Oh I understand that. Yet on the other side, we have some big name acts like Santana or Chicago, where after initially releasing the current albums, they went back to remix the earlier albums later in 1973, '74 and '75. Seeing as how The O'Jays were Columbia's top Soul Group, they may have gotten the same treatment - taking into consideration that virtually every other album of theirs appeared in Quad be it disc, tape or both. I just have this sneaking suspicion that there's a LOT of albums from 1972 (or, what I've sometimes called, "the truncated 31xxx series" of Columbia Quad releases) that were prepared, but by the time they came around for release, either other albums took precedence at time of manufacture or too much time had passed since the initial stereo release.
Maybe I'm clinging to a glass doorknob. But, I had always dreamed of having Edgar Winter's White Trash in Quad only for two songs.... fast forward a few years and there it was!
It was prepared but for whatever reason, never released. I'm speculating entirely, but I get the impression that Columbia wanted to start off their Quad program with the most recent album by Edgar Winter (which would've been They Only Come Out at Night) and then White Trash simply was forgotten about.
It's possible. And think on the bright side, if it WAS mixed to Quad, then you get the album on SACD and you won't have to clean up the mess when I explode.
That's a win-win if I ever heard one.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don't believe
Backstabbers was ever mixed in quad. Philadelphia International Records was a completely autonomous company that was distributed by Columbia, but they made their own decisions, including when to get in to quad, and what to mix. PIR had three huge R&B #1 albums in 1972, Harold Melvin's
I Miss You (which produced
If You Don't Know Me By Now), The O'Jays
Backstabbers (which produced
Love Train and
Backstabbers) and Billy Paul's
360 Degrees which yielded
Me and Mrs. Jones. When PIR finally got in to quad in 1973, it was the Billy Paul album they chose to go back and remix - I'm guessing because it was the one that was most recently a hit, and also because
Me and Mrs. Jones won a Grammy award that year.
I've mentioned it elsewhere previously on QQ, but I spoke at length to Arthur Stoppe an engineer at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia who was heavily involved in all the quad mixing done there, including all the PIR quad mixes. He started there as an assistant shortly before the studio set up its quad mixing room (Studio B) and assisted on all the early mixes (including The Spinners and the O'Jays
Ship Ahoy), and eventually got such a reputation for being the studio's "quad guy" that by 1976 he was the only one there doing the quad mixing. One of the things I asked him specifically about was things that were rumoured to have been done (like Lou Rawls'
Unmistakably Lou, which he said wasn't done because quad was already dead by that point) and also why certain groups had key albums
not mixed in quad (like why did MFSB have
Love is the Message done in quad in 1974, but they skipped the next album
Universal Love before doing
Philadelphia Freedom in quad in late '75) to which he said usually hit albums got the quad treatment on a case-by-case basis. I asked him specifically about
Backstabbers, and he echoed what I said above, that
360 Degrees was the "old" album that they elected to go back and do, that "catalog" wasn't really a big concern back then, and that the label was basically concerned with what was new, or what was next, and for the O'Jays that was
Ship Ahoy, which was followed not that long thereafter by
Live in London. Studio costs and engineer time (which was billed by the hour) was not cheap back then, and I don't think a small label like PIR (especially run by notorious penny pinchers like Gamble & Huff) would've sprung for a quad mix just to sit it on the shelf.
I don't think Columbia was much different actually - I think they were stockpiling quad mixes from '69 through late '71, and they put out a big pile of them in early 1972 to start off their quad program, but after that (with the exception, I think, in 1974 of the first Santana album and Bob Dylan's
Nashville Skyline - both albums that were mixed pre-1972) Columbia was basically in the business of selling "new" music. I'd love to believe that there are tons of shelved quad mixes sitting in the vaults, and I think there probably are a few, but in the case of CBS they're most likely ones from that pre-'72 "stockpiling period", with maybe a handful of others from the time after that that didn't make it out for one reason or another. Record labels, like any other business, were moneymaking enterprises, so I don't think they were devoting considerable resources to creating something that they didn't intend to release.
White Trash is such an interesting one! it got as far as a catalogue number and sleeve being depicted on the inners to some early Japanese CBS SQ LP releases but seemingly never came out, or its just so scarce nobody's produced evidence of a copy the last 48 years.. and via those Robin Reels we subsequently discovered it was mixed in Quad
twice and yet still never made it out!!
My feeling is that they shelved this one because by the time it was due to come out, Winter had already disbanded the White Trash group, and was working on
They Only Come Out at Night with the new, slimmed-down Edgar Winter Group. I think you probably would've seen
Roadwork as a quad release if either it were a single-LP, or not a live album - I suspect a double-disc live album in quad was probably not a high enough profit item for Epic to take the chance that year. And really, you can't totally argue with their thinking - maybe they got a whiff of what Edgar was working on in the studio (
Frankenstein, Free Ride, etc.) and realised it was going to be the mega-hit that it turned out to be.
the other Stax Quads (Isaac Hayes Live At The Tahoe, Joy, Tough Guys & Truck Turner and The Staple Singers' Be What You Are) are similarly wonderful in Quad! i'd love DV to do them all.!!
not sure who DV would have to negotiate with now in order to licence them? are these albums under Concord's auspices?
It is indeed Concord Music Group who own Stax now, along with the catalogs of several other labels that had quad releases, including Fantasy, Prestige, Milestone, and Vanguard.
--got me wondering if D-V might use the web to give us more visuals than what they're able to include in the booklets. I'm ready to hear that Sony (or whoever) would simply never allow it, but wouldn't it be great to see photos of tape boxes and session logs, high-res album art (possibly including the original jackets, gatefolds, and liner notes), etc., etc.? I'm sure there's some industrious elf--or intern--who could do the scanning.
I wish this were possible, but (like getting the master tape box photos in the MFSB and Paul Revere booklets) every single item like this requires Sony's approval, not only to go ahead but also over whether the finished product/placement is acceptable. This might be more in the realm of possibility if D-V were charging MoFi prices (or double MoFi prices since they're two-fers) but they endeavour to pack as much added value (liner notes, etc.) and as much of the original artwork that will fit in to a 7 page booklet.
I agree! Seeing as how this is the first time many of these mixes are seeing the light of day, it would be nice to have a little more info (if possible) when they were remixed in relation to the stereo mix and of course, by whom (which thankfully, they have been crediting)
Even just a paragraph or two with a picture of the original box, would be kinda fun and be a little fly on the wall moment. I've often thought that record companies are too secretive when it comes to this sort of thing and I never really understood it myself. I love showing off my shit.
I agree with you that from our view on the ground it seems like labels are overly secretive about these things, but I have to presume everything they do is with good reason even if it isn't always apparent to me. If it were possible I'd have photos of the master tape boxes in every booklet, but as-is, you can be guaranteed that every bit of usable information from those boxes (recording/remix dates, engineering personnel, locations, etc.) is included either in the inlay or booklet of these D-V releases. The big surprise for me in having seen them is how many of these boxes actually have
no information beyond the album title, song titles and running time for each track. For example with those early Guess Who quads, I was really looking forward to solving the mystery of who did them, but not one of those albums from
Wheatfield Soul through
Rockin' has much more than the song titles and album name scribbled on the outside of the box, either in sharpie or ballpoint pen. Not a single date, an engineer or producer's initials or anything!
It has since been discovered that neither of those Allman Brothers titles were done.
What's your source for this? Never heard this was the case.
