Sinatra / Capitol Sound Quality (and general discussion): Singles, Soundtracks, Etc.

Thanks, @stevelucille !

re: Tell Her You Love Her, I've got a German LP on its way in the mail, but until then, I've got three versions now posted, all cut from correct tapes, posted here: http://www.11fifty.com/Site_108/1957_-_SinglesEtc31.html

You can also bypass the webpage and go straight to the clips:

•1957 D1 45
•1968 mono The Sinatra Touch LP
•1996 The Complete Capitol Singles Collection CD (thanks, @rangerjohn )

Of those three, I'll go with The Sinatra Touch, but other opinions are invited, of course.

Still looking for these versions, if anybody's got 'em:
Tell Her You Love Her
•"Lady is a Tramp" EP
•Capitol LP 12": T-1919 — Tell Her You Love Her (1963)
•Capitol/Pickwick LP 12": PC-3458 — This Love Of Mine (1969)
•Longines Symphonette LP 12": LS-308A — Sinatra: The Works (1973)

 

I have ten clips of You're Cheatin' Yourself posted, and my thoughts are:

•The hard-to-find Japanese CD All the Way: The Hit Collection from 1989, being nearly impossible to find, is probably the best version, of course! (Thanks @progrockfan for the clip.)
•My 1984 Japanese This is Sinatra, Volume Two LP sounds nice in a warmish sort of way
•The original D5#3 This is Sinatra, Volume Two clip that @bozburn sent has a very nice, upfront brass tone that I like a lot. Way better than my own D9 cut of the same LP. (Both are a little compressed, but bozburn's LP fares much better in the tone department.)
•The Australian The Rarities - Volume One LP....I dunno....it sounds a little dull and anemic. Definitely "second tier." (It's that same ol' problem with swing tunes: They NEED to have the cymbals, especially the hi-hat, clearly defined, and there's just enough treble roll-off on this one to kill that.)

From there, it's a big dropoff, IMO, to a group of releases that are just not all that good, with a lot of compression in most cases. Many sub-par versions on this one.

Audio clips: http://www.11fifty.com/Site_108/1957_-_SinglesEtc31.html

 

Following these last four tunes from the May 20, 1957, Sinatra moved on to the A Jolly Christmas project, and we've re-re-looked at that one in the last few months (here and here). The next singles (etc.) on the docket include some real biggies: All the Way, Chicago, and the tunes from Pal Joey.

I am always grateful to those who are able to contribute clips to these ongoing sound quality threads, and I have a special need where Pal Joey is concerned, because the only copy of the Pal Joey soundtrack album that I have is the 1989 CD that Bob Norberg mastered. @progrockfan and @rangerjohn have contributed (thank you!) some other CD clips (Australian CD, Japanese CD), but we are currently sitting here with few or no vinyl clips. (I think I've got clips from a yellow label promo soundtrack LP that rangerjohn sent over a year ago.)

RE: Pal Joey soundtrack album

Does anybody have a copy of good ol' gray-label or rainbow label Capitol USA #W-912 or it's assorted monophonic issues/reissues from around the world? If so, this is a juncture where I really could use your help! If you can contribute clips from any of the Sinatra tunes on that record, please start a conversation with me so we can work out the logistics, and "thank you" in advance for any contributions.

(Full disclosure: I did purchase a really bad sounding Italian-pressed PAL JOEY soundtrack LP back in 1986 from a cut-out bin in a bookstore, and it's possible that I may still have that floating around in a box out in the garage, but, if memory serves, it's pure garbage, and I have no idea if I kept it.)

Here's a list of the songs in the next two recording sessions to be covered:

August 13, 1957
•I Could Write a Book
•Bewitched
•All the Way
•There's a Small Hotel
•Chicago

September 25, 1957
•I Didn't Know What Time It Was
•What Do I Care for a Dame?

 

Thanks, Bryan.

While we're at it, can anybody confirm that these PAL JOEY copies are MONO and not fake stereo?

•1970s SM series USA LP (issued on yellow and later blue labels, maybe with a different number)
•c. 1976 German reissue LP
•c. 1977 Dutch reissue LP

Thanks!

 

Interesting! I look forward to getting into all the minutiae here, and I also just replied in that other thread (link).

 

If somebody sends something, I'll post it.

 

Re: I Could Write a Book

Anybody have these?

??
(In case the hotlinked photos go bye-bye, the two items are a UK "All the Way " EP and the late '90s "At the Movies" CD.)

 

Thanks, Bob.

I assume that for the Pal Joey tunes, the CD below contains sub-par (maybe identical?) Bob Norberg masterings a la the 1989 soundtrack CD?

 

Re: I Could Write a Book

(Pardon the rambling here, but it all ties together eventually.)

Anybody who reads these threads knows that I am, generally speaking, in favor of wide dynamics where these Sinatra/Capitol recordings are concerned, but I'm also first in line to point out that in most cases, the most dynamic versions are the Norberg masterings, which often involve the most processing, so are often unfavorably viewed. (Translation: Dynamics are not everything!) On these mono recordings, if there's a "clean" version that is uncompressed, that's typically a good start.

We also have this situation that seemed to hit right around the advent of more-routine stereo recording at Capitol (very late '56, early '57) where suddenly the live-mixed mono recordings have markedly more reverb. Steve Hoffman has mentioned the memo that hit around this time:

(Side note: Interesting that the great John Palladino left the mixing staff in December of 1956.)

Additionally, we seem to have -- and this is highly unusual -- recordings coming out of Capitol that have questionable actions by the mixers ("engineers" in today's parlance). The most striking appearance thus far of this sort of thing is the disastrously mucked up live mix for "So Long, My Love." (Clips here.)

I guess one way to put it would be to say that the type of mono sound that Capitol staff utterly mastered over at their Melrose studios carried over briefly into the Capitol tower studios, but procedural changes seem to have been made starting around 1/1/1957. "All the Way," for instance, has always sounded flat-out "wrong" to me, almost amateurish compared to earlier Capitol recordings, and "Chicago" is no picnic, either, and these PAL JOEY Capitol recordings follow suit.

Check out these waveforms from I Could Write a Book:

The left waveform is the nicely done Australian Pal Joey CD mastering; the right is the 1957 promo LP, and they look very nearly identical except for the huge spike that occurs on the CD. (That spike appears on the USA/Norberg mastering, as well.)

One characteristic of original US Capitol LPs from this time period is that gentle, soft limiting that that makes the albums ride along on an even keel with no rough edges and often with a subtly "upfront" sound that can be very appealing. Note how effectively the limiter/compressor -- which is part of the LP cutting stage -- kept that big peak under control but essentially did not touch the rest of the music. In many circumstances, that would bug the "pro-dynamics" voice in my head, but on this particular cut, I have to wonder if the huge sway in dynamics that we hear on the un-compressed CD version is not 100% intentional or even desired. In terms of audio (rather than waveforms), it strikes me as being way over the top. (Dare I say "Putnam-esque," which is not a compliment? This reminds me of that moment in "Don't Cry, Joe" from 1961's Swing Along with Me album, that I've jokingly referred to as "The Gleason," because it sounds like a huge "string swell" from the opening theme of The Honeymooners.)

Here's an audio clip that starts a few seconds before that big peak, and ends a few seconds after:
https://app.box.com/s/fm5xa1tgsatvdya7tzf49s7hd8evtq87
The first version is the CD, limiter-free; the second version is the LP, with limiting employed.

Is it just me, or does that CD version, which appears to be a pretty "straight" conveyance of the dynamics that are actually on the tape, sound like the brass flurry is maybe not recorded in as controlled away as maybe it should have been? Listen to how much louder it gets and how much things have to be "ducked" back into place when Sinatra's vocal re-enters after the flourish. Now compare that to the LP version, which restrains the brass considerably and helps things to "sit" or settle in what strikes me as a more appropriate manner.

One more thing makes me question the actual intent of the mixer during that big peak:
Look at the END of those waveforms. The music ends in a huge flurry of brass, yet the end does not reach recording levels anywhere even close to the levels reached during that earlier interlude. Why would it be intentionally controlled during recording at the late juncture, but allowed to "fly free" during the earlier one? That strikes me as a logical disconnect, and makes me wonder if we have another engineering snafu here, or, at minimum, a spot where the mixing decisions were questionable. Combine that with too much reverb and we've got one funky recording, one that (to my ears) actually SUFFERS when presented without some sort of compression/limiting/control being applied.

 

Could be pieced from two takes..

 

While were at I Could Write a Book, I'll raise a topic that I don't bring up very often: What do you think of this in terms of musical performance? I can't say I'm wild about it, but maybe that's just me. For me, it's definitely not near the top in terms of performances of this song, and strikes me as being in need of a good kick in the pants to really get going.

Thoughts????

 

Amen!