Columbia Records Nashille Vault

[RetroSmith]

A few years ago, I remember reading about how record producer Clark Enslin bought the contents of a Nashville Storage Facility that had gone out of business, and it contained 200 reels of tape from Columbia Records, mainly 60s artists.

I cant find a link to the article or any other anywhere.

In the Billboard "Archiving" piece, I think there was a link.

Does anybody have this? Or anything related to this story?

thanks!!

[Paul L.]

The old Billboard archive article is online:
http://www.chezmarianne.com/bholland/words/vault.html

but I don't remember anything in it about Enslin. Correct me if I'm wrong, though, and I'll reread it.

[RetroSmith]

No, youre right, it just says "In a case still making headlines...."


I cant believe this story has just vanished into thin air. There were unreleased Sinatra and Byrds reels in there, among other things!!

[Paul L.]

All I know is that the lawsuit of Sony vs Enslin had a just and expected ruling: Sony retained all rights to the recordings, but the physical tapes were indeed the property of Enslin. A lot of years have passed since then and maybe Enslin has done something with them, like sell them back to Sony. I have no idea. But he was enjoined from marketing them in any way, shape, or form. In other words, all he could do was play them for himself and friends.

[Chris M]

I spoke with Smile researcher Brad Elliot (online) and he said that it's possible that some Smile multitracks and some of the 'missing' Smile vocals ('66 Surf's Up. Worms, Child is the Father, etc.) may be stored in a Colombia storage facility/vault. Brad knows more about Smile than anybody and he claimed that there are *many* Smile tapes in the BB's personal archive (in addition to Columbia) that have yet to be identified or auditioned. :)

Chris

[lukpac]

Originally posted by Chris M:
I spoke with Smile researcher Brad Elliot (online) (...)

Hopefully the vocal tapes for Good Vibrations will show up one of these days...

[RetroSmith]

I believe that I read that Enslin DID sell the tapes to a third party, who tried to obtain release rights in court.

When this was denied, this third party sold the tapes to another, 4th party, and thats the end of the trail.

Supposedly, there were multitracks to some of the Byrds LPs among the tapes.

You would think Sony, with all their millions, would have bought all these tapes back. I'm sure the owners see dollar signs flashing in their heads, but cant Sony afford 50,000 or so to make everyone happy?

Maybe Sony figures that they've got copies of whats there so they wouldnt get any additional revenue from them. Altho, the multitracks that are there would let them issue the material in DVD-A , which didnt exist for audio when these tapes were found.