NAT KING COLE in special Vintage MONO MIXES from Analogue Productions on SACD/CD!

It's probably there, just misfiled. They didn't dump the "underdubs" after they did the posthumous dubbing.

 

You're telling me that YOU'LL NEVER KNOW was FIRST issued in 1993? Nothing before that? Wow. Funky.

What Lee wanted on that song was probably an edit between a few of the takes. Of course that wasn't done because the track was left in the can. The stereo version was "pieced" by another engineer at a later date (about 3 months later) and marked (as we know) as "Single ?"

Come to think of it, that's a weird thing to mark on a three-track tape..

I'll see what to do. I have until next Wed. to figure it out...

 

I've decided to use take 7 of "You'll Never Know" for one of the mono bonus tracks on the JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS album on triple layer SACD.

I played all of the 14 takes carefully and as was suggested, used Capitol A&R producer Lee Gillette's response to the finished takes as a guide to what HE would have wanted. I chose take 7. It's beautiful and Lee yells a joyous "PLAYBACK!" at the end of it. Why they carried on after that is due to something technical in the music I think. The bass player was Charlie Harris and his opening notes were buzzing on many of the takes. Most takes only lasted until his second note before Lee stopped them. Of course when Lee announced "Take 13" Billy May said, "No, take 14!"

That got a laugh so for the remainder of the album Lee didn't announce a take 13, he skipped directly to take 14 (just to screw up discographers everywhere!) Lee also announced that his office was on the 13th floor of the round building..

At around take 9 Nat started bitching (well, lightly complaining) that he didn't want this to be one of those sessions where the songs were technically perfect but the performance without soul. Lee just wanted the opening notes to be perfect and kept after the bass player until he got what he wanted. I believe he had perfection with take 7 though and I'm sure he realized it after a day or so.

At any rate, take 7 is the one. I believe if the song had been picked for the album instead of put on the shelf for 30 years, they would have used take 7. The stereo reel had the last take preserved but I am sure the binaural engineer came to that choice just by the fact that it was the last take before they went to the next song so it was the "master".

By the way, if I may reproduce a part of the great Nat Sessionography here (courtesy of Jordan Taylor) you can see what an amazing band they put together for this album. "Sweets" Edison, Mannie Klein, Jimmy Rowles, Murray McEachern, 'Si' Zentner, Red Callender, Willie Smith and one of my favorite alto players (and the guy who gave the famous Glenn Miller Band the "Sound") Wilbur Schwartz (daddy of my mastering buddy Doug Schwartz).

This is like the entire Swing Era condensed into one great band. Wish I could have been there, dudes! When you get the SACD of JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS, play the three channel layer and try turning off the center channel (Nat's voice) and just groove to the music tracks. What a band... Don't forget to turn the center channel back on though. Gotta hear Nat!

----------------------
July 10, 1957
(Session #6133; 13:00-17:00) Capitol Recording Studio (Studio A), 1750 N. Vine Street, Hollywood, California

Nat Cole (vocal) Billy May (arranger/conductor) John Collins (guitar) Charles P. Harris (bass) Lee Young (drums) Louis 'Lou' Singer (percussion) James G. 'Jimmy' Rowles (piano) Fred Falensby (baritone saxophone) Jules Jacob (tenor saxophone) Theodore M. 'Ted' Nash (tenor saxophone) Wilbur Schwartz (alto saxophone) William McLeish 'Willie' Smith (alto saxophone) Edward Kuczborski 'Ed' Kusby (trombone) Murray McEachern (trombone) George Mortimore Roberts (bass trombone) Simon H. 'Si' Zentner (trombone) Harry Edward 'Sweets' Edison (trumpet) Conrad Gozzo (trumpet) Mannie Klein (trumpet) Uan Rasey (trumpet) Red Callender (tuba) Helen B. Hutchinson (harp)

(17285-11) Don't Get Around Much Anymore
(17286-15) The Song Is Ended (But The Melody Lingers On)
(17287-1 to 14) You'll Never Know UNISSUED in mono. Stereo, take 14 issued.
(17288-1 to 3) Just For The Fun Of It UNISSUED

 

Martin,

My mix style with this stuff is always the same. I pick an early 1950's Nat Cole song to emulate (usually the original versions of UNFORGETTABLE, PRETEND or TOO YOUNG). The way the orchestra sounds, the voice/music balance (the way Nat's voice is never drowned out and is always comfortably up front), this is how I mix the stereo stuff. It's worked so far. Check out my DCC Nat stuff!

I am always bummed by modern remixing engineers who treat old music like new music. They have the vocal and music at the same level by compressing the s**t out of both. Or, they let the music swell up over the vocal in spots, something they would never, but never have done back in the old days.

I was watching this "Tribute To Motown" thing on PBS last week hosted by my friend Mary Wilson. It was great seeing these old clips but they replaced some of the music with weird remixed versions. Why they didn't use the original Motown mixes I have no idea. They showed the Temptations singing "MY GIRL" and "AIN'T TOO PROUD TO BEG" with new mixes and at one part in the songs the music totally overwhelmed the vocals, buried them. Something Barry Gordy would never have allowed in a million years. Why couldn't they just leave the mixes alone or get someone who understands what they were trying to do in the first place?

We forget the old technique because we are so used to hearing the modern style of recording and mixing with everything at the same level..

Rant over!

By the way, one of the best remixing engineers was Larry Walsh when he worked at Capitol/EMI in the late 1980's or so. He matched the vocal/music levels of the old stuff pretty darn well..

 

All of the songs on JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS were made famous by someone else! The reason YOU'LL NEVER KNOW wasn't used is that they did 13 songs for a 12 song album. Something had to go and that was it.

There is a "fono reel" dupe of the mono take 14 of YOU'LL NEVER KNOW in the file. Perhaps that was duped for England in the 1980s? The session reel has not been touched since the 1950's that is for sure. The box seal and tape seal speak for that.

There are also two dubs in the file made from the three track folded to mono with echo added, back in the 1970's and 1980's. You can tell because of the wacky lack of rhythm foundation. This version actually has more echo than the mono original. Also take 14.

It is easy to tell Take 14. The drums and rhythm section are a bit off during the two stop-time orchestra sections when the saxes "soar". In other words they come in a bit late both times throwing the thing a bit off. Easy to tell.

I will use the unissued take 7 of the mono session reel. This is "THE" good take.

 

Agreed, some of that late 1980's Capitol stuff is almost mono. They had this thing about folding in the channels so the stereo is not really stereo but just a confused mess. However, that being said, Larry did maintain the correct music to vocal levels no matter how wacky the stuff turned out. Even when I was over at Capitol working on the Peggy Lee and Nat Cole stuff a few years ago they wanted to fold in the stereo channels so that the music was sort of stuck in between the center and the speakers. I made them put it back to normal but it was a struggle. People have certain mindsets that are just plain weird. (Of course they say the same thing about me...)

 

I'm sure that was the reason those were made. Odd that they went to the bother of doing it like that when they had the monos right there. Maybe they did the mono fold in the UK after they got the tapes? Who knows?

 

JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS is very difficult to mix in stereo due to the way it was recorded back in 1957. The three track has totally no limiting or compression on either the two music channels or the vocal channel. At first listen this seems like a good thing but after a few songs it becomes a bit distracting. Without squashing both it's pretty hard to do a good mix. When I was doing the mix at Capitol for the S&P LP their monitors and the nine miles of wiring in the playback room gave us the false impression of less dynamics than were really on the mixes. After I got home I was shocked that the mixes were too dynamic on a system with dynamic drive. Such is life.

The original 1958 stereo mix of JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS has an interesting history as well. They did the mix, cut it to the album master and then tried cutting a record with it but they couldn't. It was too dynamic. So, they redubbed it with heavy limiting and marked that limited version as "stereo master". They had the same problem in 1958 that I had. We solved it this time by bringing in our trusty Teletronix LA2a tube compressor for the vocals. Should be better this time around ("should" being the key word.)