Any thoughts on differing CD REISSUES: Mono/Stereo Martin Denny, Esquivel

It seems a European label called Rev-Ola is reissuing a good many Martin Denny titles in paper CD sleeves with both the mono & stereo versions of the albums in question on the disc. Can anyone provide some insight as to how different these would be? I know "Exotica" was allegedly re-recorded for the stereo version, but how dramatically different are the 2 versions? Am wondering whether I should collect the US 2fers or slowly go for these reissues that appear to be of Japanese origin. Sheer expense has me leaning towards US versions with 2 different albums on 1 cd.

Rev-Ola info for EXOTICA can be found here:
http://www.cherryred.co.uk/revola/artists/martindennycrrev101.htm
This particular site is having a 3 CDs for 25 British pounds sale, 5 for 35 (don't know how to make the sterling sign, sorry)

Dusty Groove America has a good deal more titles for $32.99:
http://www.dustygroove.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/dga/search.cgi?usersrch=martin+denny&issearch=yes

On another reissue note... regarding Bar/None's Esquivel 2-for-1s, one particular Amazon reviewer notes that the imports (presumably the RCA Spain versions) sound better. Am looking for some feedback on this as well. While I'm not abandoning vinyl, but CD does have some convenience to it. The problem as ever is which version to choose?

Mahalo for any feedback from fellow fanatics!

Cheers,
Rupe

[ Edited by: rupe33 on 2005-06-13 14:33 ]

If anyone's interested, there's a good overview of 2 of the Esquivel reissues here:
http://www.nippersplace.com/esquivel/cdreissues.php

Their Esquivel index page is here:
http://www.nippersplace.com/esquivel/index.php

On a related note, I picked up an RCA Spain cd of "Exploring New Sounds In Stereo," and it sounds fantastic. Will have to listen further at home, but it seems the tracks on this release sound better than the ones pulled from it for the "Space Age Bachelor Pad" compilation.

Whats up with Scamp Records? They released all of those Denny records on a 2-on-1, but they didn't include the mono versions. Did Denny really record separate mono versions of VERY LP? Or did the label just release mono versions of stereo recording sessions? I know the first LP "Exotica" was re-recorded in stereo, but what about the others? Scamp also put out the Maya Angelou & Robert Mitchum CD's as well.

The Rev-Ola mono/stereo CD reissue of "EXOTICA" arrived in my mailbox today. It's a digipak, which I'm not too fond of, but that's not too big a quibble. Being quite familiar with the mono version of "Quiet Village," I immediately cued up the stereo version on this cd. The difference was rather notable at first: the stereo version is slightly slower in my opinion. The other tracks are not as familiar to me, being that this is my first purchase of this record. Will try to compare them as the differences become apparent.

The reissue re-creates the sleeve front & back, and has some info about SPECTRA-SONIC-SOUND. The inside contains some liner notes from Joe Foster, who produced this reissue. Behind the CD tray are the other titles they've listed as Available or Coming Soon in this reissue series: Exotica I, II, III, Primitiva, Forbidden Island, Hypnotique, Quiet Village, Afro-Desia. Got my copy at a great price from the fine folks at http://www.dustygrooveamerica.com in Chicago.

Cheers,
Rupe

O.K. now I'm curious. One of the albums was recorded twice? Am I getting that right?Just to have a stereo version?

Or is it just a matter of getting the Scamp versions and hitting your mono button on the stereo if you want to?

I'd rather see more two-fers than yet another release of what's already out there on CD.

The only one I definitely know was recorded twice was "Exotica." As far as the others, it's not clear - I suspect that everything after that probably had both mono & stereo mixes as opposed to actual re-recordings. It looks like a year or three passed between the different recordings of "Exotica"--the notes on the album indicate the Mono version was recorded in December 1956, and Liberty "brought Denny back to the studio to re-record Exotica in stereo, from scratch --apparently a cheaper, technically simpler and more effective process than attempting a cursory remix." (from the Rev-Ola notes by Joe Foster.)

If the case is that the other albums are only different mixes, I'm not sure that I'm enough of a purist myself to want both Mono/Stereo versions of a record. Did get that Velvet Underground & Nico Deluxe Edition which had both, but to my ears the difference isn't very noticeable...probably due to the fact that I'm listening on the road or Metro, instead of quietly & studiously at home.

The Rev-Ola reissue of "Exotica" does have the 2 different versions of the album on it. If anyone would like, I could maybe edit 2 quick clips together to hear the differences in "Quiet Village" for comparison.

~Rupe

[ Edited by: rupe33 on 2005-06-23 20:44 ]

I wouldn't mind hearing the different versions if you have the time. Thanks!

Pardon my ignorance, but what's a digipak?

Digipak is the kind of CD package which is all cardboard, no jewelbox. It's an aesthetic dilemma in some ways for me: jewelboxes are a dime-a-dozen, but they offer better protection from the elements and such. Digipaks more accurately re-create the LP experience in that they're a chunk of cardboard you hold in your hand. The risk being that they're easier to damage via water or usage, or if the spokes on the inner tray break the package is kinda useless for holding the disc.

Some CDs that come in digipaks:
-I can feel the heart beating as one by Yo La Tengo (also Electr-o-pura and a number of their titles)
-Mass Romantic by the New Pornographers (first edition)
-The Tigers Have Spoken by Neko Case
-DVD-A version of Shangri-La by Mark Knopfler

I'll work on cutting together bits of 'Quiet Village' in the next week or so in order to demonstrate the difference.

Cheers,
Rupe

Oh...thanks. I actually like those better. Less wasteful I guess and I like the feel of paper/cardboard, etc. I have one where the spindle is actually a piece of heavy foam rubber.

I'll look forward to the sound clips.

i recently bought 2 3-cd sets. one was called "the great bill sevesi" (who intro'd exotica to australia and new zealand) and the other was "the great polynesian". it runs out they are exactly the same 3 cds, track for track. great listening, but really . . .

OK, I've edited together an MP3 of the first 30 seconds of both the Mono & Stereo versions of "Quiet Village." The stereo performance seems much slower to me. Hopefuly my AOL space will hold out for you to sample.

((YOINK looks like AOL shut down the location of my file)))

is the site. See what you think! The stereo version sounds slightly slower to me in tempo - and you can definitely tell the calls are a bit different.

Cheers,
Rupe

[ Edited by: rupe33 on 2005-07-01 18:04 ]

[ Edited by: rupe33 2009-02-27 10:51 ]

Greetings...
Rev-Ola's reissue of PRIMITIVA darkened my doorway today, courtesy of Dusty Groove in Chicago. $12.99 for a UK import version of this album, with both mono/stereo mixes. It also looks like they have The Exotic Sounds of Martin Denny compilation on Liberty reissued as well. Will post more thoughts once I've had a chance to listen...

By the way - am still interested to hear thoughts on the QV mono/stereo version. Let me know if that MP3 above isn't working.

cheers,
Rupe

While I'm not abandoning vinyl, but CD does have some convenience to it.

Just out of curiosity, then, why not just collect the original albums? The sound quality, while not necessarily better or worse, would at least be the ORIGINAL sound. And it seems to me it would be cheaper as well. I like CDs, too, but that's why I have a burner. Just a thought.

That's a cool question... and one I've had to give some thought to before responding. My partiality to vinyl stems purely from growing up with it and the memories attached to that: sneaking down to the record store after Mom had dropped me off at the Library, buying two 45s a week with my allowance, etc.

That being said - these records can be hard to come by, and when found they're not often in good shape. My pursuit of exotica has led me to buy the CDs when available, and the LPs of things that haven't been re-released. It's a judgment call, but the convenience & sound quality of the CDs (and the ease with which I can get them into the iPod) outweighs the nostalgic joys of the vinyl for me.

Others may have their own take on this; I'm curious as to your thoughts - the above is just my take on this, your mileage may vary.

Back to PRIMITIVA - some of the tracks on the Rev-Ola reissue frankly sound as if they've been taken directly from vinyl, as there are some pops recorded into the CD. I've sent an email to the company asking if this is indeed the case, as it's not mentioned on the packaging at all. Will post anything I find out.

[ Edited by: rupe33 2005-09-30 06:58 ]

On 2005-06-21 14:50, spy-tiki wrote:
O.K. now I'm curious. One of the albums was recorded twice? Am I getting that right?Just to have a stereo version?

If memory serves, I've heard that Exotica and Exotica II were recorded twice: once for their original monaural release, and the second for the stereo edition. I am only certain of it with the first album, and after numerous listenings over the last few years prefer the mono edition. Frankly -- and it could just be me -- I find Denny's piano work on the first to be a bit more "inspired." Maybe it is, as someone else mentioned, simply a matter of speed to the playing.

It is also, perhaps, notable that there was a line-up change between the mono and stereo recordings of Exotica, with Arthur Lyman on the former, and Julius Wechter on the latter.

Cheers,
Gwen Smith

Yeah Gwen, I think you're right on that one. From what I know of the story (I could be wrong), what happened was that when Denny decided to re-record the album in stereo, Mr. Lyman had already left the group to form his own band. Mr. Denny's decision to use Julian Wechter, and the fame of the original recording, led Denny to meticulously re-create the mono recording for the stereo recording as closely as possible -- including the exact alignment of the group's improvised birdcalls.

However one detail that cannot be found on both recordings is the sound of a vehicle driving past the Dome that they were recording in. I can't remember, off-hand, on which version (mono or stereo) the vehicle is on.

If any of you have stayed on O'ahu, prior to about 1997 or so, you might recall the big aluminum dome that was out towards the front of the Hilton Hawaiian Village property. Many shows were presented in the Dome (I even played in there once), and that is where some of the earlier albums were recorded.

Then they tore down the dome, and there was a mini-golf course near where it used to be (which is now gone).

Hope this helps.

On 2005-06-23 18:58, rupe33 wrote:
...I suspect that everything after that probably had both mono & stereo mixes as opposed to actual re-recordings. It looks like a year or three passed between the different recordings of "Exotica"--the notes on the album indicate the Mono version was recorded in December 1956, and Liberty "brought Denny back to the studio to re-record Exotica in stereo, from scratch --apparently a cheaper, technically simpler and more effective process than attempting a cursory remix." (from the Rev-Ola notes by Joe Foster.)

I think Joe Foster might have neglected one thing when writing his notes, which is that records weren't actually mixed in the 1950s.

That process didn't begin until the 1960s with the advent and widespread propagation of 3 and/or 4-track machines (and then 8-, 16-, 24- etc. tracks as time went on).

Before the advent of multitrack (thank Les Paul, among others, for helping to come up with the idea), records were played live in the studio directly to disc or tape. No remixing or overdubbing. A 'balance engineer' (obsolete job title) did a primitive version of what we now call mixing on the fly during the artist's performance.

Anyway, a 'cursory remix' - never mind whether or not it was possible at the time - would always be cheaper than a re-recording, hands down.

On 2005-09-30 06:56, rupe33 wrote:

Back to PRIMITIVA - some of the tracks on the Rev-Ola reissue frankly sound as if they've been taken directly from vinyl, as there are some pops recorded into the CD. I've sent an email to the company asking if this is indeed the case, as it's not mentioned on the packaging at all. Will post anything I find out.

Did you ever hear anything back about this?

Before the advent of multitrack (thank Les Paul, among others, for helping to come up with the idea), records were played live in the studio directly to disc or tape. No remixing or overdubbing. A 'balance engineer' (obsolete job title) did a primitive version of what we now call mixing on the fly during the artist's performance.

In the early days of two-track stereo, it was not uncommon to have two engineers and tape set-ups at a session - one mixing the mono recording and one mixing the stereo recording. The two could sound radically different.

On 2008-01-18 04:53, Quiet Village Idiot wrote:

On 2005-09-30 06:56, rupe33 wrote:
Back to PRIMITIVA - some of the tracks on the Rev-Ola reissue frankly sound as if they've been taken directly from vinyl, as there are some pops recorded into the CD. I've sent an email to the company asking if this is indeed the case, as it's not mentioned on the packaging at all. Will post anything I find out.

Did you ever hear anything back about this?

Alas, nope. Did write to Rev-Ola that same day, never received a response. Am still grateful for the convenience of having these on CD... but if they're taken from vinyl pressings with all the inherent noise, I feel that should rightfully be noted somewhere on the packaging.

Cheers,
Rupe

I didn't hear any surface noise on the stereo versions. Maybe only the mono tracks?

On 2008-01-18 05:40, OnyaBirri wrote:

Before the advent of multitrack (thank Les Paul, among others, for helping to come up with the idea), records were played live in the studio directly to disc or tape. No remixing or overdubbing. A 'balance engineer' (obsolete job title) did a primitive version of what we now call mixing on the fly during the artist's performance.

In the early days of two-track stereo, it was not uncommon to have two engineers and tape set-ups at a session - one mixing the mono recording and one mixing the stereo recording. The two could sound radically different.

Perhaps, but this doesn't change my point in any way - there was no remix going on after the fact, at a later date, to get the different versions.

Perhaps, but this doesn't change my point in any way - there was no remix going on after the fact, at a later date, to get the different versions.

I wasn't saying that remixing was going on, I was simply expanding on your post.

That said, occasionally a two-track stereo was mixed to mono if there was not a separate mono recording. Also - regardless of whether a session was taped in stereo or not - additional elements were sometimes added later and mixed on the fly to another mono master.

Just so you know, even back in the "mono" days, a few record companys who were on the ball actually made stereo recordings before stereo was available to the general public. When stereo became accepted as a home format, all the record companys who still cut records in mono had to create "psudo-stereo" mixes from the mono recordings (usually by splitting the mono track and adding a slight delay or chorus effect on one of the splits) So some of those older stereo records weren't really stereo at all. Atlantic records was one of the first to make stereo recordings before it was popular and had the first "true" stereo records available when the first stereo turntables came out. Atlantic would actually mix the two channels together to make a mono record from a stereo recording so it could be played on mono systems. Atlantic was also recording to tape in the early 50's as they had one of the first Ampex 1/4" decks made and recorded in stereo long before Les Paul made his 1" 8 track. Almost everyone else was still cutting right to disc. The tape format is older than you think, there just weren't many record companys willing to take the plunge at the time. There was "post recording mixing" going on in the 50's, just not the way we think of it today. Just a little recording history 101 from an old fart engineer.

Tiki Bill.

[ Edited by: Tiki Bill 2008-01-19 08:00 ]

Right, if I am not mistaken, tape was first commercially available in 1948, a product of WWII technology.
(More history from another old fart engineer!)

The Japanese company Vivid Sound seems to have released these cardboard sleeve mini-LP cds concurrently with Rev-Ola (in 2007). What would interest me is: any differences, particularly regarding sound quality. I don't trust UK labels like Real Gone, Cherry Red/El or Rev-Ola to do thoughtful remastering. Usually they just bootleg someone else's mp3s that they've found on the web. I'd like to think that a Japanese label would offer superior audio fidelity, as is often the case with their reissues. So, I'm just wondering if anyone has compared Rev-Ola vs. Vivid Sound editions? Don't want to pay 3X as much just for an obi.

And, yes, a nice clean copy of the original vinyl can't be beat.