The Beatles Polydor Sessions With Tony Sheridan Sounds Better Than Their Early EMI

The Beatles 1960/1961 studio recordings with Tony Sheridan which was produced by the legendary orchestra leader/composer Bert Kaempfert sound better than their early EMI studio recordings (Please Please Me, With The Beatles. and A Hard Day's Night)

The Hamburg session has more punch, sounds more live, and the voices are clearer and more "on your face" -type of sound.

Do you think the superior sound of the Tony Sheridan session is due to the microphone placements, better recording equipment, better recording engineers, better producer, better acoustics, or all of the above?

 

The Tony Sheridan stuff has great clarity but is slightly lean in the midrange. Nice Hi-Fi sound though.

Switching over to Hard Day's Night there's still great clarity and the sound has more weight and energy but without the high end boost.

Both are great recordings. The Abbey Road stuff sounds more like rock music to me. The Sheridan stuff is more beautifully recorded but may not have been the right approach for their mid to late period music.

 

I wish the early EMI recordings had the bass that the Polydor recordings do.

Evan

 

Dont get me wrong.

There's no bad sounding Beatles recordings with EMI/Parlophone but I've noticed the superior sound of the Hamburg sessions.


The one reissued by Bear Family sounds really good.

The import-only Polydor Deluxe CD set of the Beatles' Tony Sheridan Session sounds good too.

I prefer their sound over the early EMI/Parlophone or Capitol Beatles' recordings.

It seems to me that the music recorded in the German Polydor recording studios sound fatter and more revealing of the studio acoustics than their British and Capitol counterparts.

Listen to the tracks like "Ain't She Sweet" and "My Bonnie".
I just wished the first three albums sound like these two Hamburg tracks.

 

Anyone with ideas about the main contributing factors why the sound is so different aside from the most obvious ones?

 

Bert Kaempfert? I dunno but I agree the bass and dynamic range on those tracks is terrrific.

 

I see what you mean as he was very much into B/EZ listening music. I bit of a surprise, but if true, a neat piece of knowledge.

 

Was it the same studio Monks used for the "Black Monk Time" album? It has that same killer low-frequency presence and whenever I listen to it, I always think of the Beatles/Sheridan tracks.

 

Using the term "studio recordings" is a stretch when discussing the tracks recorded in Germany. If I am remembering things correctly, these tracks weren't actually recorded in a studio, they were recorded on a stage (with the stage curtain closed) somewhere in Germany. I don't feel like looking it up, but I believe that was the story. I'm sure someone else here will remember the exact details, including what the Fabs and Tony were wearing that day.

 

You're correct. The first session or two was recorded on a school stage.

 

Well, then for me personally, I can assume that it's a case of excellence in German engineering at Polydor. After looking up info on the Monks album, it was recorded in Cologne anyway...

But I think it's ironic that Paul would say they were later chasing that amazing bass sound on Motown and James Brown records when pushing the gain in mastering that freaked EMI out so much - when they'd already touched on it with the Hamburg recordings years earlier.

 

I first pointed this out to my audiophile friends back in the early '70's when the gatefold album "In the Beginning" came out on Polydor. The reason that the Bert Kaempfert tapes sound so good is that there was no "copying of tapes" in order to overdub more instruments. They played to a really good vacuum tube tape recorder, Tony Sheridan sang on the other track, and that was the final product. No "edit pieces" etc.

 

The BTR3 machines Abbey Road used were extremely well regarded. I'd be quite surprised if Polydor was using better machines.

It seems much more likely it comes down to the processing used, or lack thereof.

 

This is slightly OT but here goes:

I have the Polydor recordings both legitimately (Polydor's own deluxe edition of The Beatles' First) and also slightly less legitimately. The less-than-legit source claims to use Beatles Bop as its source but when I analysed the waveform it seems far too brickwalled to be a genuine contender for best sounding source.

Anyone care to comment, either here or privately?

 

Studer B67/C37, 69 mixer ?

 

I think they sound better because of the recording concept to record an "ensemble" in stereo. The two tracks were not intended to be multi-tracks with the biggest possible separation.
It was just a good sounding room and good microphones carefully placed at the right places. Like it was done with Kaempfert's orchestra...

Martin

 

I agree with Luke here as well as it's the end mastering to CD. Less tampering with the Tony Sheridan tapes.

 

I think that's the main reason. Room ambience vs. hardcore two-track separation.

 

The master tapes were well preserved too. That's why they still sound fresh after almost 50 years.

 

I agree! Do not fold, spindle or mutilate! I have a vinyl copy from the 80's from Pickadilly and I bought The Bear Family's Deluxe edition and they both have that low bass sound.How does a analog recording sound so good in a digital format?

 

I agree with the "true stereo recording" reason. Had G. Martin spread the instruments on two tracks rather than one, PPM and WTB might have sounded different. I personnaly love the sound of the Hamburg tapes (I have the Bear clamshell edition).

 

I think that most of Kaempfert's recordings are some of the best ever recorded. Listen to songs by him like, "That Happy Feeling" or "Bye Bye Blues" and it's almost like you're there in the studio with them. Here are a couple of great pictures of Bert, in that studio.

Chris C

 

And perhaps EMI didn't have as good equipment as Bert had? Remember, the Germans were recording IN STEREO and ON TAPE since 1940 on their Magnetophones whereas the the British were fairly new to it (early 50's??). Again though, the better sound is probably attributable to the final records not being made from overdubbed and copied tapes.