sonically superior mono mix sanctioned by the artists themselves, and which are not worth the trouble, if only because nothing unique about a mono fold down, which can be summed to mono using appropriate gear at home anyway, were one so inclined (as I am not). Before 1967 there isn't much question, and after 1969 there isn't much question. But during 1967-1969, we audiophiles need more info than we can get from Discogs in choosing the best version. None of that kind of analysis requires me to even agree or disagree with you.

 

In the garage rock/punk world there are still quite a few releases in mono only, one good example being the new album by The Sonics produced by Jim Diamond. But maybe this genre doesn't "count" in the audiophile world... ;-)

 

All genres count in the audiophile world. But well known and commonly available vanity mono releases by latter day artists don't really provide any useful information about which albums from the mono phaseout of 1967-1969 are better in mono, and which are better in stereo. There are genuine legitimate audiophile concerns during that time frame. And if the Sonics is mono only, for better or for worse, there is not exactly some choice that any audiophile (or non-audiophile) would have to make, is there? Have a great day just the same. And may you always have great sound.

 

This is going way off the track, but several Latin music labels like Fania kept making separate mono and stereo releases well into 1972. Roulette Records stopped making mono LPs in '68 along with everybody else, but for their Tico subsidiary, they kept putting out straight mono records longer than they were supposed to. Was the implication that salsa fans hadn't upgraded to stereo yet?

 

But what about the young rock fan that wanted to hear those classic Muddy Waters sides that Johnny Winter and Michael Bloomfield kept raving about? It's a shame they would have had to hear it in sloppy fake stereo just so some mom-and-pop could sell it. Assuming they did.

There were a lot of rock oldies being rereleased on regular vinyl, too. Going by what I see in used stores, that market - small as it was - wasn't limited to 8-tracks.

Not quite. Sure, the stores were phasing out vinyl as the 80s came to an end, but they emphasized that you could still get all kinds of music in that format. On the other hand, if the stores sold only stereo vinyl, you were okay if all you wanted was the new Iron Butterfly. But if you were looking for anything older than 1960, you were messed up. "Oh, Little Richard? We would order that for you, but it's in mono so we can't sell it. However, here's this more recent album where he recut those same songs in stereo..." No, thanks!

I guess I never understood that. I love stereo, too, but the fact of the matter is that not everything (that I like) was recorded that way. And it's not like mono sounds like hell.

I'm not even counting those inferior things!
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I don't doubt that there were stores that would only sell stereo. I believe it. I just think it was overreacting.

Like I say, the DVD stores didn't refuse to sell A Hard Day's Night because it was in B&W.
The CD stores didn't refuse to sell the Carter Family because they weren't recorded digitally.
But if a record store only sells stereo, that's a whole mess of musical history being omitted. If you're not looking for anything older than the Ultimate Spinach, okay, but...

 

To play a stereo record on an old "pre-stereo" record player without causing damage was to replace the stylus with a stereo stylus. I had a record player "Voice Of Music" or "VM" made in the early 50s. I had only stereo records. I simply changed the stylus. What was the mystery back then?

 

You are comparing apples and oranges. Retailers stopped selling mono Lps in 67 and 68 because they were no longer being manufactured and therefore not available for order. Further, labels were deleting the mono catalog. So in the retail rack was the stereo LP. In the cut out bin was the mono version with a small punch hole in the corner for 99 cents or something like that. In other words retailers had little choice in the matter.

In reality few of us cared whether a record was mono or stereo. Price was more important. If the stereo was 4.98 in the bin there was the 99 cent copy in the cut out bin. No brainer. I remember by 1969-70 you'd rarely see a mono record in the cut outs anymore. Once they were deleted - they were soon gone.

 

That makes more sense. I've read stories about how some stores just flat refused to sell a monophonic record, even if it only came that way. See my earlier post (#133) about how Sun Records put the word "stereo" on the covers of pure mono albums by Johnny Cash and the rest, just to get them into the stores.

 

I only commented on the OP's original post. No question there regarding best in mono vs stereo. Having said that, I do understand your point.

 

@MONOLOVER thanks for posting that Dr. John. I had no idea that existed and now will have to try and find one!

 

Yep, that's right! However, I did find a bootleg CD (Russian?) containing the two Wilburys albums in the gutter (literally) behind a local schoolyard a few years ago. Played just fine, too.

 

You realize that post is from 2003?

 

Bread Love and Dreams' "Captain Shannon and the Hunchback of Gigha" released November 1970 was the last pop/rock album issued in mono by Decca. Whether it's a fold or not I don't know