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After discovering "Bingo Viejo" I decided to dip back into some of Bing's other 1970s recordings. I put on the Complete United Artists set, and was struck by just how intense the "echo" is around his vocals.
Is that how those tracks sounded on the original LPs, or was that a decision by the people who did the digital remastering? Personally I think it makes the tracks less enjoyable.
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It’s similarly present on the LPs, and while in my eyes it could use to be a lot less, it’s much better than the dryness present on the Feels Good, Feels Right LP.
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I never noticed it too much. Could it be to make Bing's voice sound stronger? I will have to listen to them again.
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This later stuff produced by people like Geoff Milne, Ken Barnes & Pete Moore found them good at mixing tracks & enhanced vocals, noting orchestrations in 'stereo'. Some of it good, some not. So at least the aging Bing was at least found some good product, they are not sloppy jobs, (as much other previous other Crosby stuff, especially on LP. Total embarrassments with Simon Rady's "Gang 101" & "EL Senor Bing". Bing also seems interested, which always helped him. My own ears, however, have problems with all this electronic mess. After 1960, the only FULL albums that find vocal & production value, without mistakes are "I Wish You A Merry Christmas ",(Warner Brothers), the Christmas (Daybreak) recordings, & some of the orchestration backings of the 2 Longines recordings LPs. FULL albums with other artists-"Robin & The 7 Hoods LP" & "12 Songs Of Christmas LP", are also excellent.
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Colin Bratkovich wrote:
This later stuff produced by people like Geoff Milne, Ken Barnes & Pete Moore found them good at mixing tracks & enhanced vocals, noting orchestrations in 'stereo'. Some of it good, some not. So at least the aging Bing was at least found some good product, they are not sloppy jobs, (as much other previous other Crosby stuff, especially on LP. Total embarrassments with Simon Rady's "Gang 101" & "EL Senor Bing". Bing also seems interested, which always helped him. My own ears, however, have problems with all this electronic mess. After 1960, the only FULL albums that find vocal & production value, without mistakes are "I Wish You A Merry Christmas ",(Warner Brothers), the Christmas (Daybreak) recordings, & some of the orchestration backings of the 2 Longines recordings LPs. FULL albums with other artists-"Robin & The 7 Hoods LP" & "12 Songs Of Christmas LP", are also excellent.
I'm glad to hear someone else as disappointed as I am in the mastering of "El Señor Bing," which should be so much more fun considering Billy May did the arrangements. What the heck went wrong there?
And your overall point is a good one. The album with Buddy Bergman also seems like it could desperately use a top-notch remastering job, even though I know many fans feel the arrangements themselves are rather iffy.
Last edited by tedn (07/10/2023 2:56 am)
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I bought the complete UA Recordings 3 cd set used on E Bay last year but was disappointed to find that a lot of alternative versions were used in place of the originally released takes which may explain why Bing didn't always sound his best there is a good reason why alt takes are alt takes the best take is usually selected for release obviously the master tapes must have been misplaced for the original takes because Ken Barnes had to use a lot of alternates fir reissue surely they could have used mint copies of the original albums to master from as that was the case.