During the Christmas season
last year, I shared out an album that's very similar to the one I'm about to share, but not the same. My old copy came without a sleeve, but this time I got one with a sleeve, so you can see what's going on a little easier. What I've decided is that the one I'm giving you tonight is the original, and the other one is a version that came out a little later. They shuffled the tracks a bit, changed some artists around, just generally made some weird changes, and I don't know why. Take a look and listen at this one, then go get the other one so you can compare and contrast. And if you have any idea why they're different, please let me know. This one was pressed by Columbia, the other one was pressed by RCA. I thought maybe there were some licensing issues going on, but they seem to have all the same artists on both records, just with different songs in a different order. It's really bothering me, but then I'm easily bothered by such mysteries. Here is
The Christmas Story In Carols, Basil Rathbone-Narrator (Westminster WP 6034 (XTV 25256/25257), Mono, 1956, Original Pressing). The pressing code on the RCA version (the other one) tells me it was pressed in 1957, not 1956. That's why I'm calling this one the original and the other one a re-issue.
Again, I'm too lazy to type in all 37 tracks. Download it and see for yourself.
MEGA
Update-25 Jul 2020-I appear to have omitted track 14 from the download due to technical errors on my part. I've updated the link above, but if you only need the missing track, there should be a link to just that in the comments. My apologies, but now you can hear it the way it was meant to be heard.
My guess - and it is a guess - is that Westminster licensed the tracks from a variety of companies and that the licensing changed from year to year.
ReplyDeleteThe King's College Choir tracks all come from an Argo UK release that Westminster licensed for release in the US. I had it on my blog many years ago and just redid it in July:
http://big10inchrecord.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-part-9.html
Alternative theory - Westminster wanted to freshen up the release for the new year in hopes of stimulating more sales.
ReplyDeleteI might lean towards theory #2, mostly because many of the tunes that are swapped out are still performed by the same artists. I would think that if you lose the right to an artist, you'd lose all their tunes. I'm sure that's not always the case, but in general. If I had the sleeve to the second issue, I could see if maybe the credits are different for production or sequencing or re-jiggering...
ReplyDeleteGreat! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAnd track 14 is missing, as a commenter mentioned elsewhere. I'll have to see if that was something I left out because I couldn't get a good rip, or if I just screwed up the download package.
ReplyDeletehttps://mega.nz/file/AZ8XFRRA#T0upiJgNXtcov3XsW-ga5xJiqc2lpsL3Tpk-i3ceJ2g
ReplyDeleteThere's a link to the missing track 14. Appears that it wasn't tagged as being part of a comp, so when the MP3s were created, that one track got put into a different folder. It happens...