The Assassin: Show Notes 9/23-27

 Killing the Undesirables

The Anatomy of a Pop

Last week in this space, we discussed the cleaning of vinyl records, and I shared my DIY record-cleaning solution, which has given me terrific results. You can hear those results every week on the show. We talked about the many contaminants that might be found on records, especially records of the age that we normally play. I have washed everything from Pepsi and decades-old gravy to mold and tobacco juice off of records, all just to get down to the sweet, sweet music underneath. Sometimes it's been worth the effort. other times not so much. 

Of course, it's nice to play a clean record; but what we find underneath all that muck and mire is still a coin-toss. If we're lucky, we will find that we had a record that was dirty but undamaged. Records can get damaged in a lot of ways, but the most common damage to records is simple wear. Ever notice that popular records of great music often sound terrible, while records of stuff nobody wants to hear are pristine? Well, of course they do. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a 50-year-old polka album and thought, "How about that...no wear on it at all..." Well, duh! The really good stuff's been played to a frazzle!

Soooo...now that we have a nice clean record to work with, all we have to worry about is actual groove damage. And this can be very time-consuming and tedious to overcome. I've had lots of people come to me over the years with an album or a stack of albums that belonged to their mom and dad, and they want to hear them again for old times' sake, but they sound scratchy or skip all over the place and they want to know if I can clean them up for them. Maybe burn them to a CD or a flash drive..? The first thing I always do is go to eBay and Amazon and see if the album is available on CD. If so, game over. Buy the CD for $10 plus shipping, and you'll save me 20 hours of high-concentration restoration work. I must admit, it's been tempting on a few occasions to just buy the CDs, burn them a copy, and let them marvel at the amazing job I did on their old records. But I would never do that. 

So, let's get down to specifics. I promised last week that I would spill the beans on the cartridge and stylus I prefer, and the software I use to accomplish these tasks. Let's start with the cartridge and stylus. I'm in love with the Shure M-55, a cartridge with origins in the early 1960s that's been refined and improved through the years. I especially like this cartridge for a couple of specific reasons: (1) The Sound. It has a "dated" sound characterized by a solid mid-range and a very smooth top end. It has a warmth and creaminess because of full, firm bass response coupled with the absence of the super-bright top end favored by many audiophiles today. Remember, I'm re-processing LP audio from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s for the most part. Even after the advent of Hi Fi, it was rare to find much of anything but noise on a record above 11 or 12 kHz. On many, the ceiling is much lower. That's the first reason: I think the sound of the Shure M-55 suits the material I'm working on to a "T." 

Reason (2): The Styli. Last time I checked, Shure made about 8 different styli for the M-55 (the N-44 Stylus Series). They made conical styli, elliptical styli, high-tracking-force styli, mono styli, a 78 stylus, and a few others. Most of these are still readily available as NOS. In addition, several manufacturers are still making a variety of high quality knockoffs which perform very well. Old LPs come with a mix-N-match set of problems, and this arsenal of stylus choices offers appropriate paths to success for most of them.

Now, let's devote a little attention to software. Again, there are many choices available, and the greatest difference between most of them seems to be ease of use, rather than raw capability. I have a couple of favorites that I dearly love. One is Wave Corrector, made by Ganymede Test & Measurement in the UK. I paid $45 for this software 20 years ago, and have added every update as it was introduced. I think the most recent update was made in 2011. It's a free download now for Windows machines. WavCor is an open-ended digital recorder. By that I mean it will start recording when you hit the red button, and it will continue recording until you tell it to stop. No initializing of a blank file to record on. See the picture at the top of this blog? that's a screen shot of the main screen of WavCor. In the center is a nice, big, fat, juicy pop. WavCor kills them dead, dead, dead, without a trace. It has an automated sweep feature, and it's extremely simple to manually kill a pop that the auto sweep misses. It also has some noise filtering that works well for certain types of surface noise and tape hiss.

Sometimes, a record is covered with a certain type of pop that is better removed by the Auto pop & click removal feature of Adobe Audition. I have version 1.5, and its pop & click elimination and surface noise reduction features are very effective. Of course, there is a learning curve, but you learn to predict which records will give the best results with WavCor and which with Audition. 

And then there is Goldwave. I love this program for easy and quick manicuring of music files. Once the file is clean, I use Goldwave to adjust the EQ curve, add compression or expansion, manicure the beginning and end of the file, and set the peak volume level (normalization). 

These are the methods and tools I've used on LP records to clean and prep over 40,000 music files from the World's Greatest Record Library over the last 20 years or so. Next week, we start revealing the secrets of restoring audio from 78 records. 

As for this week's show, we kick off Hour 1 with our first-ever feature on the Metronome All Star Band. This band was a Dream Team of Jazz whose members were selected according to the results of Metronome magazine's annual Readers' Poll. This band only played together once, for a recording session held in January of each year. Generally, the band laid down two sides for posterity. Different record labels did the sessions from year to year, and the proceeds were donated to the AFM Pension Fund. As you might imagine, the musicians selected and the sound of the band evolved tremendously over the years, sometimes with stark differences in sound and approach from one year to the next. We'll take a listen to the All-Stars from 1939 (the first year), 1941, 1944, 1947, 1950 and 1953. You will be amazed at the evolution in Jazz represented by these records.

Hour 2 begins with a loving look back at some of the best records made by the Stan Kenton band. We concentrate on the band's "hit years" between 1941 and 1950. This big, brash, bombastic band was so brass-heavy with 5 and sometimes 6 trumpets and 4 or 5 trombones, it had trouble really swinging a lot of the time, although some of the members, like singer Anita O'Day, worked hard to overcome that. But swinging was never as important to Stan as making progressive sounds with new and unusual shadings and harmonies. His was the first progressive band to gain national prominence, and it paved the way for Herman's Herds of the 1940s and for the wide acceptance of Bop just a couple of years later. We'll hear a good representative sampling of the band's output from that period.

In addition, we will enjoy the sounds of Artie Shaw, Casa Loma, Will Bradley, the Benny Goodman Sextet. Earl Hines, and many more. Count Basie will tickle the ivories, the Andrews Sisters will harmonize, Gene Krupa will beat some skins, and the one and only Helen Kane will bring us the original recording of her signature song from 1929 in this week's Wayback feature. All told, a show not to be missed!

Remember to contact a young musician or band student and invite them to listen to the show with you this week. They need to hear this music, and they need to know that you support their musical dreams. 

As always, we'd love to hear from you with a comment or request, either here or on our Facebook page. Be kind to one another this week, and above all, 

Keep Swinging! 

Scott    

   

                       

The Vinyl Solution: Show Notes 9/16-20

 Great Sound from Good Records

Our trusty JVC QL Y5F

Every week, In the Mood meets the challenge of getting great audio from a huge collection of very old recordings. We have about 10,000 discs (and cylinders) in the World's Greatest Record Library, and none of them were made in this century. Obviously, the 78s are mostly original issues of the Big Band hits from the 1930s and 40s. 78s were pretty much phased out by the major US record labels by 1958, and they present their own specific set of challenges. But for this blog post, we're going to concentrate on how we pull great audio from the LP section of the collection.

LP records were introduced by Columbia in 1948. LP stands for Long-Playing, to differentiate these new discs from the standard 78 records, which were mainly singles with one song on each side. The original LP records were 10 inch discs like the old 78 format, but they contained four songs on each side instead of just one. This expanded recording time was achieved by a combination of two factors: narrower grooves and slower turntable speed. Recording studios, radio stations and record labels had been using 33.3 rpm discs since the early 1930s. Generally used for mastering, archiving and industrial purposes, such as the audio tracks for Vitaphone movies, these records were for internal uses and were never made available to the general public. Some were pressed on shellac, but most were pressed on vinyl, yielding longer record times and less surface noise. But all were cut using the same 0.03" groove size as 78 records. When Columbia came out with the LP record, it turned at 33.3 rpm, but it had a much narrower 0.007" groove, or microgroove. The sound quality was noticeably better, with higher highs, lower lows, and a much quieter surface.

Within a year, Columbia was leasing out its new technology to other record labels, and the new format began to proliferate. Almost immediately, Columbia and Victor began digging into their vaults, re-processing and re-releasing material from the 1930s and early 40s in the new format. 

By the mid-1960s, the labels were employing an arsenal of new and improved tools to make new and old recordings sound better than ever before. Sophisticated equalization circuits had been developed, allowing for correction and re-balancing of the tonal quality of older recordings. RCA had developed the compression amplifier in the late 40s, and its presence can be heard on their new recordings of 1948-49, offering a smoother sound, fuller bass response and a higher average volume level without distortion. All of these advancements lent new life to the re-releases of older recordings. 

One particularly important new technique developed by RCA in the late 1950s brought us The Great Band Era, a landmark box set of LPs chock-full of re-processed Big Band hits from the 1930s and 40s with surprisingly excellent sound quality. This was achieved by going back to the original metal molds used to press the 78 records of those days, cleaning them carefully, and making brand-new pressings of these recordings on high quality vinyl. These new 78 pressings were then tracked and recorded on tape, where engineers re-balanced the tonal characteristics, and even used razor blades and splicing tape to literally "cut out" the small pops and clicks that were inherent in even the most pristine recordings from that era. Using these steps, RCA was able to achieve new heights in audio quality for these old recordings. They partnered with Readers' Digest to market a slew of these box sets to the public, including The Great Band Era, The Swing Years, In the Groove with the Kings of Swing, and many others.These box sets were made available in original mono with just a slight dab of added reverb, and in a version that was literally ruined with fake stereo effects. We've successfully gathered together a group of excellent mono copies of these box sets in the World's Greatest Record Library, and all have been digitized and sanitized for use on the show. Of course, a lot of what we play on the show was recorded in the 1950s Hi Fi Era, and some even in the post-1957 Stereo Era. 

It's our job to get the cleanest, most original sound from all of these recordings. And here's how we do it. First and foremost, we have to start with a clean record. The newest records we play on the show date back 50 to 60 years. Over that span of time, all kinds of trash can be expected to find its way onto the record surface and into the grooves. Even carefully-handled records of that age are generally filthy at the microscopic level of stylus and groove. Vinyl records often hold a static charge, literally making them a dust magnet. Then, there's the cigarette smoke, household dust, pet dander, chicken grease, newsprint, sweat, and every other kind of grease and grime people have on their hands. It's all there on their records. Now, add a half-century to let it all solidify, and you've got a genuine challenge to deal with. 

Obviously, we don't want to play any of that stuff; we just want to hear the record. When that needle comes down, we want it touching nothing but vinyl. And so, we've developed a simple, affordable and effective way to remove the garbage from the record without damaging the surface. 

Record collectors have come up with a lot of ways to do this over the years. Here's the method I use.

***NOTICE*** This method is recommended for vinyl records ONLY. Shellac 78s may be irreparably damaged by this method. We'll cover 78 cleaning methods in an upcoming post. 

Get a clean, new spray bottle and rinse it with distilled water. In the bottle, make a mixture of 10 parts distilled water, 4 parts 91% rubbing alcohol and a few drops of liquid Jet Dry. Mix well. Spray both sides of the record with the mixture and wipe it into the grooves with a microfiber cloth or painting pad. I've used a clean, dry wash cloth with excellent results. Wipe the solution thoroughly into the record surface, and then rinse with a second spray bottle filled with distilled water only. Dry the record thoroughly with a clean, dry towel. I just use a terrycloth towel that's been laundered without fabric softener. it's very important to remove all the water from the surface. Try to avoid letting any water evaporate off the surface, as even distilled water can leave an unwanted deposit, which you will clearly hear when playing the record.

This is an aggressive process, and should be necessary only once or maybe twice in a record's life. After you've performed this process, you should be able to keep the record pristine with a Discwasher or other standard record-dusting system.

I'll go into detail about the stylus and cartridge I use, plus the digital tools I routinely use to enhance the original quality of these antique recordings next week. But, if nothing else, this post will get you well on your way to playing clean records from now on.

This week's show is a doozie, with the hot, swinging trumpet work of the great Bunny Berigan and the extra-danceable arrangements of Ralph Flanagan in the Swingin' Spotlight. You'll hear these features at the beginning of each hour of the show. In addition, we'll hear from the great bands of Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, and more. That skinny kid Frank Sinatra will swing one with the Tommy Dorsey band. And we'll even hear Cut 1 from Side 1 of the very first modern (1958) LP from Ray Conniff and his orchestra. Billie Holiday will sing one with Teddy Wilson, Jack Teagarden will sing and take a tram-bone coda, and we even reunite Jimmy Durante with his old pals Eddie Jackson and Lou Clayton for this week's unforgettable Wayback feature.

Call a young musician or band student this week and invite them to listen to the show with you. Believe me, they NEED to hear this music, and they need to know that you support them. 

As always, we'd love to hear from you with a comment or request, either here or on our Facebook Page. Above all, be kind to one another this week, and 

Keep Swinging! 

Scott                    

Arts & Crafts: Show Notes 9/9-13

 A Collaborative Effort

RCA Record Cutting Lathe 1940

Record-making is a tough deal. A complex and unforgiving proposition that demands total concentration from all participants at all times throughout the process. Especially the records we play on In the Mood. 

In the 1930s and much of the 40s, commercial recordings were mastered direct-to-disc, which is the most difficult way to record. Any error, technical or artistic, could cause the take to be scrapped. The only option at the time was to start over from the top. So, on recording day, everybody had to get it right, at the same time,  from the artist at the microphone to the engineer  at the cutting table. 

Just imagine all the things that could possibly go wrong: the singer could be hearing back from that pizza from last night; the trumpeter may have a cold; a microphone might crackle; the gain rider may fail to anticipate a loud note and it over-modulates. And there were a million possible problems with the disc cutter itself. Getting a technically flawless take on disc was something of a minor technical miracle carried out multiple times daily at various locations in New York, New Jersey, L. A., Hollywod, Chicago and elsewhere. That's why I'm always impressed when I note that the famous Big Band recording I'm about to play was Take 1 in the studio. And doubly so when the recording is of a virtuoso performance on the level of Berigan's I Can't Get Started or Harry James' Flight of the Bumble Bee. There are a hundred ways a record cutting lathe can thwart the efforts of even the most attentive technicians. The process was, in fact, a significant fire hazard. The extremely fine shaving of acetate that was planed off the surface of the blank record was highly flammable; many radio stations, for example, had announcers in a booth on the ground floor with the mic wired to a cutting table in a concrete room in the basement with buckets of sand stationed about the room.    

And that's before we even get to making actual records. The record-pressing process itself is loud, hot, dangerous and sweaty. Steam is jetting about, and the presses are applying extreme heat and pressure. Toxic chemicals are used in the plating process and chemical baths. 

All of it done with no computers, no editing capabilities, and no margin for error. Pretty Impressive. What you hear on the record is exactly what went down in the studio. Until about 1946. If you've ever listened to the Edward R. Murrow collection I can Hear It Now, you were hearing the first obvious example of tape editing on a commercially-released recording.

Since Glenn Miller died in 1944, before the advent of tape recording  technology, we know that all his records were done in the studio just as you hear them on the record: perfect from front to back in a flawless take. This was driven home to me when I heard a live radio broadcast by the Miller band wherein they play their new tune, A String of Pearls for the first time in a public performance. And it sounds exactly like the record. Rock solid, total confidence through and through. In those days, you went into the recording studio prepared.

Our tribute to Glenn Miller opens Hour 1 of In the Mood this week, with a seldom-heard Decca recording by Glenn's 1937 band leading off. It's interesting to hear Glenn's arranging style before developing the "Miller Sound." We cover the hits like Star Dust, Serenade in Blue, Moonlight Cocktail, and we may even indulge ourselves with our best copy of the show's namesake. Maybe. Just maybe.

Hour 2 kicks off with a fond listen to the sweet and very danceable band of Dick Jurgens. This was the band that first introduced us to Eddy Howard, but went on after his departure to perhaps its greatest success. Jurgens ruled the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago the way Chick Webb ruled the Savoy. And, like Webb, his music was tailored to the local taste. Midwesterners preferred their music sweet, melodic, smooth, and not too flashy. You know - Lutheran. And Dick Jurgens gave them quality dance music that fit the bill. We'll hear a good representative sampling of this band's original recordings on Columbia and Okeh. I think they came out sounding pretty good...and downright hot in a couple of cases. I'm still looking for a great copy of When You Were Sweet Sixteen.

Additionally, we enjoy some of our perennial favorites from the World's Greatest Record Library this week, with entries from Benny Goodman, Jimmy Dorsey and The Brother, Benny Carter, Count Basie, Gene Krupa, Louis Armstrong and more. Bing will sing one, and we'll hear 78s from Tommy Dorsey, Johnny Guarnieri, the Basin Street Six and others. This one's gonna be a swingin' show with gems common and rare, so plan to join us!

As always, we welcome your input, comments and requests, either here or on our Facebook Page. 

Remember to contact a young musician or band student this week and invite them to listen to the show with you. It'll be a great experience for both of you! 

Be good to one another this week, and above all,  

Keep Swinging! 

Scott                 

     

Why No CDs? Show Notes 9/2-6

        "We Don't Play CDs on This Show" 

"Nope...Just Records."

It's true. This is a two-hour weekly show about Big Band music, and when it comes to the historic recordings of the popular bands of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, we rely on source material from the World's Greatest Record Library. Why? Because I can trust it. I've been collecting records since I was in Grade School. All those years have taught me how to identify the genuine article. And that's what I'm determined to play on this show. I believe in the original hit recordings of the Big Band Era. These are the records that went to the top of the charts. And I want to bring them to you sounding as authentic and original as I possibly can. 

To be completely hones, I'm not sitting here in the studio spinning records as I do the show each week. I started back in 2000, dubbing records to the hard drive, and using a combination of analog and digital tools to help them sound as good as they can be made to sound. I use EQ, bandpass filters, and occasionally even some compression and expansion. I usually employ digital pop and click removal, and occasionally, digital surface noise reduction. What you hear on the show is these "sanitized" cuts playing back off the hard drive. Of course, the original records are still right here on the shelf. 

Big Band reissues on CD can be problematic for several reasons. Often, these releases are similar to the original hit version, but not the real deal. Maybe an alternate take from the same recording session...or maybe an obscure version cut years later. The true nature of each cut on a reissue CD can be very difficult to nail down. If you're like me, and you've been listening to this music all your life, you know the hit take when you hear it. Anything else fails to satisfy. 

Quite often, the engineers mixing and mastering these CDs get very ambitious trying to make these vintage recordings sound more modern, and have been known to employ a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle tricks and effects in that pursuit. Extreme brightening of the top end of the audio spectrum, or a major bottom-end roll-off may make some of these cuts more pleasing to modern ears. But this is an attempt to make these recordings into something they're not. Records made between 1935 and 1948 have a particular, charming sound due to the comparatively narrow frequency range of the recorded sound. As a sound engineer, you have to respect those boundaries and understand that the only thing on the record outside of that narrow range is noise: Rumble on the bottom and hiss on the top. 

My approach is to evaluate each record individually and make the most of what's there. I never add reverb or fake stereo effects. A lot of what we play comes off of the original 78s from the period. More comes from reissue albums from the major record labels. Surprisingly, over the years, RCA's Reader's Digest packages have yielded some of the cleanest transfers. And, IMHO, the way I process the audio delivers a more natural and certainly a more original sound. 

I've peeled off the cuts I need from the many compilation albums with various artists, and I'm now working through the single-artist LPs alphabetically. At this writing, I'm up to Woody Herman. And it's taken me 20 years to get this far. I'm 62 years old. I think I can make it to the finish line.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this week's show. We have special Spotlight features on Les Brown and the Glenn Miller Army Air Force band. We get to hear some of Les's best recordings, including some with Doris Day. This time, however, we successfully resist the impulse to play Sentimental Journey. And the AAF band is simply magnificent, packed full of some of the best players of The Greatest Generation. Luckily, the broadcast and dress rehearsal recordings of NBC's I Sustain the Wings program have survived well into the 21st Century. 

Other highlights this week include appearances by Peggy Lee with Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw's Gramercy Five, Fats Waller, Vaughn Monroe, and my all-time favorite record by Larry Clinton. We hear from Harry James, Count Basie, Kay Kyser, Duke Ellington and many more. We even go way back to 1932 for a special treat from Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers. Bet you can guess what it is!

Remember to call a young musician or band student this week and invite them to listen to the show with you. They need to hear this music, and it'll be the high point of their week.

Thanks for wading through all the geek stuff here. People often ask me where I get the music for this show, so I thought I'd share a little about how all that works. As always, we'd love to hear from you, either here or on our Facebook page. Take good care of one another this week,and above all, 

Keep Swinging! 

Scott