Henry Mancini • The Music from Peter Gunn RCA/Speakers Corner LSP-1956
Elvis Presley • For LP Fans Only RCA/Speakers Corner LPM-1990
or the past thirty years, Speakers Corner has provided the astute listener a well-curated selection of classical, pop, rock, jazz and soundtrack LPs. Due to the label's desire to produce a 100% analog product, Speakers Corner limits its releases to those titles recorded between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s. If a master tape is unusable, the release will be shelved. With but one exception (Alan Parsons Project’s Eye In the Sky), Speakers Corner has not reissued digitally recorded music. A stable of internationally recognized mastering engineers sees to the cutting of the lacquers on Neumann lathes using Neumann SX-74 cutting heads. I was in my teens when, on Monday night, I sat in front of the family television to watch, in black & white, what was to become my favorite TV show -- Peter Gunn. Over the next few years, the weekly telecast became required viewing for my young eyes. Craig Stevens, Lola Albright and Herschel Bernardi became my new heroes. Equally captivating was the music, which has withstood the test of time better than the series itself. Besides being among the first TV soundtracks to see commercial release, it became a go-to recording of the early stereo era. Who doesn’t remember the iconic Peter Gunn theme, with its pulsating, ostinato guitar/piano intro, wailing alto sax and throbbing brass? Or the swaggering, hipster jaunt of “Sorta Blue,” with trumpet, trombone and baritone and alto sax solos; the sophisticated swing of “The Brothers Go To Mothers,” with petite solos from Dick Nash on trombone and Ted Nash’s alto sax; the bluesy, sensual “Dreamsville,” with an ethereal piano melody played by John Williams (yes, that John Williams) floating over a heavenly trombone choir and the noirish guitar and sax solos; the bass trombone on “Session At Pete’s Pad” featuring a fine Milt Bunker vibes solo and nice contributions from Ted Nash, Pete Condoli and Dick Nash? The Music From Peter Gunn won Mancini an Emmy and, at the 1st Annual Grammy Awards, in 1959, two Grammys: Album of the Year and Best Arrangement. In that same year, it rose to the top of the Billboard Year-End #1 Album chart. I could go on, but I enjoyed each of the cuts on this album and the memories they conjured. Mancini has managed, through his skill as a composer and arranger, to capture the moods readily associated with late-night intrigue in Big City, USA. To achieve that end, he assembled an orchestra of A-list Los Angeles session musicians. The late, great Al Schmitt was the engineer on some of the tracks, and the sound of the Speakers Corner reissue closely matches that of the early pressing I own, if a touch more polite. The wonky sound on side 2’s “The Floater” is the same on both the original and this release. It sounded to me as if the stylus were dirty and not making full contact with the groove. The resulting sound was just not quite there. Why? I have no idea. For LP Fans Only also brought back pleasant memories of my teen days. With recordings from 1954 and 1956, but not released until 1959 (while Elvis was serving in the US Army). With Elvis unavailable for new recordings, For LP Fans Only was RCA’s attempt to market an LP of ten of Elvis’s songs, available before only as 45rpm singles. With a playing time of only 23:28, this album proves short on actual music but long on importance. Four of the tracks, “That’s All Right,” “Mystery Train,” I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone” and “You’re a Heartbreaker,” are from the Sun archives and provide aural proof of the genesis of an oft-maligned popular music genre. The others include “Poor Boy,” a song from the hit movie Love Me Tender, and, with one exception, a handful of early RCA B-sides -- “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy,” “Playing For Keeps,” “My Baby Left Me,” “I Was the One” -- with “Shake, Rattle and Roll” being the sole A-side. You’ll find none of Elvis’s later Las Vegas splashiness here. Instead, he demonstrates the raw, sensual, driven rocker he was when he gathered together guitarist Scotty Moore, drummer JD Fontana and bassist Bill Black in Sam Phillips’s Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. Music history was made there, with the four Sun tracks on this LP lending testimony to that. The other tracks serve to prove Elvis’s command of the music’s moment, be it a saccharine ballad (“Playing For Keeps”), raucous rhythm & blues rockers (“Lawdy, Miss Clawdy” and “Shake, Rattle and Roll”), blues (“My Baby Left Me”), heartbreak (“I Was the One”). Not one of the King’s bestsellers, For LP Fans Only rose to just number 19 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart. Willem Makkee at Emil Berliner Studios remastered these two recordings. Speakers Corner records are pressed at Pallas in Germany on 180-gram premium vinyl. The review copies were both perfectly flat and free of blemishes. The packaging was excellent, with solid outer sleeves and poly-lined inners. Artwork and liner notes capture the spirit of the originals, though the graphics are somewhat compromised. Elvis’s portraits on For LP Fans Only are softer than on the original pressing, and the font for the Living Stereo banner on The Music from Peter Gunn is not quite that seen on the original. Also, the record label on The Music from Peter Gunn is for the mono release, LPM1956, not the stereo, LSP1956. These are quibbles to be sure. The sound of these releases was perfectly fine,
considering the six-decade-old recording methods, allowing me to remove my audiophile hat
and focus on the music. Though I found Presley’s voice a bit lean compared what I
hear from my 1987 commemorative edition of The Complete Sun Sessions [RCA
6414-1-R], I remained content, knowing I was hearing every detail and nuance of those
primitive recording sessions. Other than what I noted on “The Floater,” there
was little to question in terms of the sound of the Mancini title. I consider my record
collection incomplete without either of these releases and applaud Speakers Corner for
making them available again in near-perfect editions. |
