SH Spotlight RAY CHARLES ABC-Paramount "Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music" cutting history, 1962 to 1968

Quite a contrast. That's just Bill Putnam's personal style. Listen to his work on the earlier Ray stuff (like "Ruby", etc.). Exact same sound: Giant reverb, several chambers on music, vocals. Chamber echo compressed by LA 2A's before hitting the console. Big trick of his. Plus his patented "behind a curtain" vocal group with full compression.

Also, because I'm a total ****ing nerd, I once asked about Ray's vocal microphone on I CAN'T STOP LOVING YOU and the other United sides and Ray told me personally that Bill Putnam chose the cheapest of the cheap microphones in the closet because anything better picked up too much of the surrounding musicians and singers. Played through the midrangy playback speakers at United it probably sounded OK but it's a unique sound.

On the second album the late Al Schmitt didn't follow any of Bill's rules and those songs ("Your Cheating Heart" etc.) sound different, much less compression, better tone, better stereo, etc.

However, the sound of United is still there. Not everyone's cup of tea but Ray himself loved. That's why he kept going back there until he built his own room. And then he designed it just like United.

Sid Feller told me that Bill Putnam mixed right to the mono, stereo and three track machines just like at Capitol in New York, with the result that the sound is very constant be it mono or stereo.

 

No one was as surprised as producer Sid Feller when the album broke big. Hell, he buried "I CAN'T STOP LOVING YOU" on the back side near the end.

I was asked about the Jukebox stereo ABC-Paramount records. As far as I can tell, all were just duped from the stereo album reels.

BUT, and this is a big but, the Jukebox Stereo version of "I Can't Stop Loving You" was a remix by Bill Putnam about a week later. Of course a remix is going to sound almost the same due to the constant of Bill's engineering style. Still, I thought I'd mention it. Never heard it myself, I don't think.. Or if I did, I didn't hear any difference.

So that makes it, original stereo mix of I CAN'T STOP..., second stereo mix for Jukebox 45, mono LP mix, mono 45 mix which is an edited dupe of the mono LP master with a minute cut out of it.

 

As I mentioned above, yes. A rare thing.

 

You're welcome!

 

That's probably just a mastering choice. I'm sure if there was a separate mix, Bill Putnam just duplicated what he had done before.

 

Yeah, their mastering at Bell evolved through the months, depending on who was at the controls. Different compression ratios, different midrange bumpies, etc. I remember seeing some Bell Sound notes for something else I worked on a long time ago and the first cutting was adding a 5 db boost at 1k, second cutting added a boost at 3,o00, and third cut added the boost at 5k. I guess they couldn't decide which bumpie sounded best to them.

 

@McLover, of course, the lesson I learned about this was that to the engineers of the day, nothing over 5k seemed to matter, or anything under 50 cycles.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, the RCA-Victor three knob EQ unit had:

Bass meant boost or cut at 100 cycles.
Midrange meant boost or cut at 1,000 cycles.
Treble meant boost or cut at 5,000.

Yikes, eh? Anything above or below was just gravy. Yet, some of those RCA-Victor Living Stereo cuttings are the best sounding records ever made.. So there ya go.. Probably just as well that they didn't touch the actual top end or low bass. That just slipped through, probably unheard, slumbering until us audio nuts got gear good enough to hear it 60 years later!

 

Well, the broadcast "coax sound" had NOTHING above like 5k. Dreadful sounding, but the recording studios just cared about 100, 1k, 5k. They didn't filter anything higher or lower, those frequencies just slipped through, right to us on our modern gear.

The radio networks (and later, the TV versions) couldn't help how the network sound was broadcast out in those days. I'm sure they wanted it better but it was all they could do.

I remember hearing a 16" lacquer of a real 1945 radio aircheck from the CONSOLE instead of the network feed and was shocked at how good it sounded.

 

The old Longwear building. Looks like crap but some great pressings came out of there..

 

Still correct info..