Sam Cooke- SACD or not?

I ordered Potrait of a Legend from Oldies.com, and the page said it was an SACD hybrid. There is no indication on the jewel case that there is an SACD layer. I saw an old thread here about it possibly going out of print, but I thought I'd check here before I open it and/or send it back. It is Abko 92642. Not sure if maybe this is a "stealth" SACD like the Stones. Anybody know?

 

Yup. SACD in digipak, and it's great!

 

You got that right.

 

Yep, like the Stones, Animals, and the few other Abko SACD's they kept the same spine numbers and bar codes when they were "reissued" as CD only versions. The only way to tell is if it's in a digipak (SACD Hybrid) or jewel case (CD only).

 

Stones SACD housed in a normal jewel case?

 

Thanks, all. Guess I got the wrong disc. I pretty much expected this.

 

The digipak version of the Cooke discs has the SACD and DSD logos on the back unlike with the Stones releases.

Sounds like your jewel-case version may not be an SACD - if there's no SACD logo on the disc itself then you know for sure it's redbook only.

Why did they use the same catalogue number - 92642? Just to piss people off I suppose

 

This also applies to the Herman's Hermits disc as well. Very sneaky on the label's part.

 

The jewel case version seems to be the only one currently in print, and it's several dollars cheaper than the amazing digipak version was in 2003. I think the CD mastering is the same, and it is excellent, but, as others have said, it lacks the SACD layer. I think the digipak version retailed for around $16, which was the deal of the century for a 31-track SACD; I usually see the CD for around $10, and didn't realize until today that it was strictly redbook, which is a shame.

 

My copy of Ain't That Good News arrived a few days ago. It's a digipak. It says dsd and includes the sacd logo on the back of the digipak. The booklet inside contains a paragraph about sacd.

On the cd itself, there is the ABCKO logo, the compact disc digital audio type, the dsd type, what looks to be type for sbm, with an unreadable for my eyes type above that, and type for "stereo" which is enclosed in a rectangle. Long story short, I don't see the sacd logo or type on the cd itself, and when I put the disc in my sacd player, it would only play the cd layer.

This was sold as a new disc which I purchased from Caiman and came mostly wrapped in cellophane.

Any ideas or info about the above disc would be most welcome.
?

 

I think the "Man and His Music" disc from '86 sounds better than the SACD,
certainly less processed.

 

Sam

Wow....I dont. The SACD sounds awesome, using first generation stereo tapes, which the 1986 certainly didnt!!!

 

I wouldn't agree with that at all. In addition to far inferior sources being used, there's substantially *more* processing on Man and His Music. Added echo, tracks split and delayed, etc. The ABKCO discs aren't perfect, but they are better than anything else I've heard.

 

Oh, yeah. Cooke just sends ... the SACDs are best of those songs & albums. The Night Beat remaster (digipak) is good too.

 

Night Beat isn't bad, although I would have liked it a lot more had Bob Ludwig not done his "let's NR the intros" trick.

The '90s BMG remixes/remasters used good sources for the most part, but usually processed them horribly.

 

Sounds like you have a new, non-SACD disc in the old packaging. I'm surprised, as I didn't think "Ain't That Good News" made it to a "second pressing" in redbook-style CDs. I thought the SACD hybrid disc was the only version of that title. (By the way, the SACD hybrid of this album had a suggested retail price of just $8.99 -- a steal. I think that was in recognition of the fact that it had only 12 songs, like the original LP, and 10 of those 12 songs were available on other Sam Cooke SACDs in the series...)

As for what you have, look at the disc itself. If, in microscopic size, it has the SACD logo and the perimeter print that includes a reference to the SACD trademark (as seen in the detailed photo below), that should be an SACD hybrid, obviously.

As far as the packaging goes, in addition to the SACD logo on the back and the SACD blurb in the booklet you mentioned, all of the Cooke SACDs I have seen had a round sticker on the shrinkwrap as seen below....

 

Clark, you just went above and beyond. . Thanks for showing the cd. One look at it and I knew my copy does not indeed have the sacd logo.

One thing for certain, on the cd I have, indeed, there is no SACD logo or Super Audio print, . I threw it in the sacd player late last night and when I try to access the sacd layer, my player spelled it out for me - "no hybrid".......

I don't remember seeing the Sam Cook sticker on the packaging either, although I was in such a hurry to tear off the cellophane, I may not have noticed. Regardless, no sacd.

Hopefully, Caiman will take care of it and I'll eventually have and listen to the sacd.

 

I'll have to join the others in disagreeing with this assessment. This is all subjective and I can see why some people might prefer the overall sound of "The Man And His Music" but that release -- which, as you say, is from 1986! -- certainly had a lot more processing than the 2003 remasters.

Here's a transcript of an interview I did with Steve Rosenthal, the guy who handled the 2003 Sam Cooke remasters, when the SACDs were first released. (Apologies if I posted this before in a different Sam Cooke thread...)

-------------------

Q: I was listening to the new "Portrait Of A Legend" disc last night and it sounds like you were really able to bring these songs to life -- even the old Keen-era masters such as "Wonderful World." Are those tapes still in pretty good condition?

A: Yeah, and that's the wonderful thing about a lot of the Cooke tapes. They've held up really well over time. In terms of the exact tape formula -- what kind of tape they were -- my memory is that some of them were old Scotch, some were old Agfa. Anyway, the good news is that tape from the 50s and tape from the early 60s has held up very well over time. Where you get into trouble is the late 1970s or the 1980s. That's when Ampex started using the scrapings of driveways on Long Island to formulate their tape stock.

Q: I spoke to one of the people at Specialty Records, which put together "The Complete Specialty Recordings Of Sam Cooke" box set, and for that release they apparently used masters from a reissue program of about 10 years ago because they were afraid to go back to the original, first-generation session tapes -- they weren't sure what kind of condition they'd be in. For the Specialty recordings that you used on the "Portrait Of A Legend" disc, did you use those original session tapes?

A: Oh, yeah. Jody Klein (from Abkco) got those from Specialty. He took a trip out to California to get them. I'm very, very tough about using first-generation masters. My perspective on that is this: That's where the magic is, and it's my job as the restoration producer to find those first-generation masters. Tape copies are so problematic. You very rarely find a tape copy that hasn't in some way been compromised. Part of my job is to be very cranky when I get tape copies, and I just keep complaining until the first-generation masters show up.

Q: Did you ever strike out in your search for first-generation masters of a song?

A: You know, we did really great. The Abkco team spent years searching to try to find the proper material and really did an amazing job and then came to me with an incredible amount of first-generation masters.

Q: You use the term "restoration" rather than "remix" when it comes to your work. So I gather you saw it as your job to present these songs in the best way possible while using the original records as a guide.

A: You bet. What I used sort of as a guideline were those releases that Sam had something to do with. You know, they went back and got me a whole set of mono singles to use as a reference -- because that's what he worked on. It was only after he passed away that all this reprocessed stereo stuff started coming out. So, to me the restoration job is to bring the material back to the way it was when the artist first conceived it and when the public first heard it. And I think a lot of times that's what gets lost over the years, because people can be very intrusive in how they deal with recordings like this and they tend to put their own stamp on it. And, you know, they say. "Well, I want a little more of this and a little less of that (in the mix)." But I like to go back to the original releases, to where the artists themselves had a hand in these decisions. And I think that's very important, especially when dealing with Sam's stuff.

Q: Well, yeah, he played such a big role in how those records sounded in terms of the production.

A: Oh, he is all over these tapes. He's talking before the songs, talking after the songs, giving people instructions on how to deal with stuff, you know what I mean? He's just all over, talking people through the songs, what he wants, what he's happy with, what he's not happy with. Restoration work is about the details. You cannot let things slip by, you have to very diligent and you can't compromise on the source material you're using.

Q: And there's a certain element of righting past wrongs, isn't there? If you're taking those extra steps, you're setting a new benchmark and re-establishing that standard for how the material should sound.

A: Yeah, when we did the Rolling Stones discs, we sort of exorcised all these reprocessed stereo mixes that had made their way into the Stones' releases. And there were so many of them and they were so abominable. Some engineer here in Manhattan had decided to make a stereo record out of mono recordings, so he put all the low end on one side and all of the high end on the other side and said, "Yeah, OK, now we have a stereo version of some great Stones song." So wherever ugly things like that appear, I feel it's my responsibility to just get rid of them. Some of these things were just rotten ideas, at least in retrospect, and that reprocessed stereo stuff was a really bad idea.

Q: Now, am I hearing this new "Portrait Of A Legend" disc correctly? Is that a true stereo version of "Wonderful Word" you have on there?

A: Yes! That's a stereo tape they found searching through the archives. It seemed to be a much clearer, less processed, less "reverbed-out" version of what was already out there.

Q: Oh, absolutely. Another fan wrote to me today to tell me how impressed he was with the sound you got on "Chain Gang."

A: Oh, so you're hearing good feedback on these? That's good, that's good. You know, just in a general sense, I think Sam is so deserving of a first-class restoration job. I think his material has really been under-rated and under-appreciated by the public and it's time for him to sort of take his rightful place -- a place that is commensurate with his talent. So I'm really happy to have been involved in what I think is a first-class restoration job.

Q: You know, I keep hitting the replay button on my CD player to hear "Another Saturday Night" and "Twistin' The Night Away" again and again. I don't know where you dug up the bass, the bottom end, on those two recordings, because it just wasn't there in all the previous releases.

A: Ah, yes, I need to talk to you about this. We used a new technology to get what is on these tapes. We're using DSD technology to create these new dual-layer discs. The basic idea is this: With this new technology, you are not creating new sounds from what's on the tape, you are actually finally hearing things that were on the tape all this time. Now you're finally given the opportunity to hear these frequencies.

At the front end of the chain is a special analog tape machine, a refurbished Ampex machine with a special set of Aria electronics. And these electronics are what I like to call extended-range electronics. So, if you think about this, it's not that we're adding low end to the recordings, it's just that we finally have got the window open on the low end so you're able to hear what has been on that tape all this time. So when I'm playing back these masters, I'm not adding low end to these things. It's what is actually on the tape -- but until now, we just hadn't been able to play it back for the listener to hear.

So, the way this works, the first step is to find the master. We transfer the master by playing it back through the newly refurbished and rebuilt Ampex tape machines with the extended-range electronics..

Then we transfer (to digital) by using an incredibly high bit-rate analog-to-digital converter and we transfer through this new Sony system that is called DSD, or Direct Stream Digital. With this incredibly higher sampling rate, you get a much, much clearer picture of the analog source material. You can get down to the real low frequencies and capture that. I mean, on a regular 16-bit CD there is a hard cut-off on the low frequencies and on the high frequencies. It's very unforgiving. With this DSD technology, for the first time we can hear this bottom end that is on the original tapes.

And the nice thing about the way this works, with these hybrid discs, is that the discs, of course, can be played in a normal CD player and in a SACD player -- and you're still, even with the regular CD player, getting the benefit of this new technology. You're still getting the benefit of the new transfer, the new filters, the new technology.

Now, the SACD players are not that expensive. I mean, at Best Buy you can get one for $140, $160 now. They've figured out how to get the technology out there at a manageable price. And the one that I have also plays DVDs, as well as regular CDs and SACDs. So, you know, if you're happy now with the sound of these discs in a normal player, when you hear the SACD version I think you'll be about 40 percent happier. (Laughing.)

Q: With the new "Tribute To The Lady" disc, obviously we're dealing with some pretty old material there. The Keen CD that is still floating around in some stores is pretty much an abomination as far as sound quality. Just terrible. I haven't heard the new version yet, but were you pleased with the work you were able to do on that album in terms of improving the sound?

A: Well, with that one, I complained and complained -- I just kept saying, "No, no, no..." -- until they walked into the studio with the actual, first-generation master. And the extended range on that master is really very good. And they did something really fun with that release, they added a whole bunch of extra tracks to it. So it's sort of an extended version of "Tribute To The Lady."

Q: Let's talk about one previously unrelased Sam Cooke song, one that has only been out there for a year or so, and that's "Keep Movin' On." I was really impressed when that song surfaced last year, because it's not very often with an artist of Sam's stature that you come up with something new that is of such high quality, and this is 35 or 40 years after the fact.

A: Yes, isn't that song terrific?

Q: Yeah, can you tell me anything about how that song was discovered or whether it took much work or editing to assemble it and create the finished version we now hear?

A: No, no, that's the master you're hearing. I didn't cut it, edit it or anything like that. No, that's the master.

Q: Well, that makes one wonder why it sat in the vaults for so long.

A: You know, it's an interesting thing. Sometimes, things get lost. You know, for some reason the artist doesn't like a song, or the record company doesn't like it. Then years pass and you find it and it's almost like buried treasure.

Q: And I assume that's the original instrumental backing for the song we hear on the menu screen of the new "Sam Cooke: Legend" DVD.

A: Yes. You know, the playing on the Cooke records was pretty extraordinary. And as you said you can finally hear the bass player now.

Q: Tell me about the new "Sam Cooke At The Copa" CD, which you've remixed for 5.1 sound.

A: That was a blast.

Q: I understand there was a real effort made to research the layout of the Copacabana club for purposes of mixing.

A: You bet. I had already done a number of surround sound mixes when we first sat down to talk about this project. I really wanted to come up with a plan with which we could recreate the size and shape of that club so that the listener at home could really get a feel for what it was like to be there. My concept basically was that the listener would be at the front table, sitting about five or six feet from Sam -- they would be, you know, at the high-rollers' table, right? That was the experience we wanted to create.

So I needed to find pictures of the Copa, drawings of the Copa, and I needed to talk to people who had been there and get their recollections of what was on the walls. Oddly enough, there were very few photos of the inside of the Copa. We spent many, many months looking for stuff.

I talked to Allen Klein about the Copa, and he had some great, really clear recollections of the whole couple of weeks Sam was there. I talked to a number of people, and it's funny because different people have very different memories of what it was like. I talked to my sister, who had seen the Supremes and, I think, Paul Anka there. And she had a very different recollection of what the size was and where the stage was. So I spent a lot of time on research.

And then, of course, we remembered that in the movie "Goodfellas" they actually filmed inside of the original Copa. It still existed at that point in time. So we spent a lot of time looking at the DVD, and stopping it to study a frame so we could measure the size of the tables.

Now, I know that may sound totally obsessive, but once I knew how big the tables were then I would know how far back the rear wall was, you know? I didn't want to come up with some kind of phony room ambiance for this thing. I wanted to really try to figure out the room geometry, so I spent a lot of time researching that and the materials that were on the walls so that really the listener today can get as close as possible to what it felt like then to be sitting in the audience.

It may be a little over the top, it may be a little abstract, but I felt that I didn't want it to be just an arbitrary thing where I decided, "OK, well, I'm going to use a reverb effect of 2.4 seconds on this tape because I like the way that sounds." I was not going to do that. I wanted people to feel like they were sitting in the Copa.

Q: And if you were talking to people like Allen Klein, who was there, you were talking to people who, when they heard the finished product, could either tell you, "Yeah, you got it right," or, "No, that's not what it was like."

A: Oh, yeah, we played it for Allen, we played it for (recording engineer) Al Schmitt, and, yeah, they were delighted and really happy. I forget who it was, but one of them told me they could smell the Chinese food!

Q: That had to be gratifying.

A: Well, you know, I don't want to rewrite history. I just want to recreate it so that people can feel it again. That's what I set out to do with that album.

Q: And these were three-track tapes of a couple of shows you were working with?

A: Yeah, there were several shows, but the set-list was pretty much written in stone. It's not as if one night he did a whole different set. There is the one set, but a number of shows that were recorded. One thing I should tell you is that all of these shows -- and actually all of the Sam Cooke material -- has now been archived properly and saved for posterity.

Here at my studio, The Magic Shop, I've developed an archive system to archive the Sam Cooke catalog in three formats. One is this new DSD technology, the second is a Sonic Solutions back-up and the third is an analog transfer. We took the original quarter-inch, 15 IPS (inches per second) analog tapes and transferred them onto 30 IPS, half-inch tapes for the analog back-up.

And, you know, with the Copa, what was interesting was trying to get the surround-sound feeling with only three tracks to work with. Most surround-sound discs are more modern and were recorded on 16-track or eight-track tape, so it was very, very challenging to look for things and grab things in the original recording that you could move around in the surround-sound field. But it was recorded by a master. You know, Al Schmitt is a master, he knows what he is doing and so the material was there and the fidelity was there.

Q: Now, when you talk about archiving these things, are you just archiving those finished tracks now being released, or are you archiving the original session tapes in their entirety?

A: You bet, we`re archiving all of the session tapes, and we're archiving all of the reels of the shows at the Copa. You know, it's really important with tapes that they be properly archived for historical purposes. I don't know if you know this, but besides doing this work for Abkco, I also am in charge of doing all the restoration work on the Alan Lomax collection. I've been doing a lot of work for the Library of Congress and I think we have put out almost 85 CDs now from the Alan Lomax collection. So I approach the Sam Cooke material the same way I deal with Alan Lomax. These things need to be saved for future generations. The tapes have a shelf life and we need to know that 50 years or 100 years from now people still will be able to play these tapes. So I feel a historical responsibility to make sure these tapes are safe. That's part of my job, really.

Q: Anything about this whole Sam Cooke project that stands out in your memory?

A: Well, you asked about "Wonderful World." That had always been one of my favorites, And the moment I heard that tape with the new, clean version of that, was really just amazing to me. You know, to hear Sam do "Bring It On Home To Me," and to hear Lou Rawls on that, the way we hear it now, is amazing to me.

Q: And the stereo tape of "Wonderful World," was that something that was thought to be lost to the ages? I don't know that I ever heard a stereo version of that until now.

A: I think you're right about that. If you listen to these (new) discs and then listen to the stuff that was coming out of RCA over the years, I think these new ones are lot truer to the original intent of the artist. There's a lot less of that sort of reverb gloss that was put on Sam's records posthumously. You know, the artist knows better, and Sam is not around to sort of fight for himself now. But he lives through those original recordings. He lives through the vinyl, because that was something that he dealt with himself.

Q: Now, I can hear you playing Sam in the background there while we talk. After all these months working on these songs, you can still sit down and listen to them for enjoyment? The process of listening to these same songs again and again and again to perfect the discs, that didn't drain the music of any enjoyment for you?

A: Oh, no. I love Sam Cooke. I was thrilled to be able to work on this whole restoration project. It's not like I hear it a hundred times and I don't want to hear it again. It's the opposite. It's like on the 80th time I hear something happening on the hi-hat that I hadn't heard the first 79 times. That helps me to understand why that particular record is so timeless. The more times I hear it, the more I learn and the more enjoyable it gets.

You know what I bought out on the street yesterday? I was walking down the street in Soho, on my way to lunch, and I saw these two Soul Stirrers records and went, "Hey!" They're on Specialty, from the 1970s, but they are really in mint shape. There's "That's Heaven To Me," and the other is "The Original Soul Stirrers Featuring Sam Cooke." They're great. And I got 'em both on the street for 15 bucks. I love vinyl.

And that's the thing with SACD. Finally they're getting CDs that have the warmth of a nice vinyl pressing, but they have the extended dynamic range that vinyl doesn't offer. I think with this SACD thing they seem to have gotten something right.

 

Hey Clark, I want to thank you for reposting this interview you did. I really enjoyed that. I had missed it earlier.

__________________
Dale

 

Thanks, Clark. Great interview.

 

Clark, great interview, thanks. I have that Sam Cooke SACD and it IS awesome sounding.

 

I am not a fan of Portrait of a Legend.

 

As long as we're talkin' Sam, anybody out there heard these new BluSpec resissues of the "Night Beat" and "Best Of" album?

 

Not out yet. Or so I thought.