Question about old Time-Life series?

One of my dark secrets when I was a guitarist in a punk band in the 1980s was my fascination with big band music. I was working 9PM to 9AM three nights a week in Philadelphia, and got into listening to a small station from the Jersey shore that played nothing but big band music. It was like a time warp!

Anyway, I wanted to get some material and eventually decided on the then-new Time-Life series of just-under 30 double albums. Years later the series was re-released on CD.

Flash forward to 2010 and I've just acquired a Music Hall turntable. After running though an assortment of '70s-and-newer material, this weekend I listened to some of this Time-Life vinyl. I was amazed at how great it sounded. Some of the tracks were obviously sourced from discs, as there is some crackle that disappears between the songs, but overall I was really impressed by the clarity and how easy it was to distinguish individual instruments and groupings in the arrangements.

While each set has really extensive liner notes covering personnel and original sessions, and each song's full details of original release information by label and catalog number, there is little on how these sets were assembled.

Does anyone know how this project, based on old material, was approached, and the challenges that were dealt with? How is Time-Life of this late 70s-early 80s era regarded on archival vinyl projects like this?

 

Here's a link to a discography of the series:

http://www.bsnpubs.com/warner/time-life/14bigbands/14bigbands.html

 

I have all of those and they smoke the competition.

When they came into the store I listened to one and took all of them home -
NOT FOR SALE (laughing). Too good to give up.

 

Yeh, I must admit I was pretty shocked when the first tracks started the other night. I thought it was just going to sound quaint - instead I was really startled at how full these LPs sounded. I guess a lot of credit has to go to those who actually set up and accomplished the original recordings... But this mastering sounds good to me!

 

I have several of the LP box sets from the Time-Life "Giants of Jazz" series which would have been around the same time. There were some comments from our host about the quality of that series in the following thread. Not sure if they apply to the Big Band series as well.

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=190126&highlight=


p.s.: Frank, I need to check out your NASCAR books! Just finished DW's 2004 autobiography today - it included the good, the bad and the ugly...

 

The original Big Band Era boxed set was a fantastic collection. That was my first exposure to jazz music, maybe 1969 or 1970 or so. Fantastic collection. The later CD releases weren't bad, either.

 

The Giants of Jazz series and the Big Bands series have different mastering. The earlier series, Giants of Jazz, is analog. Steve has commented on the lackluster sound. I found them variable with lots of equalization to filter out the surface noise. The later Big Bands boxes were digitally mastered with more subdued filtering.

Contrary to the summary information on that discography page, the Big Bands series was initially offered in three formats: vinyl, cassette, and CD. After the fourth edition (Harry James) was released, Time-Life sent a letter to CD subscribers announcing that the CD series was being discontinued due to production problems. Subscribers were asked to switch to either cassette or vinyl. (I switched to vinyl.) That's why those first four editions (Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Harry James) can be found with gold covers as well as the later black covers that were used on the later reissues.

 

I know they used half-speed mastering on this series, but were the vinyl LP versions of these mastered digitally? Isn't that early for a series released in 1983? Just curious...

 

I have to amend my earlier certainty about the digital mastering, Frank. I checked my Benny Goodman CD and my Duke Ellington vinyl set, and the liner notes do not indicate the type of mastering. The recording engineer and producer are the same for both sets. The vinyl set has a copyright date of 1983, while the CD has two dates, 1983 and 1988. I bought both of these sets around 1989.

 

Funny thing is, L.A. hardcore punk rock band Youth Brigade started out as big band/punk hybrid. They occasionally play as Royal Crown Revue.