SH Spotlight Pressing and mastering quality of Creedence Clearwater Revival albums*

Several factors, aside from what you mentioned. One was me being an East Coast boy, the other as an insurance against getting bootlegs or counterfeits.

 

The only original I have which is in great shape, is Willy & The Poor Boys, this pressing:
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willy And The Poor Boys

Blue label with deep groove, and the matrix numbers are stamped, along with the H (Hollywood pressing).
I like it a lot. But maybe there's a better, later pressing (besides the Analogue Productions, which I also love).

 

That's an interesting last part to your comment. Bootlegs or counterfeits.... was it something about West Coast plants that this was more common?

If I recall.. the I for Indy and H for Hollywood were always machine stamped, but the R for Rockaway could be hand written on some Rockaway pressings. Wouldn't it be easier to 'fake' a hand scribed R instead of a machine stamped I or H?

Maybe I'm not understanding what you mean..

 

It does seem complex, yeah, but . . . the other factor for me would be uniformity in label type. If one has primarily Rockaway pressings, an Indy or Hollywood would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.

 

Fantasy in that era did not press their own records, they used RCA Victor plants. Thick Blue Label with "H" deadwax suffixes best where available. For me, the thick RCA pressings are better than the thin ones though a bit more hissy. Second choice for deadwax suffixes is "I", "R" is usually not as fine overall.

 

I meant to ask, where (besides Monarch) did Fantasy have their main (i.e. colored vinyl) product pressed before they (as you put it) "went all-out RCA." I have a 1965 Little Johnny Taylor single on their Galaxy subsidiary which was pressed by RCA Rockaway, and looking at the lacquers I could tell the RCA Hollywood studios at 6363 Sunset either cut or re-cut it.

 

Steve, makes sense. When the odd hit in their early history was few and far between, they could handle their own pressing. And when the first CCR album hit "Going all out RCA" made sense, as they could handle national demand with 3 pressing plants, and they could handle hit logistics. Yes, Fantasy was very much a record pressing company in those halcyon days, first incorporated as Circle Records. Miss those beautiful thick Blue and Red pressings from the Weiss Brothers (Sol and Max) who founded the company before the sale to Saul Zaentz. And their tasteful and beautiful cover artwork, itself distinctive.

 

And it was towards the end of 1973/beginning of 1974 that Columbia began entering the picture in terms of Fantasy's pressing array - at first Pitman and Terre Haute only, before RCA Hollywood closed in 1976 and then Fantasy had all Columbia's plants press for them.

Bert-Co did all the "local" pressed label typesetting, and RCA Hollywood pressings.

 

The colored vinyl and thick black vinyl on Fantasy and associated labels was pressed at the old Weiss era Fantasy pressing plant. The odd hit forced the company to use other plants before the all RCA move, examples being Little Johnny Taylor's big R&B hit "Part-Time Love" and Vince Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate To The Wind" as notable examples of the odd early Fantasy hits.

 

I would've thought the Lenny Bruce LPs might have been the label's first big sellers.

 

They were not major sellers, small and steady demand (comparable roughly in sales to average Fantasy Jazz titles). Not enough to overwhelm Fantasy's plant then. The major two titles I quoted were exceptions, big national hits for the label. As in 30,000 and more unit sellers nationally.

 

It's a start, that's for sure.

 

Not even his Charlie Brown Christmas album? Sheesh! Or was that pretty much all they ended up doing?

 

Apparently, Circle must've had Scullys, based on what I've seen of photos of such records . . .

 

Christ almighty. And the TV special remains a perennial. Go figure.

 

All of Steve's notes about the CCR tapes and cuts is extremely interesting.

I'm curious as to one thing. If some of these LPs were cut or assembled or whatever at RCA Hollywood, and given RCA numbers like Z4RS-7923 for example.. why does the deadwax of these early cuts use the format example like F-2801 (or whatever corresponds to the specific title)? Why don't they fit the standard RCA matrix protocol with the four letters that signify the year, contract, studio, whatever... etc.. then the four numbers ... then the 1S, 2S, etc..??

RCA of course did contract pressings... and didn't their matrix format have a stipulation for contract pressings? Or was their format only for their own label? I seem to remember the 45 matrix protocol having a certain code number assigned to contract pressings...

 

F-#### was Fantasy's own matrix numbering system, dating to 1954-55 and used well into 1974, applicable to both LP and 45 (what would have been the W3KM numbers for "Proud Mary" and "Born On The Bayou" for Fantasy single 619, f'rinstance - I'm betting within the 9200 range). Why RCA's own numbers, despite being so assembled, weren't used on their pressings of Fantasy product, is one of those questions where those who would've had the answers as to why, may well be all dead by now. -#S dash numbers were limited strictly to RCA's own product; for contract custom pressing jobs, those mastered at RCA itself had their first lacquer as -1, the second as -1A, the third as -1B, and so on.

 

Does anyone know which plant Fantasy used in the early 50's to the early 60's when they pressed records in every color except black.

Those Gerry Mulligan, Cal Tjader, Dave Brubeck, Vince Guaraldi, Mongo Santamaria and Korla Pandit records came in either red (for mono) and blue (stereo),
plus other colors of the spectrum for 10" LP's. It's too bad Fantasy stopped doing colored vinyl because it would have been awesome in the rock era.

 

I think Our Host explained it was Circle's own San Francisco plant that turned out those colored vinyl records. As I've said, Bert-Co did the label typesetting . . .