SH's Billie Holiday Original Decca Masters

I got this through half.com and I gotta say this is the best Billie Holiday I have heard sonically from this era of her career. Great job on this Steve!

By the way, why weren't these tapes really hissy? I assumed they would be.

 

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Here a link to an older thread about this disc Shawn:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?threadid=10402

 

Thanks! A thread before my time. I'll take a look!

 

I just compared Good Morning Heartache b/w the Ken Burns single disc comp (mastered by Kevin Reeves) and SH's disc and SH's wins. I'm not sure if Reeves got a lesser quality disc to master with or he didn't know the Wesson oil trick. The Ken Burns version sounds terrible.

 

Re: Re: SH's Billie Holiday Original Decca Masters

Well, their ancient. Most old tapes sound hissy, but these don't.

 

I agree with Shawn. This is yet another disc done beautifully by Mr. Hoffman.

 

Re: Re: Re: SH's Billie Holiday Original Decca Masters

Wasn't this title mastered directly from the glass discs (instead of tapes)?

 

James said:

That's what was said in the older thread that MMM referenced. Note that the Holiday disc is called From the Original Decca Masters, not From the Original Master Tapes. I assume that there was a method to Steve's madness in choosing the title.

 

I still don't have this, but I think a few of the songs are new enough on it where their original master is a tape, but the rest of the songs were originally recorded direct to disc.

 

On the back of the booklet it says "Digitally mastered from the original Decca 30 IPS session tapes, but in the booklet it says "Originally recorded on 331/3 RPM glass discs. These rare original discs were used in the digital transfer." Steve.

PS: Nevermind, I see you've already answered.

 

Our posts kinda crossed Steve, sorry. I'm a little confused though. Do you remember if you used a tape dub for some of the songs that were originally recorded direct to disc? If you had to, was it because the sound on those tape copies was better than the sound on the actual discs due to deterioration of the discs?

 

All were from the original tapes except for 2 songs that were from glass masters.

 

Thanks for trying to help Steve. No one can be expected to remember everything!

 

Nice to hear that they made some good transfers at Decca years ago.

 

That explains why all but 2 songs on the CD were recorded after that date. Very cool info Steve.

 

Wow.
I had no idea -- I suppose I really should read the liner notes more carefully -- that this was a Hoffman special. Have enjoyed this set for years.
Great songs, well sung, well mastered, and very well packaged. To be so close to Billie must have been wonderful. Jeff
Now a vinyl transfer would be fun...