chewy
New member
another on my top wishlist- would love to find it- thanks!
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WTB: McGriff/Holmes- 'Giants of Organ' Quad Tape
- Thread starter chewy
- Start date
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Could this be what you are looking for? Lifted from Mark Andersons' Surround Discography.
JIMMY McGRIFF & GROOVE HOLMES -
Giants of the Organ Come Together. Groove Merchant H-1520 (QR),
L-7520 (Q8)
JIMMY McGRIFF & GROOVE HOLMES -
Giants of the Organ Come Together. Groove Merchant H-1520 (QR),
L-7520 (Q8)
There's a picture of the quad reel on discogs
From discogs:
From discogs:
The Groove Merchant tapes on the whole are really difficult to find - Buddy Rich Roar of '74 probably shows up the most often, but that's not saying much. I think I've seen the QR of this title as many (or more) times as the Q8 in my 20 years of eBay trawling, and that is to say maybe 3-5 times at most. The other albums Groove Merchant released in quad are similarly obscure - Dakota Staton's I Want a Country Man shows up once in a blue moon in both Q8 and QR, and O'Donel Levy's Simba I've only ever seen one or two Q8s although supposedly a QR was released as well.
I think aside from these being albums that didn't have really mainstream commercial appeal to start with, their rarity is compounded by the fact that the tapes were manufactured and sold by Ampex, who seemed to have the poorest distribution network of all the tape licensees - Stereotape, who did RCA and WEA tapes probably the best, followed by GRT who did a load of labels including the ABC family, in the middle. I haven't been able to find a concrete date for it, but Ampex exited the consumer tape business (so they stopped duplicating and selling titles like these) sometime in the 1975/1976 time period which further shortened their print run. This is why you see some titles that were originally in the yellow bordered Ampex QR boxes like The Moody Blues albums later reissued in the 'rainbow border' Stereotape boxes. GRT, meanwhile continued to sell quad product into late 1977, and Stereotape until at least the same point, at which they sold (or transferred) their remaining business to the company that became The Reel Society, which I believe continued to sell quad reels into the early '80s at least.
I think aside from these being albums that didn't have really mainstream commercial appeal to start with, their rarity is compounded by the fact that the tapes were manufactured and sold by Ampex, who seemed to have the poorest distribution network of all the tape licensees - Stereotape, who did RCA and WEA tapes probably the best, followed by GRT who did a load of labels including the ABC family, in the middle. I haven't been able to find a concrete date for it, but Ampex exited the consumer tape business (so they stopped duplicating and selling titles like these) sometime in the 1975/1976 time period which further shortened their print run. This is why you see some titles that were originally in the yellow bordered Ampex QR boxes like The Moody Blues albums later reissued in the 'rainbow border' Stereotape boxes. GRT, meanwhile continued to sell quad product into late 1977, and Stereotape until at least the same point, at which they sold (or transferred) their remaining business to the company that became The Reel Society, which I believe continued to sell quad reels into the early '80s at least.
The only copy i found of Giants of the Organ had tape issues so i bet that is why Bob never converted it. Seems like all those titles were a challenge to find. I have the files from the Levy Reel so it exists. . And yep Stereotape did the best transfers. Till Reel Society started.
Were the "tape issues" related to the ampex tape stock they might have been using at the time? That seems close to the time ampex started making the tape that had all the moisture/shed problems. that stuff is/was the worst to have to transfer. Lots of baking...
I'd love to hear anything hammond related. Can't get enough.
Everything needs more cowbell, LOL. Organ is fun too though.
Oh Yeah, had to bake many tapes and that one would just never play. Most would play after baking, not that one.
I can't remember where I was, I think it was in Albany, NY or nearby. It was mid-80's, I was there for work but whenever I traveled I always looked up record stores in the Yellow Pages (remember those, I mean the books) and I would look for the ones with big ads near my hotel, then after work I would check them out to see what they had in the cut-outs or bins.
There was one store I found that wasn't that big, but I checked all of the racks because many stores at the time would put cut-outs in with the artist section just to fill out the racks. So for example, every artist that I knew had a quad release I would thumb through their divided section and once in a while you would find a quad mixed in there. It was part of the record store searching game.
Anyway, I didn't find anything worthy, and was about to leave, when I passed through the very back of the store and there was a bookshelf filled with reel to reel tapes! All new, all sealed. Naturally I checked them out and on the very bottom shelf were a ton of those yellow Ampex quad reels. They were all minor titles, like this one, and there was a chance that this title was actually there. At that point in my life, I didn't buy up everything I saw, so I grabbed a couple of RCA reels that interested me and left most of the Mantovani's and other Ampex reels I never thought I would every play. But I am telling you, there were at least 2 shelves of them.
Today, I would have bought the whole rack. And the kicker? Are you ready? They were all 99 cents. Yup. 99 Freaking cents!
There was one store I found that wasn't that big, but I checked all of the racks because many stores at the time would put cut-outs in with the artist section just to fill out the racks. So for example, every artist that I knew had a quad release I would thumb through their divided section and once in a while you would find a quad mixed in there. It was part of the record store searching game.
Anyway, I didn't find anything worthy, and was about to leave, when I passed through the very back of the store and there was a bookshelf filled with reel to reel tapes! All new, all sealed. Naturally I checked them out and on the very bottom shelf were a ton of those yellow Ampex quad reels. They were all minor titles, like this one, and there was a chance that this title was actually there. At that point in my life, I didn't buy up everything I saw, so I grabbed a couple of RCA reels that interested me and left most of the Mantovani's and other Ampex reels I never thought I would every play. But I am telling you, there were at least 2 shelves of them.
Today, I would have bought the whole rack. And the kicker? Are you ready? They were all 99 cents. Yup. 99 Freaking cents!
Depends on whether or not the bell is still attached to the cow!
I remember working at a studio in the late 80's and first enountering old Ampex tape. Ampex reels that were barely 10 years old would slow down and stop after barely a minute or 2 of playback. Hot storage made it even worse.
doity
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Well finally got around to listening to it last night. The fidelity is pretty darn good I have to say. I know that someone else complained about the sound quality but mine was above average. The splice even held up after numerous spins. 
Not too sure about the music though. I generally love jazz organ and while there are a couple of songs where having two organists at the same time works......well there are just as many times where the music doesn’t seem to be saying anything and goes nowhere. It is cool hearing the organs coming from left and right, but the drums seem to be weak (is that really Bernard Purdie?). It sounds more like a drum machine at times and the bass sounds like it is organ generated. I think it would had been better with stronger material, like say mostly standards, and the organists were of like tone and style.
Not too sure about the music though. I generally love jazz organ and while there are a couple of songs where having two organists at the same time works......well there are just as many times where the music doesn’t seem to be saying anything and goes nowhere. It is cool hearing the organs coming from left and right, but the drums seem to be weak (is that really Bernard Purdie?). It sounds more like a drum machine at times and the bass sounds like it is organ generated. I think it would had been better with stronger material, like say mostly standards, and the organists were of like tone and style.
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