Legendary Masters Series EMI CDs - how good are they?

Hello, I Just recieved (finally!) my copy of The Best of Dennis Yost and The Classics IV, I hav'nt heard it yet ( I HAD to first hear Mamas & Papas 16 Grt Hits and it is VERY cool!)I was wondering if the others in the LM series from Capitol were any good? Thanks

 

For me personally, the "Legendary Master Series" was VERY important, as I'm a big fan of the Liberty, Imperial, United Artists and other related labels. At the time that they were released, they were the ONLY real representation of many of the artists, outside of edited 10 track "budget" CD's. I love the presentation (how they showed the old 45's and albums, plus they often used the original label's logo's) and I loved the track selection on most and thought that you got a very good bang, for the buck.

However, I've since learned that MANY of the tracks were remixed and many don't care for the remixes. This faults the series, but does not, in my opinion, ruin them for me. Looking back now, I doubt that EMI will ever reissue anything better on many of these artists, because they can't make enough money to warrent them. So CD's like Timi Yuro, Fleetwoods, Gene McDaniels and many others in this series, may end up the best we'll EVER get and we should be glad that we've got them!

Chris C

 

Thanks for getting back with the info. In your (or anybody's) opinon, which are desiriable to get ? I mean in quality of selected tracks, rarities, etc?I did pick up the one by Gerry Lewis, I thought it was very good.

 

Try searching the Archives for a great Ron Furmanek Q&A thread. It's too bad the remix issue drove him away. I really enjoyed his posts.
Bob.

 

Here are the one's I have in the series and I like them all, for one reason or another...

Gary Lewis & The Playboys (a great selection)
Gerry & The Pacemakers
Jay & The Americans (another really good one)
Dennis Yost & The Classics IV
Fats Domino
Gene McDaniels
Johnny Burnette
Eddie Cochran
Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas
Bobby Vee
Manfred Mann
Bobby Goldsboro (really love this one!)
Timi Yuro (another favorite, although Timi's stuff was distorted to begin with)
Cher
Jackie De Shannon
The Fleetwoods
The Crickets

Chris C

 

A few of these were repackaged by Collectibles and AFAIK employ the original LMS masters.

 

Me too, but the original hit mono mixes are better (not on CD, unfortunately). I'm not automatically a mono fan, but for vintage pop singles, it's better 99% of the time.

I think my favorite of the entire series was the Ike & Tina Turner CD. All original mixes in nice sound with that exemplary packaging and annotation every title in the series received. Easy to find and cheap (look in eBay stores...there are always some sealed copies there).

BTW, these were EMI CDs. The Capitol CDs from the same period were the Capitol "Collector's Series". Ron Furmanek was indeed a cool guy to have around the forum. Lotsa good stories.

 

If I remember correctly some of the CDs in this series suffer from noise reduction. Wasn't this discussed in an old thread?

 

Here's an old thread discussing this series.

 

Some of the Capitol Collector's Series CDs used NR. I think they were limited to some of the Bob Norberg titles. I'm not aware of any NR used for EMI's Legendary Masters/Legends of Rock 'N' Roll CD's, though.

 

The Jay & the Americans Legendary Masters CD seems to suffer from it, according to this thread (post #7).

 

Very well done,put together by a fan who cares.Went out of his way to make sure they had ALL of the act's chart hits on them.Some of the mixes are weird,but didn't Ron say the UA 2-tracks were in really bad shape & that he pretty much HAD to remix them??
a lot of them have unlisted bonus tracks(radio spots,etc.)...

 

The Classics IV disc was part of the series,but never came out on EMI.Years later Taragon put it out,as well as an Oliver disc.

 

...And,since the old threads are now closed-didn't the old,black cover Jay & The Americans' Greatest Hits LP come out on CD way back in the 80s?--Also,what about the 10 track J&TA disc on CEMA,early 90s?? Was that BEFORE Legendary Masters???--If so,it would have the original mixes.(Which I'd like to find on "This Magic Moment" at least....)

 

I would really like to have a Jay & the Americans compilation with reasonable sound, i.e. not suffering from noise reduction or other nasty mastering artefacts. Any recommendations?

 

The remixing debate is one I've wanted to voice an opinion on for a number of years, so here goes.

I think The Legendary Masters Series discs are fine for one simple reason. These records weren't famous for their stereo mixes. Nobody was listening to Jan & Dean and saying "oh wow I love that fact that the guitar is on the right channel, and the drums are on the left," or whatever. These stereo mixes were just suffering from what I call "the early days of stereo sales pitch." Somebody said, "hey we can put half of the musicians on one side and half on the other." Or "We can make a train roll through the room from one side to the other," like on the old Stereo Demonstration Records. The only problem is you lose sonic impact that way. The Beatles albums are about the only 60's records that I think are "famous" for their stereo mixes. Other than that, most 60's stereo rock and roll records sucked due to what I call an underdeveloped sophistication in understanding a "stereo display." If you take an old Phil Spector record and listen to one of the stereo versions it totally de-constructs the "Wall of Sound." It takes the wall and puts some of it in one corner of the room and the rest in the other and not much more than vocals in the middle. Without drums & bass in the middle there is NO foundation.
The Legendary Masters Series ,to me, was a great idea because by mixing the foundation instruments like bass & drums to the middle and letting everything else spread out you get a stereo version that is the closest approximation of the way the singles sounded. They have IMPACT.

I hope you agree, or at least I hope I've made some of you think twice about the idea.

 

Some other good ones not mentioned:

Del Shannon
The Seekers
The Outsiders

 

The main reasons to get any of the Furmanek-mastered CD's are: comps not otherwise assembled elsewhere, with the basic selection of hits(though not always as comprehensive as one might wish), and unreleased or rare goodies thrown in. Also enjoyable at times are the countoffs, longer or unedited takes. And since they were looking for stereo when they could find it, previously unissued stereo is scattered about, also a good thing. On the negative side, you won't find many 'hit' mixes because the focus was on stereo--and when possible, remixed stereo, which as we all know is a hit and miss deal: sometimes it worked, sometimes it was disappointing. And yes, NR was an issue, though not applied uniformly, so some discs sound good, others don't come off so well. But Ron did pry loose some interesting stuff from the vaults, no small feat, and did well in that regard for such an expansive venture.

 

I wish there were a comprehensive list of Legendary Masters Series and Capital Collectors Series titles. But this thread is at least a good start.

 

Wouldn't be too hard to compile, there were only so many...

 

Isn't there such a list elsewhere on the forum? A search might turn up something, but search for "Capitol", not Capital.

 

I do enjoy some of the discs. The Crickets CD is great because I wouldn't have otherwise gotten into them. However, with some of those discs the stereo mixes are pretty awful when compared to the released stereo mixes. The Gary Lewis stuff is a case in point. No comparison and no reason to ruin the mixes. The problem I have is that the Ron F mixes have become the standard mixes and that's a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. It's getting very hard and expensive to find original mixes on CD. I think Ron has done an amazing service to collectors as a researcher but I don't like the majority of his mixes or his reasoning for doing them.

By the way, I read just about all of the posts in the major Ron F. threads and I don't remember him being taken to task by this group on his remixes or his work in general. They are amazing threads and I thought people were almost too nice. I figured he just doesn't do "on-line and that's why he's not a regular participant here. Maybe I missed something?

 

A lot of them are on these lists:

CAPITOL COLLECTOR'S SERIES

LEGENDARY MASTERS SERIES

 

Well, I think in today's climate, that having any chance to hear some of these artists is great. I don't have the ultimate set- up ( wish I had!) , and on the other hand I do love Steve's work, but I have enjoyed all of the Capitol series and would like to thank Ron F. for getting them out there.