Sinatra / Capitol Sound Quality and General Discussion: In the Wee Small Hours (1955)*

As far as the 16 LP clips posted thus far, it's pretty tough to deny the beauty of those D pressings, I think. They all sound good, even the ones pressed at RCA. (IMO, of course.)

 

CD clips of "I'll Be Around" are now posted: http://www.11fifty.com/Site_108/1955_-_In_the_Wee_Small_Hours.html

To my ears, the CD choice is a no-brainer on this one.

 

There are many cases in this forum where I/we/others reference 1987/1991 Walsh, and I know that somewhere here I've said something like, "They are the same mastering, but the 1991 version adds back the missing song." In fact, on my web page for this album, the first reference to the 1991 edition reads:

"Not so fast, buddy boy!"

While the 1987 edition is missing "Last Night When We Were Young," and the 1991 edition includes that song, on the 1991 CD that song only is presented "dry." Interesting that Capitol went to the trouble of adding that song back in, but left 15 tracks with Larry Walsh's "wet" 1987 mastering, while "Last Night...." is a (likely new at the time) 1991 "dry" mastering.

I've posted a comparison of this Walsh track with the famous 1998 UK "dry" CD, and the two are basically indistinguishable from one another. Scan way down the page here: http://www.11fifty.com/Site_108/1955_-_In_the_Wee_Small_Hours.html

(Full disclosure: The Walsh version of this track is slightly more dynamic than the UK disc, but by slightly, I mean about 0.8 dB RMS -- negligible, IMO. Also, it is transferred on a stereo machine and is slightly left-heavy.)

 

I was rooting around in my Wayback machine and found FLAC clips dated October 17, 2013, that somebody sent from the 2009 Capitol LP and an Australian CD reissue, but I can't figure out who sent them. I'd love to get them posted and to properly credit the nice person who sent them to me, so if that's you, would you please either post here or contact me? Thanks!

 

From the website:

It's that way on the 1984 "Dell" LP, but I'm sure there's yet another version that does that, too.

 

Two more LP samples of "I'll Be Around" added near bottom of page here: http://www.11fifty.com/Site_108/1955_-_In_the_Wee_Small_Hours.html

•1984 UK "Dell" LP
•2009 Capitol "From the Vaults" LP

Both are "wet."

Also, I've added three brief LP clips of the title track:
•A good one, my dad's bought-new-when-it-came-out D1/D1 10" pressing
•A bad one: The 1975 Dutch LP
•A worse one: The 1970's first cut UK reissue LP

More LP clips to come later.

 

That's an EU copyright expiration release; not official; not sourced from masters, unless Universal has merged with Black Coffee Records.

 

I just haven't had the time to tackle much Sinatra stuff over the last couple of months, but I'm freshly back from a little vacation in the sunny midwest and trying to get back into the "Sinatra swing of things," and have done some serious listening this morning to all 20+ (!) clips of I'll Be Around that have been posted here for a few weeks now: http://www.11fifty.com/Site_108/1955_-_In_the_Wee_Small_Hours.html. Here's my take on them:

I think that they basically fall into three categories along the lines of a bell curve, with the middle category (#2) containing the vast majority of the samples.

Category 1: Clearly substandard. Into this bunch, I would place:
•The not-made-from-US-stampers foreign LP pressings, due to tone quality issues (boosted upper mids; rolled off top end, etc. They all have issues of one sort or another.)
•Norberg CD and MFSL LP - Dry/sterile sound; lifeless. Bad fade-in on the MFSL for some reason.
•Walsh CD - great tone, but reverb added. (Larry has spoken of this publicly, indicating that the reverb should not have been added back in 1987. When the disc was reissued in 1991, the added track, "Last Night When We Were Young," did not have reverb added, and sounds much better. The other tracks retained the 1987 quality.)
•2009 Capitol LP and 1984 UK "Dell" LP - wet tapes. (The UK LP also has that bad fade-in like the MFSL.)

Category 2: Varying flavors of good.
•In the slightly lower side of this category, I'd place most of the "N" pressings, and, oddly, one of the two 10" D1 pressings, and the D8#2 clip. These don't have quite the openness and sparkle of other pressings, but they still sound pretty nice, IMO.
•In the slightly higher side of this category, I'd place the rest of the "D" pressings (including the EP), and the N24 pressing. A couple of the D LPs verge on being "airy" (in a bad sense) on top, but they are still quite nice, IMO.

There are lots of subtly different "flavors" in that second category, but they all are basically fine and quite pleasant to listen to, IMO, with some being slightly better than others.

Category 3: Top Notch.
Based on the clips (and reinforced by my own time spent with both versions), I think that there are two versions that are truly superior:
•The 1980s greenish/bluish-label LP reissue from Capitol. Sadly, this only has 10 tracks, so what's a girl to do? (Side note about this LP: Not all tracks sound quite as nice as I'll Be Around, and there is tape damage apparent on some tracks, especially around the starts of songs.)
•The 1998 UK boxed-set compact disc.

There's also a fourth category, but it wasn't covered in the "I'll Be Around" section, and that would be the "Geez this is horrid" category:
•The infamous -1/-1 cut of the 1970s UK reissue LP, which uses the Duophonic tapes, then sums them to mono;
•The Duophonic versions, including the Dutch copy that I posted.

I'll still be posting a few more clips before we move on from this title, but I'll be very surprised if anything surpasses that UK CD.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will also opine that there is a wonderful mastering "lurking" within the Harry Moss 1970s UK LPs, but some "home brew" tinkering is required, as there is a pretty severe high-end roll-off on that LP. I've found that a very nice, warm, dynamic sound is to be had if one is willing to boost the highs a bit on that edition. (The unboosted version is on the site.)

All "IMO," of course. Please have a listen and see if you agree??? http://www.11fifty.com/Site_108/1955_-_In_the_Wee_Small_Hours.html

 

Alright, I think the WEE SMALL HOURS saga is complete, with several more samples posted near the bottom of this page, along with these closing thoughts, which I'll just reproduce here:

<<First off, I must say that John Palladino did a heck of a job recording this album, and fully deserved his NARAS award for outstanding engineering. These arrangements cry out “warmth” and “smoothness,” and should be mastered in a way that conveys those impressions. That said, I think that, very unusually, the “D” pressings do not always best serve the recordings, as their treble seems to add a slight edginess to the top end that may not put the music in its best light. That sort of thinking goes against my usual thought processes, but as I listen to the assorted N, D, and other pressings, the tone of the D cuts is not always my favorite, and I think that I often find myself preferring a more “covered” treble sound, such as on the better of the N pressings -- at least on the string-based tunes. I do think that the green-label and the “D” cuts are superior on the “small group” selections (such as “I’ll Be Around), perhaps because of the greater need to hear the sparkle of the cymbals and guitar.

In the end, I don’t think that any release abolutely “nails it,” but I do think the 1998 UK boxed set CD is very nice. There’s an oddness in the treble that lends it a bit of “digitalness,” but it’s quite good nevertheless, and I am comfortable recommending it highly.

In the LP world, it’s tough to find a truly near-mint pre-1962 USA pressing these days, and while those pressings are quite good, I’m not sure I’d call them “great.” Frankly, as much as I hate to say this (as I don’t like to support unofficial EU releases), the Waxtime LP is not half bad, and actually sounds better than some vintage copies, at least in the clip I’ve heard (posted above). [I have not heard the entire LP, so cannot speak to its consistency from track-to-track.] Additionally, the 1970s Harry Moss cut sounds dead as a doornail “off the shelf,” but is fixable with a treble boost, although that’s a hassle that many don’t want to encumber, and is sacrilege to many LP purists.

Final conclusion? I guess that the 1998 UK CD is, all things considered, the best version out there “as is,” but it’s hard to find and expensive. The Waxtime vinyl sounds pretty good, and is easy to find, so is probably the simple way to get your WEE SMALL HOURS ticket punched in satisfactory fashion. Vintage copies? Don’t dismiss the N copies out of hand. OK with doing a little tweaking? Consider the 1970s Harry Moss LP.

LOTS of versions are about 85% on their way to being “audiophile” quality, and while none of them quite makes it all the way to the goal, many versions sound very good. The trick is to avoid the wet-tape versions and the releases with sub-par tone. Hopefully the clips provided can assist you in finding your own favorite among many good choices.>>

As always, comments are welcome! Discussion on this stuff is a good thing, and I'm pretty thick skinned, so dissension is a-okay.

 

Focusing on the French Horn section today.....

I find it interesting to note the efficiency with which the LP sessions were scheduled for In the Wee Small Hours. The March 4, 1955 session (the final session for the album) featured a stunningly good group of French Horn players, including Vincent De Rosa, and the horns are used with exquisite taste, yet as one listens to the album, it doesn't scream out: "We have horns now!" It's all tasteful and effective.

There was one Wee Small Hours track recorded way back in March of 1954, which sat "on hold" for a year, and it included two horns, which effectively served as an extension of the trombone section, with nothing blatantly "horn-istic" going on. That left 15 tracks to be recorded, with horns not making a return until the final session:

•Four "small group" recordings were done Feb. 8, 1955
•Four "medium group" recordings, with reeds and Sweets Edison, on Feb. 16
•Four "string orchestra" recordings, one day later
•Final three tracks recorded with the odd instrumentation of flutes, French horns, violins, cellos, and rhythm section. To pad out the session, one singles track, Not as a Stranger, was thrown in.

That last session is really a French horn tour de force.
•In that little opening bit on "It Never Entered My Mind," I think that's one "open" horn (the highest one), with the other horns playing "stopped," with their fist crammed into the bell of the horn to provide that tinny, metallic, almost kazoo-like "buzzy" tone, and it's all right in tune, gorgeously played. (These guys were pros!) Great little quietly-soaring horn coda on this one, too.
•Not as a Stranger has a great "hunting" style horn fanfare at the open and close. Very tasty, and not a cracked note in the bunch.
•Deep in a Dream - very subtle "stopped horn" parts laying a metallic foundation for the strings in the opening, and again right before "the smoke makes a stairway...." Same thing used for jarring effect at "I wake with a start." The subtlety in Nelson Riddle's work here is just incredible!
•The horn use in the opening of "I'll Never Be the Same" strikes me as pretty "standard fare," but there are some nice sustained parts later in the arrangement that (through about 2:08) kind of act as a "viola substitute" quite nicely, then at 2:08, we get a bunch of 8th notes (some in a low-ish, awkward range) and dynamic changes (and one clam on the first subito piano passage) to wrap things up nicely.

Nice, nice horn writing from a guy who played trombone!!!!

It's astonishing how well the album doesn't "show its hand" in terms of the constant and significant alteration in instrumentation from track to track. (Other Sinatra/Capitol albums did this to some degree, as well, but none as well as here, IMO.) It really keeps things from getting monotonous, i.e., "an all string album for 16 songs." The braintrust (Gilmore, Riddle, and Sinatra) really was firing on all cylinders here, and did a nice job at "sprinking in" the small group tracks at track 3, 7, 11, and 14, to lighten the mood at just the right times.

Sorry to wax rhapsodic.

 

^^^^Boy, did I ever kill this thread with THAT post! (Sorry, guys.)

Time for a shot of coffee to perk up this thread -- BLACK COFFEE.

From another Sinatra thread:

"Moops" was kind enough to send along a segment from his EU "Black Coffee Records" release of In the Wee Small Hours. Mind you, I have only heard a small segment of the disc, but I can say unequivocally that the title track is sourced from the oft-praised 1998 UK CD boxed set, BUT (and with the EU things there is virtually always a BUT, because all these guys think they can "make it better" by fiddling with it) with compression added. Don't get me wrong: it's a nice listen, sourced from arguably the best publicly accessible source out there, but it's mildly compressed.

Anybody who's been brave enough to plow through the ongoing Sinatra Singles thread (link) has put up with me saying ad nauseum that with most of these classic recordings, at least in my experience, once the dynamics drop by 3dB RMS, you are getting into the "clearly audible" ballpark. Well, the Black Coffee disc, at least on the title track, is 2 dB RMS louder. I always profess to be, above all else, a "tone guy," and the Black Coffee disc, at least on the track I've heard, maintains the excellent tone of the boxed set CD, but it's a little louder. Will it bother most people? Probably not. It's certainly not anything close to being brickwalled.

In the pantheon of CD releases of this album that I've heard part or all of, I'd rank things this way:
1. UK boxed set
2. Black Coffee
3. 1991 Walsh CD
4. Avid CD (which is not very good at all, and is a needledrop of the 1983 MFSL LP, as MMM pointed out)
5. Norberg CD

I'd put the Waxtime LP between #2 and #3, but, of course, it's not a CD!