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

Yowza -- the one I saw there recently was $200. Hopefully you didn't pay anything close to that!!

 

Continuing with The Nearness of You:
This one's a little tricky. It was recorded for the album that eventually became Nice 'n' Easy, and so I think that the tendency is to think that this needs to sound as if it fits in with the versions of that album that we know so well. If you want this to "fit in" with those other tracks, then, to my ears, the best versions of the original stereo mix are the 1983 MFSL LP (audio link) or the 1984 UK "Dell" LP (audio link - thanks to @bferr1 for the clip). My guess is that these are just the mixes that were made for that album, prior to the track being excised. My preference for the original mono mix is the 1984 DMM LP from Holland (audio link).

Now....there's also the matter of Larry Walsh's 1991 stereo remix (audio link), which is another creature altogether. It's dry; it's "Frank is in my living room;" it's immediate and present. Whether or not that makes it better is debatable, but I like it very much when I play the full-length track and my ears and brain have time to adjust to its "disarming differentness." In terms of dynamics and clarity, it's the hands-down top choice, but if you are used to the soupier versions out there, it will certainly strike you, perhaps justifiably, as heavy revisionism. I'm often not from the "drier is better" camp, but in this case, I think that "drier is, at minimum, very good on its own terms." It is definitely very different from the other choices, largely in a good way.

More info here: Non-Album Tracks, 1960

Please listen and chime in!

 

My recollection (which may be faulty, and I'm not at home, so cannot check this) is that, for the 12 Nice 'n' Easy tracks (the ones that actually appeared on the released LP), the 1988 CD remix/mastering was reused on tracks 2-12 of the 16-track 1991 CD. The title tracks (track 1) is differently mixed/mastered on the two versions. While the 1988 CD contained only the 12 LP tracks, the 1991 version added The Nearness of You, newly remixed to stereo, plus three mono-only bonus tracks from the 1950s (that didn't fit all that well, honestly).

If that's accurate, and I think it is, then The Nearness of You is a "1991 Larry Walsh"-style remix, from the same timeframe as his excellent Where Are You remix. IMO, Larry's stereo mixes of that timeframe, the last year or so before he quit working on these projects at Capitol, were by-and-large "firing on all cylinders." The earlier (i.e., 1988) mixes are good, but of a different style, including the use of moderate amounts of stereo reverb on the vocal channel. (The original stereo mixes had mono reverb on the vocal channel, in pretty heavy fashion, adding to the soup factor.) Translation: My memory is that the bulk of the mixes on the 1991 CD are not in that same, dry-ish style that we hear on The Nearness of You. Maybe somebody with the disc at hand can confirm.

Thanks for the kind words, and thank you to those that contribute samples and who contribute to the conversation here and to the overall knowledge base on this stuff.

 

By the way, next up will be the song Nice 'n' Easy, which I am treating as a single, even though it does appear on (duh) the album of the same name. Before it ever was integrated into the album, it was released as a single, and there are some mixes out there that differ from the LP mixes with which we are most familiar, so I think it definitely deserves a place in this ongoing "singles" survey.

[Edit: The phrase in gray, above, is incorrect, as @Bob F points out in the next post.]

 

Thanks, Bob. Brain fart on my part.

 

In another thread, I brought up this 1974 UK compilation album:
.

For the purposes of this thread, nine of the tracks are single/EP tracks, alongside 5 "album tracks." Of the nine "singles, etc." tracks here, five were originally "mono only" recordings. Sadly, they are presented here in some form of artificial stereo.
•Love and Marriage - Duophonic, with time-delay between the channels, causing them to not sum well to mono at all. Icky.
•Our Town, The Impatient Years, Same Old Song and Dance, Look to Your Heart - "stereo effect" - they sum to mono without that time-delay effect, but results, even when summed to mono, are mixed. "Our Town" and "Look to Your Heart" fare pretty well; "The Impatient Years" and "Same Old Song and Dance" become mildly tubby, but not horribly so.

Regardless of "summing quality," I put all of the above in the "avoid" category because, "off the shelf," they sound pretty bad, even though a decent-sounding version may be able to be extracted by those who wish to bother.

On to the stereo singles tracks:
•To Love and Be Loved - this is the longer "album" version, take #8, and the sound is good here.
Version from this album: Audio link
My top choice, the 1982 USA Capitol All the Way LP: Audio link
More here: Non-Album Tracks, 1958

•They Came to Cordura - again, good sound here.
Version from this album: Audio link
My top stereo choice, 1989 UK Screen Sinatra CD: Audio Link
My top choice overall, mono, 1984 Dutch DMM All the Way LP: Audio link
More here: Non-Album Tracks, 1958

•All My Tomorrows - another strong showing.
Version from this album: Audio link
My top choice, from the 1983 MFSL All the Way LP: Audio link
More here: Non-Album Tracks, 1958 (same as previous song)

•High Hopes - a "strong second choice" to my ears.
Version from this album, using the original stereo mix, which I am categorizing as tied for 2nd choice: Audio link
My top choice -- by a hair -- albeit a different mix, from UK 2o Golden Greats CD: Audio link
(Ask me on a different day, and I could easily reverse the choice.)
More here: Non-Album Tracks, 1959

There are some good sounding stereo cuts on this LP, no question. One odd quality: the disk is cut at low volume, so surface noise becomes a little more prominent. If you want this album, get as clean a copy as you can.

 

What's with The Impatient Years and Look to Your Heart being Ⓟ1963, the correct year for the Duophonic issue of the Look to Your Heart LP, while Our Town, which also appears on that 1963 album, is listed as Ⓟ1964?

 

A little housekeeping, trying to stay on top of things with this "singles" thread. I'll update regarding one CD today, and one in the days ahead. Here's the first one:

1988 Japan "Best Now" CD:

For tracks we've already visited:
•South of the Border -- not bad, not great. (Audio)
•From Here to Eternity, Three Coins in the Fountain - wet (reverb added) tapes.
•All the Way -- Good sound, but it runs slow
•Chicago -- Not bad; a little tubby/weird in the bass department (Audio)
•Everybody Loves Somebody - Mono mix; I'm calling this a second-place choice (Audio). It's airier and lighter in tone than the 2016 LP, which is still my favorite. I like both versions, but they are definitely different from one another. Here's audio from the LP for comparison.

You can poke around at 11fifty.com if you need more info, but aside from Everybody Loves Somebody, there's nothing much to get excited about here so far.

There are some later tracks here that we'll get to as the survey continues to unwind over the next 14 years or so.

 

Catching up on the other CD:

That's the original "1986" CD cover art. I put that date in quotes because I've never been 100% sold that this CD came out in 1986, but maybe it did. I don't know! The only indicator is "This compilation Ⓟ1986 Capitol Records, Inc." It was reissued in 1997, a straight "digital clone" of the earlier version, but with this cover art:

If 1986 is the correct year of CD release, then this Australian EMI CD is the first official release for many of these tracks, and may have been the first CD release of Sinatra/Capitol material, period, depending on the exact release date. Regardless, the set remains the only digital source, to my knowledge, to contain a track ("Blues in the Night") from Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely sourced from the original stereo mix (audio from this CD), not a remix. (The original mix of that album was effectively retired when the 1987 remix arrived on CD.)

Here's a breakdown of the "singles" tracks, for songs already covered in this thread:
•I've Got the World on a String, South of the Border, Love and Marriage, Chicago - Fake stereo
•From Here to Eternity, Three Coins in the Fountain, The Lady is a Tramp ("short" version) - Duophonic
•Young-at-Heart, The Tender Trap, Hey! Jealous Lover - wet (reverb added) tapes used
•Witchcraft - heavily/audibly compressed
•All the Way - compressed (not quite as bad as "Witchcraft")
•High Hopes - Original stereo mix; not bad (audio)

That catches us up on this CD, and tracks will be added as we reach them from here on out. As far as the "singles" cuts go, there's nothing much here to recommend thus far.

 

I don't have The Great Years in any edition, mono or stereo. I don't need to hear "Nice 'n' Easy" from that set, but would like to just confirm that it uses the original mixes on the mono and stereo editions of the LPs. If somebody is able to just give that LP a listen and chime in, that would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

Moving on to Nice 'n' Easy, the song, not the album; the mixes, not the masterings (per se):

I think there have been seven mixes released (as well as some pretty serious re-tweaks of existing mixes, but that's for another post, maybe). One mix is in mono. The original stereo mix had the strings on the right. Some later remixes have the strings in that same (incorrect, IMO) position; one mix ("The Capitol Years") moved the strings (correctly, IMO) to the left. So that we can compare "apples to apples," in all of the clips below, the strings are on the left. (I simply reversed left/right on some versions, for consistency.)

Click the links below for audio.

•Original mono mix, from my slightly chewed N2''#3 45: https://app.box.com/s/l8hkzs3jwvompnb1h75sx4qm5cxyed95
•Original stereo mix, from my 1983 MFSL LP: https://app.box.com/s/gkex27nhq60xzsmrzp6k13fp6mb2sjov
•1987 remix from the UK The Frank Sinatra Collection CD: https://app.box.com/s/epziob6avgqw3ckw4xb0cioi8j27fd94
•1988 remix from Nice 'n' Easy CD (Uncredited, likely Walsh): https://app.box.com/s/cvo8syu1slihdxnjszxrd0tvo56b8w7f
•1990 remix from The Capitol Years CD (Furmanek/Walsh): https://app.box.com/s/a7ih4k7zw7gutnyuf46cyg646kxyshl6
•1991 remix from Nice 'n' Easy CD (Walsh): https://app.box.com/s/sadkyueifyouir5gb1ddjycb4s0t0tc4
•1999 remix from Nice 'n' Easy CD (Norberg): https://app.box.com/s/fgn4cu8uan9m3dsfdzl7slu6vib83tce

Whatever mix style you are after....it's probably out there! Thoughts? (I'd still like to know the story on that 1987 remix....a remix appearing for the first time on a 1987 UK CD issue* of a 1986 UK LP, the LP of which used the original mix? Really? Why?)

*also issued in Canada and Japan, either concurrently or at a later date.