{"id":535,"date":"2011-06-20T05:58:05","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T10:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=535"},"modified":"2011-06-20T05:58:05","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T10:58:05","slug":"once-more-into-the-catalog-with-concord-music-group-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/06\/20\/once-more-into-the-catalog-with-concord-music-group-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Once More Into the Catalog, with Concord Music Group (part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Concord Music Group was founded in 2004, the combination of two labels: Concord and Fantasy. The group subsequently added to its stable Telarc International (jazz) and Stax (soul\/r&b). Their catalog also includes a vast list of titles from smaller jazz labels including Riverside, Prestige and Stretch. The group quickly earned a well-deserved reputation for exercising care and thought in the repackaging and reissuing of catalog items: large chunks of the back catalogs of Paul McCartney<\/strong> and Frank Sinatra<\/strong> — two of the world\u2019s greatest-selling artists \u2013 are now administered by Concord. I asked Chris Clough<\/strong>, Concord\u2019s Manager of Catalog Development, if there is a guiding philosophy for reissue projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, obviously we want it to be something of quality,” Clough says. \u201cSomething that\u2019s probably not already been done. We\u2019re always looking for titles that haven\u2019t been reissued, or that maybe weren\u2019t done as thoroughly as they could be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Concord recently acquired rights to a sizable portion of the Ray Charles<\/strong> catalog, and quickly set about a schedule of compilations and reissues. In most cases the label added bonus material. \u201cI\u2019ve been looking at it as, \u2018What hasn\u2019t been done?\u2019\u201d says Clough. \u201cA lot of the Ray catalog has not even been on CD. We did a few things that had already been out; it\u2019s kind of like, \u2018Well, you\u2019ve got to do Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music<\/em> because that was a huge record.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen,\u201d he continues, \u201cafter that, we started looking around. I was a big fan of the LP Ray Charles Live in Concert<\/em>, and I figured since it was a live show, there might be some unreleased material. And sure enough, there was. So after digging around in the vault, we turned up seven bonus tracks. And some of them \u2013 most<\/em> of them — were really good. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s one where I could say, \u2018Well, I can understand why that wasn\u2019t used.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Clough has his own theories as to why some tracks were originally left off. \u201cI think Ray probably left \u2018Georgia\u2019 off because he didn\u2019t want it to compete with the [studio] version.\u201d But he believes that some of the decisions went beyond commercial considerations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think,\u201d Clough opines, \u201con a couple of the tracks, Ray might have thought he gave a little more than he wanted to. I\u2019ve listened to a lot of Ray\u2019s live recordings. [On this one] he didn\u2019t know he was being recorded, and I think he gave a little more on these performances; more than he might have been comfortable sharing with the wider world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another Ray Charles reissue of note was 2010\u2019s version of the 1961 classic Genius + Soul = Jazz<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0<\/span>The Concord repackaging expanded the album to a 2CD set, with the thematic addition of three other Charles albums: 1970\u2019s My Kind of Jazz<\/em>, Jazz Number II<\/em> (1972) and My Kind of Jazz Part 3<\/em> from 1975. The project connected the dots between four albums spread over a long span of time.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people don\u2019t know that side of Ray,\u201d notes Clough. \u201cHe was an incredible player. He was a great songwriter, singer and performer, but he could really play<\/em>, too.\u201d Clough points out that on these albums, Charles \u201cwanted to flex a little, and show the world he could [compete] with the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

When a label such as Concord approaches a reissue project, they are \u2013 almost without exception \u2013 dealing with old analog tapes. Sometimes they have access to multitrack masters, but more often they have only a \u201cfinal mix\u201d that has been in some sort of storage for half century.<\/p>\n

For a title like Ray Charles Live in Concert<\/em>, there never were multitrack masters. That live album was recorded by Wally Heider<\/strong>, a master of that kind of work. Clough believes that Heider \u201ckept it simple, got his mix, and recorded it on the fly.\u201d<\/p>\n

When they do<\/em> have the option of working with multiple tracks, Concord\u2019s reissue team does carefully consider that an option. \u201cSometimes it does make sense,\u201d Clough argues. \u201cSometimes you can go back in and clean up some things that happened when it was originally recorded.\u201d He refers to occasional buzzes and hiss, pointing out that \u201cSome things take away from a recording, so you want to minimize those.\u201d<\/p>\n

The condition of the master tapes varies widely. \u201cThey\u2019re all different,\u201d Clough says. \u201cSometimes they\u2019re pretty ratty.\u201d He makes the point that stewardship of these historic tapes has been under the control of various people over the years. Some exercised more care than others. \u201cSome show signs of\u2026less than optimal storage situations,\u201d Clough says, taking pains to be diplomatic.<\/p>\n

At the time many of these recordings were made \u2013 especially in the jazz genre \u2013 the idea that anyone would be interested in hearing them ten, twenty, fifty years down the line probably didn\u2019t even receive serious consideration. \u201cI don\u2019t want to throw anyone under the bus,\u201d says Clough, choosing his words carefully, \u201cbut Bob Weinstock<\/strong> at Prestige was notoriously thrifty. He would reuse tape, and as far as outtakes, his approach was, \u2018Well, if it\u2019s not going on the album, who cares about it?\u2019\u201d That may account for the dearth of unreleased material from that label, but Clough allows for another possibility: \u201cThose guys were incredible players, so they maybe did it in one or two takes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily, in many cases, someone along the way decided that many of these recordings were <\/em>important, and made sure they were preserved. Clough mentions George Horn<\/strong> (Chief Mastering Engineer at Fantasy) making sure that the Creedence Clearwater Revival<\/strong> masters were preserved.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In part two<\/a> we\u2019ll look at some of the challenges associated with releasing archival reissues: technological, aesthetic and financial. And we\u2019ll also give a tantalizing preview of a possible future project from the people at Concord Music Group.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Concord Music Group was founded in 2004, the combination of two labels: Concord and Fantasy. The group subsequently added to its stable Telarc International (jazz) and Stax (soul\/r&b). Their catalog […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","cat-41-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}