Sinatra / Reprise Sound Quality and General Discussion: "Sinatra and Swingin' Brass" - 1962*

The answer we were looking for was "separator thingy which was black." Well done!

As far as I can tell, other colors actually match up well. I think any perceived color differences were just due to the low-quality lighting/color of my cell phone photo.

 

I know this album pretty well, yet I have no idea what to make of this album. Never have, aside from really digging some individual tracks, liking the cover art, and thinking that it either needed more songs or longer solos/arrangements.



Song selection?
Song order?
Sound quality of the recording itself? Especially the United vocal "sound" for Frank?
Sound quality of the assorted mixes/releases?
Arrangements?
Performance quality? (This was a quick, two-session recording.)

Good? Bad?

Anybody?

 

Vocal at left? I was unaware of that. My R9 stereo LP has vocals centered, IIRC.

One of my major hurdles with this album is that **** Bill Putnam-y sound. It even infects the new versions, which appear to be remixes, although I don't think anybody has chimed in to confirm that yet (in other threads).

 

Bill Putnam Sound was built into the three-tracks. Add the dreadful AME EQ and you get.......

 

RING A DING DING problems are fixable as the three-track is dry as a bone and non compressed. The BRASS album is "fixed" right on the three-track.

 

Great discussion here!

I'd have loved to get "into" Putnam's head back in this era, because one thing I can never figure out is how the application reverb, EQ, effects, compression, etc., AT THE SESSION (never mind the later mixdowns) seems to be almost random. The new remix seems to have nothing added (in terms of reverb), and it just makes that much clearer how Putnam might put extra compression on this vocal, slap-back reverb on that one, chamber on another, funny EQ on some, etc. It's so dang weird, and seems to have zero rhyme or reason!

Agreed. Some tracks are, shall we say, "less horribly scathed" -- especially on the new mix -- than others, i.e., "I'm Beginning to See the Light" and "Don'tcha Go 'Way Mad," but then there are others, like "They Can't Take that Away from Me" and "Pick Yourself Up," that are just beyond any hope of even being deemed "mid-fi," let alone "hi-fi" or audiophile. I've been spending a lot of time the last couple of days, just for yuks, playing around with the HD download files, just to try to see how badly bruised the recordings (as opposed to the masterings) are, what is hopelessly lost (in terms of hi-fi), etc., and boy....it's rough.

I will say one thing that is very positive: The new HD version's #1 "issue" may be how strongly the bass is goosed, and just in my own amateurish tinkering around, it seems like it can be easily improved just by rolling back the bass a little bit. ("Heretic!") The wide stereo is intact (unlike the new LP), the voice is clearer than it has ever been (as @paulmock and @peopleareleaving have intimated), and while the "air" around the recording (which was never all that great to begin with) is somewhat reduced by the hard bass boost, once the bass is reduced a bit, a lot of the dynamics are maintained and things seem a little less claustrophobic. That's all good!

By the way, the tracks that I really like on this album are all on side one. Side two, for me, largely falls apart in terms of keeping my interest.

Is there a reason that Frank did the whole album in two sessions? Did the fact that Reprise was hemorrhaging $$$ come into play with that decision?

 

I didn't spend much time with the album (don't like it much) but I do know that Putnam ran the mono machine, two track machine and three track machine at the same time, capturing the session all three ways. He felt the stereo two track was THE mix (by this point in time) and the mono was a compromise and the three-track was un-needed.

Now, the AME thing really sucks and I don't know WHY they started taking Ampex's advise that this recording EQ would reduce tape hiss. All it did was oversaturate everything (and not in that good way) because the EQ was so severe. The headroom that was OK with the NAB EQ just vanished with AME (Ampex Master EQ) and if the engineer went over 0 vu, there was NO headroom left, just distortion. Yrggh.

 

Check out the intro to AIN'T SHE SWEET. Crunch!

 

Sound over content? Not from me! Poor-sounding version of something when a better sounding version of the same album is out there? Yeah, that's me! ....but sound quality never dictates what music I like/dislike. I play Spike Jones on a regular basis, and I've got hundreds and hundreds of old radio shows in my collection, and the sound on those doesn't bother me one bit. They are what they are.

I was collecting Frank's RCA stuff back when....well, we'll just say I wasn't buying it for hi-fi purposes. (We've all been spoiled -- big time -- by recent reissues of RCA material.) Some of my favorite music ever is by Erroll Garner on the Savoy label (ouch!), which is painfully bad SOUNDING, but completely fantastic.

Why am I a Sinatra fan? For the music, duh. When it sounds really good, that's a big bonus, and much of Sinatra's material was very well recorded and well presented. Win-win. (I do, definitely and admittedly, want to listen to each album in "as good a sound quality as possible," be it a generally poor recording or a generally excellent one, but the reason for listening in the first place is the music. If it was all about the sound, I'd be sitting around and playing Lincoln Mayorga albums or something, and I ain't.)

Going back five years from this album, we have the following scenarios:

•Where Are You: 12 songs, 3 sessions
•Jolly Christmas: 12 songs, 3 sessions
•Come Fly with Me: 12 songs, 3 sessions
•Only the Lonely: 12 LP songs plus a couple of singles and one unfinished song, 4 sessions plus an earlier session from which nothing met with approval for release, so....14 tracks over 5 sessions
•Come Dance with Me: 12 songs, 3 sessions
•No One Cares: 12 (intended) LP songs + 2 singles, 4 sessions

Then the great period of silence hit, and when a less-than-pleased Sinatra began recording again, we had:

•Nice 'n' Easy: 12 (intended) LP songs, 3 sessions
•Swingin' Session: 12 LP tracks + 3 singles, 4 sessions
•Ring-a-Ding Ding: 14 tracks (1 unfinished, 1 unused), 3 sessions
•Come Swing with Me: 12 tracks, 3 sessions
•I Remember Tommy: 12 tracks, 3 sessions, after 8 tracks were recorded at two other sessions that (one track aside) produced no usable product, so I guess that's a total of 13 tracks over 5 sessions
•Swing Along with Me: 12 tracks, 3 sessions

Then we get to what to an album that Frank probably would have done in one session, if he could:
•Point of No Return: 12 tracks, 2 sessions, plenty of sloppiness that arguably should have been re-done

Then:
•Sinatra and Strings: 12 intended LP tracks (only 10 used), 2 singles, 3 sessions
•All Alone: 12 tracks, 3 sessions
•Swingin' Brass: 12 tracks, 2 sessions

The next album was back to the 12/3 pattern.

So, "sessions were booked six weeks in advance" according to the liner notes. I'm just curious, based on the pretty-well-held-to pattern of 3 sessions per 12-song album, if it was planned as a two-session affair from the get-go, or if it just wound up that way.

The reason I brought up the $$$ issue is because of something that @MMM cited recently (link to article):

 

Ha! Just realized something!

I started this thread earlier today thinking that Swingin' Brass would be the next album we'd get to from Reprise, but the correct album (in recorded-order sequence) would be All Alone.

Guess I should stick to things that tend not to confuse me as much.



It'll all get straightened out in the end!

 

Headphones are the least of my concerns.

 

Just noticed I forgot to put the seat up!