[Question] Hello list, I have been an Everest freak since the early 60's and still actively "hunt" both the 2 trk open reel tapes and stereo Silver Back l.p.s. Over the years I have become acquainted with all of the re-issue variants of the original Belock pressings. Most of the reissues have an address on the l.p. label stating some L.A. location. Most but not entirely all of these variants are grossly inferior to my 1st generation pressings and my P/C 2 nd generation pressings. I have long wanted to know who the California entity was that Harry Belock sold his label to. And was the label sold again, again, again. In other words, who produced each succeeding generation of Everest l.p.s. Does this explain the continual degredation of the pressings? I realize that I am in a very small minority of Everest lovers but Steve did do some excellent reissues of a few Everest discs and I hope that this is indicitave of enough shared interest that someone in the L.A. area may know or be able to find via the net the answers to my admittedly low priority question. Phil Samuelson [recordchaser] [email protected]
Hi Recordchaser! I can give you a short account of the Everest story after H.B. sold out. Bernie Soloman bought the label in the middle 1960's. He lives in LA and also at the same time bought the Hi-Fi/Arvee (Arthur Lyman, George Wright) and Period/Esoteric labels. RykoDisc owns a bunch of that stuff now. Bernie has licensed the Everest Catalog to Omega Record Productions. Their web site is at: http://www.omegarecords.com/ They are issuing the best sounding Everest stuff to date. The old Everest pressings? Well, here is the REAL DEAL. Read it and weep: The first Belock pressings were mastered directly from the three-channel analog master or the three-channel 35mm fullcoat film. When Belock started losing money (real quickly), he sold out, and the NEXT pressings were made from 2-track and mono mixes derived from the original three-channel recordings. These "Cutting Master Dubs" were all done at Radio Recorders in 1962, and boy, oh boy do they stink (the tapes I mean). The cuttings stunk too. And so on, using COPIES of the COPIES of the three-channel tapes every time a new cutting was made. It wasn't until I came along wanting to do some Everest LP's that Bernie broke out his vault key and unearthed the original three-channel tapes. Most of the 35mm fullcoat mags were totally turned to vinagar, but the 1/2" tape seemed all right. Omega is using these same great sounding tapes to do their SACD's and CD releases of the Everest catalogs. Their Vaughn Williams 9th is amazing! That help?
A note: Not only are silver label pressings superb ones on Everest, the Purple Mountain labels are also excellent ones. If you get the very earliest of the pressings right after Harry Belock sold out, those used original metal work (stampers) for pressing. And still pressed on decent vinyl. Usually a black label or sometimes gold label has the good HB era masterings. Once you know the style of original Everest deadwax, you can recognize those masterings, and you can occasionally get lucky on early reissues.
I believe Collectables released some Everest records about 12 or so years ago. Some good, some not so good.
Speaking of Everest labels, I have found contradictory information about the chronology of Everest pressings online (which is no surprise, of course). While reviewing Everest label variations on the "vinylbeat" label site [VinylBeat.com: LP Label Guide: Record Labels D - F: EVEREST ], I just noticed that they date the orange-and-blue label (with the small yellow mountain peak) as a "1960" variant; but I always thought that that label was a *late* 1960s variant that post-dated the solid black, solid gold and solid bright-orange variants. Is that a mistake on their listing, or are they correct and I'm wrong? In any case, I definitely have *post*-1966 classical releases on Everest with that orange-and-blue label; so it if did, indeed, start using it in 1960, then it continued throughout the 1960s, as well. *And*, if the orange-and-blue label variant *was*, in fact, used on 1960 releases, then that means that those releases must have been Belock pressings. Which contradicts what I have always thought.
I remember the SBM CD reissues being particularly good and I was surprised to learn that Everest was not a legendary label like RCA Living Stereo or Mercury Living Presence.
There are several reasons. The artists/performances are uneven even compared with Mercury. The sound is superb but Mercury, who had similar mic placement and same equipment, did leave greater results. And Steve explained the rest in this thread.
Orange and Blue is more like 1978-early 1980's pressings. So not Harry Belock era pressings. Not even close to them, more like high generation umpteenth generation tape sources.
He bought more than the equipment, he bought the entire studio to boot with it, became Fine Recording, Bayshore.
Everest even issued a fake stereo Sousa compilation of original 78s and also some Patsy Cline 4-Star recordings in mono as well as fake stereo.
Was Everest the original label for the promiscuously licensed and reissued Beethoven cycle by Krips/LSO?
