Past Four Seasons Sessions And Masters..

I only skimmed this but it looks like it's right up you SH Forums members alley.
Click here for the same article with pictures:
http://thatfourseasonssound.typepad...3/past-four-seasons-sessions-and-masters.html

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03/08/2011
Past Four Seasons Sessions and Masters
The Four Seasons catalogue is a mess. Yes it has to be said. Despite years of re-issues on CD there is still no comprehensive record of what they recorded and no satisfactory collection of the mono and stereo tracks for us to play…and still dozens of unreleased supposedly unsatisfactory tracks in the vaults.

This week we have news of more unreleased tracks with BACK IN ACTION...CAN’T BE TOO MUCH MUSIC...STAGGER LEE being left in the Warner Archive as left over tracks from the ‘Frankie Valli Is The Word’ album sessions…and at least 7 tracks from the Helicon album sessions intended for a follow on album. But even more shocking was news of lost masters.

In the ‘Both Sides Now’ sound forum TallPaul said of the catalogue.. “Bill Inglot has stated the Partnership does not have a mono single master of ‘Sherry’, and this could be true with other early Four Seasons hits. The mono single of Sherry contains echo on certain parts not on the dryer sounding stereo version. The mono single is also slightly longer. Bill told me all the Partnership has is basically singles and album masters so anything issued today is what was originally out in the 60s. He couldn’t remix much of anything..no multi’s of the early stuff. But obviously also not a complete set of singles masters.”

There is also lots of evidence that several stereo masters now exist only on old 1960s vinyl.

But apart from bad housekeeping by Philips and the Four Seasons Partnership, are there other contributing factors that make it difficult to find the original mono and stereo versions in decent sound in an anthology.? The latest set in Jersey Beat’s 3 CD box was very unsatisfactory and even the Rhino Anthology CD Box set back in 1987 was criticized by the sound engineer George Schowerer. But that was with regard to his late 60s recordings which had not been re-mastered satisfactorily. And, it seems, our expectations of getting the original masters in good stereo is a pipe dream……as he told us.

“The older hits were never made with anything but mono in mind.

First of all, the smaller studios did not have multiple multitrack machines. Stea Phillips began with two stereo machines in their hotel studios. Mirasound initially had only two stereo machines for recording. They later added a 300 mono, and a three track ½” Ampex 300 with sel-sync. Even when we got an eight track Ampex AG-300-8, does anyone today have any idea how many tracks Bob Crewe needed on his sessions ??

Even with eight tracks, Bob used more channels than the orchestra. When the genius engineers who would do the mastering tried to make stereo out of the final eight tracks, they were limited in what it could sound like.

So, that’s where we get the orchestra on one track and the vocals on the other....because the orchestra was never given enough tracks to be able to spread in the mix. In fact, in those days, no one ever thought about stereo.

Mirasound had a twelve input console with four buses. When we got the eight track recorder, I would use eight inputs to monitor the mix and use the last four to input all the overdubs...and I do mean ALL the overdubs!






(George Schowerer at the Mirasound console)



The idea was to leave one or two tracks open for vocal takes. On top of those problems, the sync response on the AG-300-8 recorder was terrible. It was so poor, that I would bounce each group of tracks using the normal playback preamps in order to retain the original quality. (this method placed the new mix track out of sync with the other channels...so eventually, I had to bounce each additional track using the same method, until I had those six tracks in sync. The last one or two tracks used for vocal were monitored using the sel-sync, since Frankie’s track never needed to be bounced. That’s why the quality on Beggin, My Mother’s Eyes, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,. Marianne, and all that group of songs sound as good as they do, so long as Rhino didn’t ‘bum them up’. However Crewe always went to Bell Sound for mastering to disc, and Bob would often add Bell’s live chamber to what I had used via the stereo EMT at Mira. This often caused the different amounts or type of echo to be so obvious. He would drive me crazy because I didn’t like Bell’s chamber...it’s bad enough that I can tell a record made at Bell because of the room leakage and the sound of their echo...I didn’t want that for mixes I made at Mira. I do believe we had a better sound at Mira. I used a modified RCA limiter which had the Columbia records mods, and at times used low frequency cut-offs to shape what leakage was inevitable at Mira. The problem in those days was simply that you had to have a good picture in your mind as to what the final mix would sound like. In the mono to mono overdubbing during the early days of mixing, it was imperative that you had a clear understanding of what the final product would sound like...you couldn’t always go back to correct the mix. So when Bob came up with all the overdubs (sometimes using three horns, - three or four times - you had to understand what was being asked for and make sure it sounded like a single group at one sitting.

The musicians often came back in an hour later, in order to avoid the union rep who might show up during the session (since overdubbing wasn’t in the union’s vocabulary).

So now , when people are looking for the original multi-tracks in order to make stereo, they don't understand that the very thing they are looking for may not exist in the form they think-of as multi-track.... and if it did, it wouldn't be in matched pairs of tracks. Crewe even challenged sixteen tracks with all the ‘chachkas’ he would add. In many cases, I mixed live stereo two tracks during the session...most however, were quick mix-downs upon playback to the orchestra.

You can be certain that Crewe never thought of releasing in stereo on the early stuff at all. It wasn't until he rushed in one day to do ‘Girl Watchers’ as a cover record that he asked me for stereo because it was a live large orchestra session with very few overdubs. "What Now My Love" with Mitch Ryder was done for stereo during that time period. Don't forget that only the large studios like RCA and Columbia had deep pockets for multi-track machines...and even then, Columbia’s first eight track recorder was built with four model 354 electronics and a 300 deck...see my photos of that machine on my photo disc. Smaller studios couldn't afford the cost.

We got the first sixteen track recorder at Mirasound only because we were going to use a 2" video deck with AG-350 electronics which we already owned. We then asked Ampex to make us 16 track heads for it. They came back, saying that since it was going to have the ‘name’ Ampex on it...they wanted to build it and lease it to us. They gave us a good deal and we could then afford to purchase it without all of our own work in building it. The rest is history. The day we received the unit at 10 am., I did the very first 16 track session of "With This Ring" by the Platters at 7pm with Luther Dixon producing. Amongst the other first 16 track recordings was ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ with the Four Seasons"





( The new 16 track Ampex AG 1000 arrives June 1966)

What we have now on vinyl and CD is as good as it gets it seems, but as a starting point we believe that we need to collate all we know re the groups recordings and so our NEW WEB PAGE will do this and hopefully lead to a comprehensive library of masters in mono and stereo.

We’ve gathered the work of several people to create what we hope is the definitive list from 1953 when Frankie Valley first recorded to 1974 when he and the Four Seasons left Motown to forge supposedly separate careers.

As we edit the 5 Parts we’ll check to ensure all known masters are listed. But with around 50 unreleased tracks in the Motown vaults and a dozen or so in the Philips archive it will be a case of we will publish as much as we have when we get it.

But for now we can present Part 1 which features all of the early years work from 1953 to 1961 as Frankie formed the Variatones and The Four Lovers.

Check out our web page here of The Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons Sessionography 1953 to 1974 and review and download the Introduction and Part 1. We will add more Parts as we complete them and update these pdf files as more information arises.

Maybe someone will gather the singles and stereo masters into a database and we will someday be able to acquire the ‘Official’ recovered Masters in mono and stereo on CD……or will someone re-mix them with today’s technology to give us something like an acceptable NEW stereo remix.?

 

I would surely question that 1966 16 track delivery date. Also, MiraSound had a four track machine as early as 1964.. Place is a friggin' parking lot now which is a bummer..

 

Don't get why they are saying that RHINO ruined the Four Seasons songs. Makes no sense.