Restoration of Phil Spector's Catalog Brings 4 New Collections from Sony Legacy*

From Your Way to Music:

<<The 50th anniversary of the Philles Records label (1961-2011) has arrived. The long-range campaign promise announced in 2009 by Legacy Recordings and EMI Music Publishing, to dig deep into the rich catalog of Phil Spector’s ‘Wall Of Sound’ on Philles, moves ahead with four newly-compiled albums. The quartet of titles will be available at all physical and digital retail outlets starting February 22nd through Phil Spector Records/ Legacy, a division of SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT:

DA DOO RON RON; THE VERY BEST OF THE CRYSTALS, 18 tracks including “There’s No Other (Like My Baby),” “He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss),” “He’s A Rebel,” “He’s Sure the Boy I Love,” “Da Doo Ron Ron,” and “Then He Kissed Me,” with numerous B-sides and rarities, plus the previously unreleased “Woman In Love (With You)”;

BE MY BABY: THE VERY BEST OF THE RONETTES, 18 tracks including “Be My Baby,” “Baby, I Love You,’ “(The Best Part Of) Breakin’ Up,” “Do I Love You?,” “Walking In The Rain,” and “I Can Hear Music,” with numerous B-sides and rarities, bonus solo tracks by Veronica (aka Ronnie Spector), plus the 1969 A&M single “You Came, You Saw, You Conquered”;

THE SOUND OF LOVE: THE VERY BEST OF DARLENE LOVE, 17 tracks, her first comprehensive multi-label collection ever, including her own “(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry,” “Wait ‘Til My Bobby Gets Home,” and “A Fine, Fine Boy,” plus examples of her work as lead singer with the Blossoms (in 1958 on Capitol Records, and later in 1965 on Reprise), the Crystals, and Bob B. Soxx and The Blue Jeans (“Why Do Lovers Break Each Others Hearts?,” “Not Too Young To Get Married”);

WALL OF SOUND: THE VERY BEST OF PHIL SPECTOR 1961-1966, 17 tracks covering a cross-section of the top-charted A-side Philles hits from 1961 to ’66 by the Crystals, the Ronettes, Darlene Love, Bob B. Soxx and The Blue Jeans, plus special bonus tracks from the Righteous Brothers (“You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”) and Ike & Tina Turner (“River Deep, Mountain High”).>>

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Not a bad start, but perhaps Sony Legacy will throw us die hard fans a bone and release a comprehensive box set compiling ever Philles Records master recording (or at least the A&B sides of every single).

 

Wonder if Phil had any input in this or not? Not that he cares. He's probably got more important things to worry about these days!

 

If, for a change, they can make these discs sound something like the 45's (which has yet to be done on CD), then we'll have something.

 

I've always been told on this forum that the Hip-O Select The Complete Motown Singles sets were made to sound like the heavily compressed 45s. Or are you referring to the Philles 45s in particular?

 

There were 59 tracks released in 2010 as downloads under the name The Phil Spector Collection (check iTunes or eMusic). They sound similar to the The Phil Spector Collection CD that came out a few years ago. These CDs are probably just the physical release and reconfiguration of the material that's already been mastered.

 

AKA The Phil Needs Cash To Pay His Legal Bills Collection.

 

I'd be willing to buy a comp of those goofy knock-off instrumentals Phil used to place on the b-sides of the singles!

 

Nothing sounds exactly like the original "thumping" and "compressed" PHILLES 45's. In my opinion, the "Back To Mono" box (pictured on the left), while a great selection and who didn't love that LP sized lyrics book in that box, was sadly, nothing spectacular in the "sound" department. The 2-CD import, from a few years ago, (pictured on the right), had a much less inviting selection, but came far closer to the "sound" of the original 45's, at least to my ears.

But enough already, just give us the album (shown in the other photo), on a "thumping" and "compressed" compact disc and then, we'll be talking "Wall Of Sound".

RIP, Larry Levine

Chris C

 

I wonder if Phil Spector's work was just crafted to sound right on the technology of the day, and will never work as well on today's sound systems?

Tim

 

Presumably these are another recycling of the Abkco Back To Mono Box masters (1991) and the individual Best Of's from '92. Amongst the hype is no mention of some of those ear-bleeders being re-remastered for human consumption.

Track lineup differences are:

RONETTES loses "How Does It Feel" (From The Fabulous Ronettes LP) and gains the previously unavailable on CD original (and first) Jeff Barry production of "I Can Hear Music". ("Chapel Of Love" still remains unavailable on CD and so the Ronettes LP still remains unavailable complete)

CRYSTALS loses two tracks ("Look In My Eyes" and "Girls Can Tell") but gains the never-released Crystals version of "Woman In Love". (I have it on acetate and it's magnificent - far & away the best version ever recorded)

DARLENE LOVE loses one track ("Zip A Dee..."), gains "Strange Love" from the box and (inexplicably) three uninteresting Blossoms cuts which have nothing to do with Phil Spector.

WALL OF SOUND is a reconfiguration of the UK 2006 Abkco comp Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound Retrospective, losing "Born To be Together", "Unchained Melody" and Phil's warbling and clomping out the chords of "Spanish Harlem".

Restoration??? Hardly. I'll bet no Sony Legacy staffers have exacerbated their asthma in the dusty Philles vaults or blown out their eardrums at the remastering console on this batch of doozies.

 

I'm not aware of any instances where Sony simply recycled another label's mastering for one of their Legacy reissues (ok, maybe the first couple ELO remasters )

ELO aside, I see no basis for speculating these are going to be recycled ABKCO discs, especially since the new ones include previously unavailable/unreleased material.

 

Why would Sony use the earlier masterings from Back to Mono? The 2006 ABKCO comp was remastered by Bob Ludwig, and it sounds a lot better than the crappy Back to Mono boxed set discs. My hunch is that Bob L. remastered the Spector catalog to DSD around the same time the ABKCO catalog was prepped for cd release (after a tremendously long wait for fans of Chubby Checker, ? and the Mysterians and other Cameo-Parkway label artists).

 

From the track listing, the Crystals set is not a "complete" collection. (some b-sides are missing? + The Screw, maybe more...)
EDIT --> Ricko commented above

Could a complete collection have fit on one cd?

 

The UK collection named the Wall of Sound Retrospective had a brand new mastering by Bob Ludwig and he also did the Christmas album for Legacy. I agree there's a huge difference with the Back To Mono stuff. The Retrospective was some good Ludwig work, similar to what he did with The Rolling Stones but with even less interference from the label.

It's safe to say that the same team has been working on the master tapes, rather than using the original Abkco transfers. Besides, it's not as if there were dozens of hours of recordings. It's quite a small catalog, they're now releasing the hits that had been out of print for years in the US.

The three artists collections are what they claim to be and they put the emphasis on the bands and the singers instead of Spector a little more than the previous edition. And it also leaves the gates open for a box set this fall or next year.

 

I didnt realize the Christmas album was re-mastered. Was that in the US and when?

 

As I said before, I'm sure they are using the current "new" mastering - the same available on the recent downloads. If its not the same it's got to be similar.

 

It sounds only marginally better than the box, and Ludwig remastered nothing. I suspect he went nowhere near any tapes at all. His timings are exact matches for the Abkco transfers.

There's not a huge difference at all. There's some EQing difference which marginally improves the sound.

Why is it safe to assume that, when there's no indication that anybody's been anywhere near the master tapes since 1990? And the fact that these new issues almost perfectly match the running order of the Abkco Best Of's it's probably safer to assume they're the same masters with (hopefully) some better EQing.

 

I had a short conversation with the guy who's putting this together at Legacy. He interviewed Spector a few times in prison. It sounded like a very strange experience, but he said Phil would come to life when he started talking about the music in detail. I can't imagine he could have had any input in technical matters and I don't know if he made any suggestions about what to include or not include, but he wasn't completely out-of-the-loop.

 

I'll correct my post #17: there are very slight speed and fade differences between the box and Ludwig masters which do indeed create real time differences.

And while we're on the subject of the Retrospective comp the inclusion of "Lovin' Feelin'" and "River Deep" in stereo wasn't a particularly welcome surprise: I'd say that pair were definitely NOT Abkco tapes or Spector-approved!

 

Rob from Sony had to get Phil to agree to give him access to all of his tapes and he's remastering everything with Mark Wilder and Vic Annesini. Sony has all of the original albums coming out and a box set of unreleased tapes

 

There's no indication on the Retrospective packaging that Bob Ludwig had anything to do with the mixing and transferring of the analog tapes to digital. The tape to digital transfers are credited to Abkco's Teri Landi, who's credited as Assistant Engineer on the Back To Mono box.

Which comes down to the semantics of "mastering" vs "remastering", and deciding at what point a master is struck, followed by remasters. Ludwig is credited for mastering (of "Retrospective") but the rest of the crew are all associated with Abkco and the box set.

So whether or not he mastered or remastered, there's no indication of any further mixing or tape handling beyond what Phil Spector and Jody Klein mixed and mastered in analog in 1990 - '91.

Now THAT's brilliant news!!!

 

That's the news I wanted to hear.

BTW Were these people behind Sundazed's reissue of "A Christmas Gift To You" or was that Bob Irwin's job?

 

Irwin.

 

Compare this to the credits for the Rolling Stones, Cameo/Parkway, Righteous Brothers and Sam Cooke ABKCO reissues. Ludwig and Landi were both credited and we know that these were new transfers.

Beyond semantics (and the guys who write the credits in some random UK anthology are not generally engineering experts), I don't see the point of hiring Ludwig to EQ digital masters done in 1991.

My guess is that Ludwig was hired with the idea that ABKCO would release a reissue campaign, as they had done for the rest of their catalog. It was delayed because of Spector legal issues and ABKCO ultimately lost the rights to Sony/Legacy. Ultimately, there was only this UK retrospective released. Ludwig must have at least also done A Christmas Gift For You, as it was his mastering that was used for the Legacy edition and it was claimed as being from first generation tapes (as the Sundazed vinyl was). It's one of Ludwig's only credits with Legacy and the rest of the catalog is dealt by their in-house engineers. I guess it was done before the new deal when ABKCO was in charge and that nobody saw the necessity of starting again from scratch.

It may be all settled when we'll see the credits for the new reissues. If there's nothing wrong with the Wall of Sound retrospective, they'll keep the Bob Ludwig mastering and delete a few tracks while the other anthologies will credit Wilder and Anesini.

BTW, I'm quite fond of the demo of "Spanish Harlem". Very sweet.