Sinatra / Capitol: General Purpose Sound Quality (and more) Discussion Thread*

Yes, I've got it. A little caveat first: My personal preference would have been that this be a "non-LP tracks only" compilation, as the tunes from regular albums seem like filler. I mean......if Love Locked Out from the Close to You album is a "rarity," isn't With Every Breath I Take (or any other Close to You song) equally rare?

•You're Sensational -- this is the real calling card of this set, in my opinion. It's the full-length version (most releases have over 90 seconds missing, cut from 3:54 to 2:16, as they use the "single edit"), well mastered in mono (as recorded), with no limiter used. This has never been released on CD. (CDs all use either the short edit, or are in fake stereo).
•Nothing in Common, How Are Ya' Fixed for Love, Don't Change Your Mind About Me - excellent
•Weep They Will - mostly excellent, but technically flawed after a splice
•White Christmas, Five Hundred Guys - Good
•Anytime, Anywhere - good mastering, but from a source tape that has a chunk missing at the 2:00 mark (a problem on all LP and CD releases of this song). You need the original 45 or 78 to get the complete, un-cut release. (To clarify: on the 45/78, there is still an intended tape edit in the song, but nothing is MISSING that was intended to be there. The LPs and CDs are all made from a tape source that apparently broke and was re-spliced, with a brief piece gone missing in the process.)
•Wait Till You See Her, Rain - So-so (tone is an issue)
•Half as Lovely - off speed, "wet" tapes.
•The Moon was Yellow, From the Bottom to the Top, and Two Hearts, Two Kisses - "wet" tapes.

I haven't checked Sentimental Baby yet, and don't care about the few LP tracks that are also present, so can't comment on them.

 

Yeah, that's one of a handful of songs that have virtually never had a "really done right" release. Also, as far as Nelson's involvement (or lack thereof), see here.

 

I've waited my whole life to hear those words! (I'm referring to my headphones, of course.)

Thanks, Paul!

 

Regarding the UK release, Twenty Golden Greats, from 1978:

These photos are from discogs, and show a shiny-foil-style cover. The inner sleeve and LP are both standard-issue UK, but the outer sleeve is not like the usual UK release. German mail order, maybe??????
For those who may not know, the usual look of this album is:

 

I was at one of my favorite haunts, Down in the Groove, a record shop in Mt. Vernon, WA, the other day, and picked up a clean copy of this UK Capitol release from 1974:

What an intriguing record!
•All four songs from the Our Town EP are gathered here. (I think this is the only LP to feature all four.) They are "electronically reprocessed" for stereo, but they sum to mono okay, so these are not merely dubs of the Duophonic versions found on the altered This is Sinatra and Look to Your Heart LPs of the 1960s.
•The nine stereo tracks are nicely mastered.

The above two points are not entirely surprising when one realizes that this set was apparently compiled from scratch (good tapes?) at Capitol in Hollywood. The rear cover bears the credit:
<<Compiled from Capitol/EMI archives by Chris Ellis, Capitol Records, Inc.>>
In other words, the master reels for side 1 and side 2 were compiled from Capitol USA masters, not UK dubs. Disc mastering by Richard Langham, presumably at Abbey Road.

I have not done enough A/B-ing yet to say with certainly, but I suspect that the OUR TOWN tracks are sourced from the EP/session tapes, not the futzed-with Look to Your Heart tapes. More to follow. The stereo tracks sound quite nice upon first listen.

 

Correction: Of those four Our Town EP songs, three are "electronically enhanced" (fake stereo) in a way that sums well to mono (mildly bass heavy), but "Love and Marriage" is actual Duophonic, so does not sum to mono well at all. I'm guessing that it's a straight dub of the Duophonic This is Sinatra tapes.

 

It may be an interesting read, but where this particular album is concerned, much of it has no connection to reality. Despite rear cover "information" to the contrary, this album was:
•Recorded at Capitol to either 1- or 3-track tape -- no 4-track in sight -- at 15 IPS, not 30.
•Cut from COPY tapes at Capitol NYC on a Neumann lathe, not Scully.
•Pressed by Capitol Records' Winchester, VA, plant

That's not a dig at the quality of the record, which is pretty good, and worth picking up for those two uniquely-presented stereo mixes. I'm just saying that the boilerplate PR junk on the rear cover of every (?) Longines LP just doesn't apply here.

On another topic:

I knew that this album (below), The Frank Sinatra Collection, was issued on CD in the UK and in Canada in 1987, a year after its LP release in the UK.

Until last night, I did not realize [EDIT: or did I???? See the bottom of this post] that it also had a Japanese release in 1989 within their rolling "Best Now" series:

Based on the fine print, I'd be very surprised if this were not an identical mastering to the UK/Canada versions.



EDIT: From the "I've forgotten more than you'll ever know" department, apparently I *DID* know about the Japanese release back in 2013, when I posted this in another thread, regarding The Frank Sinatra Collection:

I have no memory of that whatsoever, but the search engine does not lie!

Either way, it's fun to look at the cool pictures.

 

Here's an oddball from Australia:

The 1989 date pre-dates the USA Walsh mastering, correct? (I think so.) This has only 15 tracks, as opposed to 16 on the Walsh CD. Also, it has the full-length "You're Sensational" recording, not the 2:16 "single" edit. Should be here via swimming mule from Australia in a few weeks.

 

Just a re-use of the then-available Walsh masterings?
1 You Make Me Feel So Young 2:54
2 I've Got You Under My Skin 3:43
3 The Lady Is A Tramp 3:14
4 Someone To Watch Over Me 2:56
5 All The Way 2:52
6 I've Got The World On A String 2:10
7 The Gal That Got Away 3:00
8 Christmas Waltz 3:00
9 White Christmas 2:36
10 Lean Baby 2:33

 

Hi, Scotti.
There are dedicated sound quality thread for each of those two albums:
Sinatra / Capitol Sound Quality and General Discussion: In the Wee Small Hours (1955)*
Sinatra / Capitol Sound Quality and General Discussion: Songs for Swingin' Lovers - Released 1956*

Short answer: Your editions should be very good. Are there "better" editions? "Better" can be a slippery term, of course. I think that the currently-available Capitol/UMe reissue LPs of both titles are arguably the best these titles have ever sounded on LP (especially with Swingin' Lovers).

Lots of info, including actual audio clips so you can make some comparisons for yourself, can be found by clicking around my website: www.11fifty.com.

A few samples from the site:

Wee Small Hours - Click on the links below for audio
D16 audio (provided by @Blackie -- thanks)
2014 LP audio (provided by @AxeD -- thanks)

D8 audio (not quite the same as yours, but should be in the ballpark - provided by @Arkoffs -- thanks)
2014 LP audio (from AxeD again)

Songs for Swingin' Lovers
D5 Audio (provided by @stevelucille -- thanks)
2016 LP Audio

 

Nice 'n' Easy: Rainbow label (original, not a reproduction, I assume) should be original mono release.
Swing Easy: Unless this is a COMBO LP (Songs for Young Lovers and Swing Easy combined onto one 12" LP, which you do not state to be the case), this would be the early '60s reconfiguration, with extra tracks and revised running order.

 

I've said this before, but the reason I keep buying these "oddball" and/or foreign market official releases is that you just never know what may surface, and this Australian CD is another case in point, as it contains some unique-to-CD tracks.

•I Concentrate on You, C'est Magnifique, It's All Right with Me, I Love Paris (solo version) and You Do Something to Me - all five are only-time-on-CD mono releases, as far as I know.
•You're Sensational (Capitol "soundtrack album" version) - To my knowledge, this is the only CD release of the full length (3:52) LP version in actual mono. Other CD versions are either the full-length version in [edit: fake stereo or] Duophonic sound, or the severely edited (nearly cut in half, with 1:38 missing) "single" version. Here's a summary of other releases, from this webpage:

Before this CD's mastering came to light, the only ways, to my knowledge, to get that full-length version in mono (as recorded) were the original, so-so sounding High Society mono soundtrack LP, and the hard-to-find Australian The Rarities, Volume Two LP from 1983, with no official CD release, so this strikes me as being a significant find.

I'm mildly surprised that this all-mono CD is not marked as such.