The Lonely Bull (mono)

[Patrick J Gray]

Any chance of ever getting a digital recording of "The Lonely Bull" album in mono ? Most of you must know by now that the stereo release (on both LP, and remastered CD) is a horrible hack job of re-mixing with overdubs that are too loud over background parts that are all left or right in the stereo pan field. I've made my own from a mono LP, but as you can imagine, there's a lot of disturbing surface noise I couldn't filter out.

 

[Harry]

Hi Patrick, welcome to the A&M Corner Forum. My gut feeling is that any further releases that we see from Herb of this older material will all be of the stereo variety. I could be wrong. Maybe Steve S. can investigate further as to any plans for mono releases.

THE LONELY BULL in stereo can be a jarring and uncomfortable experience, especially with so much music today being played over headphones as many of us listen privately. I've done exactly as you said you did, take a mono LP, clean it up, and digitize it, which may be the best way to go. If your LP is really noisy, perhaps seek out another copy - they're generally not that expensive, and back in THE LONELY BULL days, there were a lot of mono purchases. My copy has a few ticks and pops here and there, but nothing that spoils the listening experience.

Oh - one more suggestion: try mono-ing out the mono album. Believe it or not, that simple technique can often minimize a lot of surface noise.

Harry

 

[Patrick J Gray]

Thank you, Harry...I'll try that (monoing the mono)...I would also like to see "The Band Are Coming" released on CD (it might have been for a short time) or even a downloadable MP3

 

[Rudy]

There was a download available of The Brass Are Comin' not too long ago, but Herb's deal with Shout!Factory ended. But hang tight, as there is a large batch of reissues coming in the next few months--CDs, downloads, even high-res audio. I'll be posting any new information on our www.tijuanabrass.com site as it arrives.

 

[Captain Bacardi]

Thank you, Harry...I'll try that (monoing the mono)...I would also like to see "The Band Are Coming" released on CD (it might have been for a short time) or even a downloadable MP3

The Brass Are Comin' was briefly available on CD from Japan many years ago. Long out of print now....

 

[Mike Blakesley]

A person could always just "mono-ize" the CD issue of The Lonely Bull. Your mileage may vary though, I'm not sure if the mix is the same (probably not, eh?)

 

[Harry]

I'm not sure if the mix is the same (probably not, eh?)

Nope. Very different. The stereo added an extra trumpet track from Herb all alone on the left channel on the title track. "Acapulco 1922" added those loud woodblocks, and there's a different ad-lib in "Crawfish" - all part of what make the mono mix special.

 

[bob]

mike, harry is right about the mono mixes they are different, as listed the songs listed above are different, than the stereo mixes like the song mexico that is a differet mix from the stereo.so my guess the bootleg version that was on ebay is taken

from the stereo version and mixed to mono and they tried to pass it off as the mono and stereo versions. but we true fans know the differece.

take care
bob

 

[KentTeffeteller]

This LP in mono is very common in most areas, sold many, many copies. And a clean original can be had with hunting. And should be very cheap.

 

[bob]

Kent Teffetelle you can find just about all of the tjb albums on local goodwill stores including the lonely bull if you are new to this the lonely bull will have stereo at the bottom right hand corner and the mono version will not.

bob

 

[Rudy]

That reminds me of the time I saw this album listed on eBay, no condition given, for $75, plus $9 shipping.

Locally I could buy 28 copies of the album for that much.

 

[Bobberman]

I was lucky to get a very clean mono copy of " The Lonely bull" Lp back in the 80s and im happy to say it has not been played too much since and i still have it along with a very nice sounding needle drop transfer to CDR. ( Done over a decade ago by a good friend.) And i see mono versions of this and other Herb Alpert titles on occasion in the used shops. So it just takes a little searching. Sometimes you will find them when you are not even consciously. Looking for them ( as has been my experience.)

 

[KentTeffeteller]

What is hard to find however is any pressing with a A&M Logo on top or a cream colored original label in my area.

 

[Steve Sidoruk]

You just never know where & when they will turn up!

 

[Rudy]

I unsealed a Volume 2 a few years ago to see if it had the 12 o'clock label but, no dice.

The only cream label I found was for the George McCurn album (SP-102). But that's expected since it probably sold in the dozens, and never had a second pressing run. (Even a couple of soul/R&B collectors I know have barely heard of McCurn.)

 

[Bobberman]

Interesting you mentioned George McCurn i saw on amazon about a year ago ''country boy goes to town " as an mp3 release i bought it cause i lost my vinyl version long ago. It was in mono ( i suspect a foldown. From the stereo release) overall sound quality was acceptable given it is a 50+ year old recording. The label was vintage masters. I thought id chime in about my discovery i did make several cd copies of the download and they sound fine.

 

[Rudy]

It is actually quite a good sounding recording in stereo. It was released in both mono and stereo, so there's really no need to do a fold-down unless the stereo copy was in bad shape.

 

[Bobberman]

It is actually quite a good sounding recording in stereo. It was released in both mono and stereo, so there's really no need to do a fold-down unless the stereo copy was in bad shape.

I agree my vinyl copy was in stereo and it was such a tragic loss but im glad to have it back in some form and on a CDR. I Dont think it will ever see a proper cd release and i just checked amazon today and its no longer availible on the u.s amazon digital music. But it appears to be availible on amazon in other countries.

 

[Acapulco 1922]

Why is the wide stereo mixing something *SO* many people get retentive about(?). I think, it's fun to be able to listen to "isolated" parts of a recording, alone, sometimes (depending on: which direction your balance control is set); where, you can "get inside" the details of the musicianship better.
What is the point, then(?), of assembling a system which -at least- aims to be "transparent"-sounding, if: you want the effect to be reminiscent of a pocket or AM car radio?

 

[KentTeffeteller]

The overdub of the title track to make it Stereo is why most people don't like the single sides in Stereo here. The mono original is one channel, the added overdubs are on the other channel. The rest of the LP in Stereo is very good.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Plus, if a person is a headphone listener, isolated stereo sounds terrible in headphones.

 

[Rudy]

The overdub of the title track to make it Stereo is why most people don't like the single sides in Stereo here.

A couple other tracks sound similar to 2-track to me. In other words, they were recorded in 2-channel but were never meant to be released that way. At least with other recordings from that era (many labels, many artists), the 2-tracks were more like an early version of multitrack, where the tracks were intended to be mixed down to mono. The quick and dirty way to get a stereo version was to--you guessed it--released the 2-track as "stereo." And based on many recordings I've heard from the early stereo days, it is not uncommon. Yes, there were "wide" stereo mixes (including all the early TJBs...and you can tell since the sounds were balanced between hard left/center/hard right), but 2-track was never intended to be released as stereo.

Short version? I don't like 2-track recordings released as stereo. Give me the monaural.

(Not knocking the new remastered release--the intention was to release the recordings as-is.)

I think the Dave Lewis Little Green Thing was also a 2-track. The stereo has Lewis in one channel, and the drums and guitar in the other. I would have to listen to it again to be certain.

 

[Bobberman]

[QUOTE="Rudy, post: 1

I think the Dave Lewis Little Green Thing was also a 2-track. The stereo has Lewis in one channel, and the drums and guitar in the other. I would have to listen to it again to be certain.[/QUOTE]
I been looking for that Dave Lewis A&M album and it looks like the Mono version would probably be the one to get ( depending on the condition and price) i know its a very scarce album like George McCurn's and since Lewis was from near my neck of the woods in the pacific northwest. I might have a better chance to track down a
copy . Sometimes it seems mono versions of some LPs sound better than their stereo counterparts. And As we been discussing here The Lonely Bull is just one such example

 

[Harry]

On the LITTLE GREEN THING album, Dave's playing on the left and his reverb trails off to the right. The guitar and drums in the right do the opposite, reverb trailing off to the left. This makes the hard-panning a little more tolerable than straight hard pans while listening with headphones.

 

[Rudy]

It was common to put reverb on early stereo recordings--I can think of many where the stereo version has added reverb (some of them, way too much reverb in fact*), in an attempt to impress consumers, and the mono is more on the dry side.

*Stan Kenton's Viva Kenton on Capitol is probably the worst I've heard in terms of added reverb. It is swimming in so much of it that it blurs a lot of the music, making all of the horn parts a jumble of sound, and the bass is buried. I am normally not a fan of remixes, but that is one instance where the remix on CD finally clears up a lot of that muck and uses the reverb sparingly.

BTW, I tend to think the Little Green Thing album was licensed (or at least, provided in finished form) to A&M, not recorded there, as (like @Bobberman says) Lewis was not L.A. base but from the pacific northwest, and the sound quality doesn't anywhere near resemble what A&M was doing at the time. Lewis could have been shopping around a finished album to get it distributed. I had first found a beaten mono copy for only a couple of dollars, but found the stereo a few years later for an affordable price. Probably $10 or less. Today I don't see any on Discogs under $20.