[78-L] From Frosty to Toscanini

[David Lennick]

OK, the missing line is "Where's the spoon?"

The master for Frosty The Snowman would have been on tape..most likely they 
just picked the wrong or most convenient one for reissue on LP and then kept 
using it. There's also the vague possibility that an alternate take was shipped 
to Canada, but I'd discount this because tape was in use by this time. We did 
sometimes get alternates in the mid to late 40s on pop and jazz recordings.

As for Toscanini, we know he hated stopping and starting and his 1936 New York 
Philharmonic recordings were all made by cutting abruptly from one lathe to the 
next..the side breaks occur in mid-note and some sides have very long silent 
portions before the music cuts in. So if they only had two lathes to run and 
both were in use, they couldn't have back-up masters. If I'm not mistaken, the 
second version of side 1 of the Beethoven 7th takes up much less disc surface. 
Side 1 in the original runs into the label space.

dl

Michael Biel wrote:
> dl wrote:
>>> And come on..have you ever seen a skinny snowman?  dl
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> From: DAVID BURNHAM <burnhamd at rogers.com>
>> To quote the punch line of many Jewish jokes, (e.g.
>> "Waiter would you please taste this soup?") - "Aha!"
> 
> I don't get it.  And I'm Jewish.
> 
>> We never had 78s until we had 33s and 45s.
> 
> Which was, of course, 1926.  Broadcasters had to know the two speeds by
> 1929, and the public got their first two-speed turntables in 1931. 
> Labels for recording blanks often had a 33/78 speed check-off space back
> as far as the 30s.    
> 
>> We only have flightless birds because most birds can fly.
>> Nobody ever talks about flightless kangaroos. 
> 
> How many of us ever talk about kangaroos at all????????
> 
>> If all snowmen are the same shape, then none of them are fat.
> 
> They can be made thin, didn't you say you carved legs in yours?  But,
> yes, most of them suffer from water retention.
> 
>> But if anyone has the info, I would still like to know how we wound up
>> with at least two different takes of Frosty from June 12, 1950.  The 78
>> version that I have is superior to the CD version, which dl said also
>> appeared on a Harmony LP.  Was there a reason they resorted to an earlier
>> take, (like a damaged or lost master)?  Perhaps this recording isn't
>> significant enough for them to retain this information but it would
>> be interesting to know.  
> 
> Does your 78 have a take number on it?  How do you know if the alternate
> on the CD is an earlier take?  Generally over the years, when masters or
> file pressings are pulled for reissue they very often use the best
> looking master.  And often it is better looking because it is lesser
> used -- or alternate.  This happened VERY often in the Victor Vintage
> series.  It was eye opening to find out that RCA had so many pop
> alternate takes in their vaults from the 20s.  
> 
> Even experts occasionally use alternates unknowingly.  A great example
> is when Vince Giordano (an acknowledged expert) produced "Time Capsule"
> on Buddha for the turn of the century and he used a take of Paul
> Whiteman's Charleston that did not have the oriental-like scat.  He
> didn't realize that there was a difference between the issued take and
> the one he used till I asked him for the take number.  Everyone else was
> amazed that this crazy scat (that nobody really likes) was not on all
> takes, and that there was a scatless take saved and had never been used
> before.  I was amazed that he had not issued this take on purpose
> because the scat wasn't there.  (He should have pretended that he knew
> the difference and had been looking for a scatless take.)   
> 
>> Collectors have all sorts of stories about why the first disc of Toscanini's
>> Beethoven 7th was replaced sometime during the run.  Irving Kolodin, who
>> wrote the notes for the Victrola issue of this recording states that
>> Toscanini insisted that there be two turntables set up so he wouldn't
>> have to stop unless there was an error, so what finally appeared on
>> records was the result of a single performance. 
> 
> To be sure I would have to look at the original session sheets, but they
> usually ran two turntables simultaneously to get two masters of each
> side, not for recording continuously from one turntable to the next
> turntable.  Making a break between sides in a live performance would
> make it highly likely that there WOULD be an error, and they might not
> know until test pressing stage because they cannot check takes during
> the sessions except from another separate machine -- and the different
> machines might not all make the changeover the exact same way.  
> 
> They recorded sides separately, and usually rehearsed a side, recorded
> take one then take two, etc before going on to the next side's rehearsal
> and recording.  Even the Stoki/Rach Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini
> where the sides fade out and in with a slight overlap were done on a
> side by side by side basis with pauses, re-takes, and rehearsals. 
> Kousy/Hale Peter and the Wolf was recorded take ones for each side in
> the morning with a rehearsal between each side, and then after lunch
> they did the takes two and three for each side.  Its on the sheets, not
> in discographies.
> 
>> But then sometime down the road a new and completely different version of
>> side one appeared.  I've heard that the first master got ruined and it had
>> to be replaced with an earlier previously rejected take; and I've heard
>> that A.T. later changed his mind and didn't like the first take and came
>> back to re-record it at a later date.  It was only the first side which was
>> affected, the other two sides of the first movement seem to remain the same db
> 
> There are far more alternate takes on classical sets than anybody has
> ever realized.  Two sides on that Peter and the Wolf have issued
> alternates and there may be more I haven't found yet.  Some copies of
> the sets have some sides with no take marker, which makes it necessary
> to listen to them.  I have alternates on two of the three sides of the
> Levant Rhapsody in Blue on Columbia.  I discovered that the entire
> Stoky/Rach Rach 2 electrical has issued alternate takes except for side
> 8, I believe, and that Victor FALSIFIED the session sheet in the Artist
> File to cover up the use of H-30 masters for all the post war and
> microgroove sets.  The session sheet in the original chronological
> binder had not been altered and showed that the pre-war sets had the
> approved M takes and post-war sets didn't.  Victor didn't even realize
> that Ward Marston used the original set of takes when he remastered the
> CD from his own V-shellac set, and Ward didn't even know that he was
> using different takes till I called and told him after the CD was
> issued. (He called me Mr. Rach 2 when I said hi to him at ARSC.)  That's
> why Mark Orbet-Thorn put out a CD of the alternate takes.  
> 
> So you have to check the session sheets, compare them with the actual
> records and the blue cards, and maybe even have the technical log (and
> that is not with the discographical files -- I don't know where it is
> now) to be sure what was issued and why.  You also have to know how to
> read the sheets, and I am not sure if Irving K could.  And now you have
> to check if RCA falsified the sheets in the Artist Files.   
> 
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com  
>