Family Portrait

If we're thinking of the same album: he may have produced a couple of *tracks* on the album, but it was just an A&M compilation of the many artists they had on the label. Jobim had one of the tracks--one or two of the other CTi artists may have had others, but beyond that, it was just standard A&M fare.

It could have been in Creed's contract that his "signature" and logo would appear on all records that he was involved in and they were just dotting the "I's" and crossing the "T's" with this.

Harry

The two CTi tracks on each side have a little asterisk next to them referring you to the little asterisk next to the "produced by Creed Taylor" logo.

--Mr Bill

...proving that not only does FAMILY PORTRAIT still do what it was designed to do, but so does the asterisk!

Harry

I've finally gotten around to transferring FAMILY PORTRAIT to CD-R after all these years. It's one of those little side projects that's always been on the back burner, but with my recent discovery of just how different "Like A Lover" is from its LOOK AROUND counterpart (in terms of mix), I decided to accelerate the process.

First I had to find the cleanest vinyl versions of four tracks that I don't own on CD. They are "The Debutante's Ball" by Liza Minnelli; this "Like A Lover" mix from Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66; "Baja Humbug" from the Baja Marimba Band; and "House Of The Rising Sun" by Herbie Mann.

"Debutante's Ball" is only in my collection on FAMILY PORTRAIT, as is the different "Like A Lover". I have a couple of copies of "Baja Humbug", but the cleanest version is on the best FAMILY PORTRAIT that I own. And this album also holds my only copy of the Herbie Mann tune.

Next I dragged out the CDs for Herb Alpert, Sandpipers, Chris Montez, Claudine Longet, Burt Bacharach, and all of the others that I have in my collection, ripped them into the computer as WAV files, mixed in the WAV files I created for the four FP tracks, and assembled a CD. Then I searched the Web for some already-scanned-in artwork with reasonable success, and voila! I have a CD-R of this excellent compilation from the classic days of A&M.

Harry

I've done those type as well over the years. But after awhile, the permanence of the ticks and pops becomes mildly annoying. This project was more of a compilation effort - a "let's see if I can make this can sound great" job, all started by acquiring a sealed FAMILY PORTRAIT LP. And that purchase was spurred on by wanting the cleanest possible version of "Like A Lover" in its one-of-a-kind mix found on this album. The FAMILY PORTRAIT LPs I've had over the years were my old well-worn original and another that must have been from a flea-market haul.

And I started out with the idea of using the new vinyl, start to finish, but even "new" vinyl has its imperfections sometimes, and this album was no exception. It was particularly noisy on the outermost tracks on both sides. This sometimes happens with older sealed vinyl that might have had rough handling of was filed in tight spaces. Fortunately the four tracks that I didn't own on CD were all inner-tracks and in nice shape.

I've made a CD-R as well as transferring the files to my MP3 player and I did one of those really good jobs of matching levels and cleaning up the couple of spots that needed it, to the point that I don't think I could tell the four vinyl tracks from the CD-sourced ones.

Harry

It could be dirty vinyl, too, after all those years. It depends on how it was handled prior to packaging.

One of the worst things I've ever found are those "gummy" plastic sleeves, the type I'd seen a few A&M Canada LPs shipped in. They adhere to the vinyl and leech plasticizer, and it's difficult to get off without something potent. You can see the swirls on the vinyl from the plastic, in fact, after you've peeled it off.

True. We've all opened brand new, current vinyl and found it sealed in its package with a fair amount of dust from paper inner sleeves to whatever was floating around in the pressing plant that day. Well, this "new" vinyl sat for forty-odd years allowing that dust to adhere, harden, cake-up, all manner of evils that could be attributed to heat and humidity levels in storage, etc.

So I wasn't surprised that the disk needed a bit of cleaning to once again sound new. It cleaned up nicely, though.

Harry

Some also come out really clean. The last sealed A&M I opened was the TJB's Volume 2 in the original jacket. I was going to leave it sealed, but I wanted to see if mine had the logo at "high noon" instead of on the left side....no luck. But it played clean! I didn't even need to put it on the vac.

Here's a challenge for you Photoshop experts.

This is an ad for the A&M in the FAMILY PORTRAIT days, utilizing the picture that was used on the cover. It came from an eBay seller years ago. Unfortunately the two halves are missing a bit of information.



Utilizing a scan of the cover (say, the one below), is it possible to fill in some of the missing picture information?



I've attempted it, but can't seem to get the sizing/color anywhere close.

Harry

For brightness/contrast (aka "levels") and color balance, that's actually the easiest part--I was able to match those within a minute or two with an adjustment layer.

The sizing will be a problem. What I do first is cut out the white separator in the main photo. Then, I paste in the album cover and put it in a layer underneath. I go back to the main photo and change the opacity so that I can see both covers. From there I can resize and nudge the album cover image so that it lines up.

However...

Something is off with one or both pictures. I can set it up so Herb's face is mostly clear, but the other elements are off. IOW, Liza's dress and the table cloth are still "ghosting". It seems like I get the size close but it also seems like one of the images may be stretched slightly.

Once it is massaged into the right size though, it should go together easily. The only thing is the top of the album cover (with the lettering) would need to be reconstructed a bit...and we'd use the clone tool for that.

The album cover would need to be scanned at the same resolution also. And I would emphasize "scan" as photographing covers involves a lot of keystoning and other distortions, which can take forever to line up. At least a nice flat scan levels the playing field.

Hmmm. I could probably help, but since all I see for the ad scan is a "red X" I can't do much for now...