[78-L] Remastering

[David Lennick]

I haven't encountered too many Commodore releases, mercifully (although I 
picked up a "Billie Holiday Commodore Masters" disc from 2000..which had a few 
tracks that were definitely not the ones issued on 78GRP, through Universal). 
Randy referred to an Andrews Sisters messup, and that's one I recall along with 
an Al Jolson (maybe) and the Jascha Heifetz Decca Years (definitely). Philips 
had even worse results with a series of historical recordings which sounded 
like bad short wave radio.

dl

Jeff Sultanof wrote:
> Dan Morgenstern still tells the story of a gathering of press and and jazz
> historians at RCA to listen to No Noise 'clean-ups' at a pre-release party
> for the three-CD set of early BG and his orchestra. While the engineers did
> remove a lot of noise, they also took out bass lines and drum parts. Dan
> said that some tracks were so bad they sounded like they were played
> underwater. This disastrous reception sent engineers back to the drawing
> board for that set, which still had many tracks where actual music was
> removed.
> 
> I will also never forget (and perhaps David, these are the CDs you mean)
> when MCA acquired the Commodore catalog and issued Billie Holiday and 'Best
> of Commodore' CDs. The sound was distorted and disgusting. Interestingly,
> Commodore is a catalog which is still MIA on CD.
> 
> That was also when I found out that the people at MCA didn't realize that
> they owned a catalog named ABC-Paramount. One of their employees asked me to
> 'suggest' some reissues to him, of course not offering to pay me a red cent.
> I developed a bad memory quickly.
> 
> Jeff Sultanof
> 
>> I still remember "NoNoise" and still shudder at the disasters it wreaked.
>> Or to
>> be more accurate, the disasters wreaked by the engineers who turned it on
>> full
>> blast and left it running overnight and issued the results on unlistenable
>> MCA
>> and Philips CDs in the mid 80s.
>>
>> dl
>>