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#1

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 616

Nov 2 10 2:23 AM

Hi Chuck,

In addition to the ones you listed, I have:

Wild About My Lovin': Beale Street Blues 1928-1930 - Memphis Jug Band, Jim Jackson, Cannon's Jug Stompers, Frank Stokes

Better Boot That Thing: Great Woman Blues Singers of the 1920's - Alberta Hunter, Bessie Tucker, Victoria Spivey, Ida May Mack

Grinder Man Blues: Master of the Blues Piano - Little Brother Montgomery, Memphis Slim, Big Maceo Merriweather

Sonny Boy Williams & Big Joe Williams: Throw a Boogie Woogie

I Hear Music in the Air: A Treasury of Gospel Music - Rev. J.M. Gates, The Southern Sons, The Golden Gate Quartet, etc.

Leadbelly: Alabama Bound (just to confirm)

in addition, these are listed as "Other releases in this series" on various of the above:

Are You From Dixie: Great County Brother Teams of the 1930's

Ragged But Right: Great Country String Bands of the 1930's

Under the Double Eagle: Great Western Swing Bands of the 1930's

Something Got a Hold of Me: A Treasury of Sacred Music

Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys: Mule Skinner Blues

Edit - found via an internet search, and mentioned in a post below:

Golden Gate Quartet: Travelin' Shoes

Nice to see you here. Like Sun Ra, I have many names - you know me under a couple of others.

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#2

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Pale Blue

Posts: 0

Nov 2 10 3:14 AM

Great series with some wonderful music, but the masterings of the ones I've heard are disastrous, there's almost no high end left...

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#3

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 616

Nov 2 10 3:56 AM

QUOTE (J.A.W. @ November 02, 2010 03:14 am)

Great series with some wonderful music, but the masterings of the ones I've heard are disastrous, there's almost no high end left...

I'm listening to I Hear Music in the Air right now, and it sounds pretty good to me. Of course, that just could mean that my ears have lost those frequencies anyway.

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#4

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Pale Blue

Posts: 0

Nov 2 10 12:08 PM

QUOTE (Professor Shorthair @ November 02, 2010 04:56 am)

QUOTE (J.A.W. @ November 02, 2010 03:14 am)

Great series with some wonderful music, but the masterings of the ones I've heard are disastrous, there's almost no high end left...

I'm listening to I Hear Music in the Air right now, and it sounds pretty good to me. Of course, that just could mean that my ears have lost those frequencies anyway.

Don't have that one and never heard it. I have a few others and some of them sound as if heavy noise reduction was applied.

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#5

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 890

Nov 2 10 2:34 PM

Don't forget my favorite: "Robert Lee McCoy - The Bluebird Recordings 1937-1938" and also the two CD Tommy McClennan collection...Sound quality is fabulous on both...Probably because RCA managed to salvage a lot of their metal masters "when the war was on". So much was lost for the war effort in WW II....Especially things melted down from the smaller labels like Paramount...Labels like Columbia and RCA Bluebird managed to elude some of that...

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Tom Rushen

#6

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 4476

Nov 2 10 2:50 PM

QUOTE (Artie the Cat @ November 02, 2010 10:34 am)

Don't forget my favorite: "Robert Lee McCoy - The Bluebird Recordings 1937-1938" and also the two CD Tommy McClennan collection...Sound quality is fabulous on both...Probably because RCA managed to salvage a lot of their metal masters "when the war was on". So much was lost for the war effort in WW II....Especially things melted down from the smaller labels like Paramount...Labels like Columbia and RCA Bluebird managed to elude some of that...

Were those two titles (which are indeed fabulous!) part of the "Heritage" series that this thread is about?

I bought some of those late 80s/early 90s "Heritage" titles, such as "Canned Heat Blues" and "Wild About My Lovin'", but I associated them with an earlier RCA reissue series...

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#7

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 616

Nov 2 10 3:00 PM

QUOTE (Artie the Cat @ November 02, 2010 02:34 pm)

Don't forget my favorite: "Robert Lee McCoy - The Bluebird Recordings 1937-1938" and also the two CD Tommy McClennan collection...Sound quality is fabulous on both...Probably because RCA managed to salvage a lot of their metal masters "when the war was on". So much was lost for the war effort in WW II....Especially things melted down from the smaller labels like Paramount...Labels like Columbia and RCA Bluebird managed to elude some of that...

Misleadingly similar name, but those are from a different reissue series. Chuck is talking about (I think) the RCA Heritage Series that came out around 1989-1992, with blues, gospel and country releases. The Nighthawk/McCoy and McClennan were part of a late 1990s reissue series - the Bluebird Blues & Heritage Series, which also included Big Maceo, Memphis Slim, and Sonny Boy I releases. I have a really nice one called Four Women Blues from that series. I agree that the sound is excellent.

I got really frustrated with that series though - the put out two volumes of Sonny Boy Williamson I's recordings in chronological order, then just stopped.

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#8

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Pale Blue

Posts: 0

Nov 2 10 3:17 PM

I was referring to the earlier late 1980s/early 1990s series with my sound quality comments. The CDs of the later series do indeed sound much better.

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#9

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 890

Nov 2 10 4:45 PM

This is getting confusing...I didn't realize these were from a different series, thought they were a continuation of the older RCA series...I have a gang of 'em on that, but never really drew the line that they weren't related....BOTH my copies of Crudup's "That's All Right Mama" and the Robert Nighthawk one are stamped (Crudup on the front cover, and Nighthawk in small stamp on the back cover) Bluebird RCA Heritage Series...Crudup has a 1991 date, and Nighthawk a 1997 date...This would be why I had assumed they were a continuation of the same series...I will say that the sound quality on both issues is clean and superb, with some nod to the Crudup being cleaner, but also remember they were recorded a number of years later then the McCoy set....

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#10

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 616

Nov 2 10 4:59 PM

Well, it is confusing, and I'm not 100% sure I'm right, and it might be a distinction without a difference anyway, but:

The Crudup and others from the older series say "RCA Heritage Series" above a Bluebird logo. I don't have the Nighthawk, but the others from the later series say "Blues & Heritage Series" under a Bluebird logo on the back. They also say "Bluebird Blues & Heritage Series" along the left side of the inlay card, which you can read through the clear CD tray.

I seem to recall a gap of several years between the two series. That later series seemed to be just blues releases, while the earlier series had a wider range.

And I don't work for BMG, so maybe I'm wrong about all of this....

I did a Google search for "RCA Heritage Series," and this thread was the first thing that came up. I did come up with another release in that series:

Golden Gate Quartet: Travelin' Shoes.

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Tom Rushen

#11

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 4476

Nov 2 10 5:01 PM

Artie, I always thought they were two distinctly different series, but perhaps RCA/BMG considered the late 90s releases part of the original series. I don't know the answer.

Certainly the artwork/design for the series changed dramatically when the late 90s releases such as McClennan came out.

I never saw or knew about the early piano blues CD "Grinderman Blues"...I'd love to have that title...

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cih

#12

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 1283

Nov 2 10 5:03 PM

QUOTE (Tom Rushen @ November 02, 2010 05:01 pm)

"Grinderman Blues"...I'd love to have that title...

We can call you grinderman if you really want

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Tom Rushen

#13

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 4476

Nov 2 10 5:09 PM

QUOTE (cih @ November 02, 2010 01:03 pm)

QUOTE (Tom Rushen @ November 02, 2010 05:01 pm)

"Grinderman Blues"...I'd love to have that title...

We can call you grinderman if you really want

How do you know Mrs. Rushen doesn't already call me that?

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LD50

#14

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Posts: 710

Nov 2 10 5:19 PM

I can't contribute too much to this since I dont have too many of these RCA's, but I have two CDs from the RCA Heritage series: Arthur Crudup's That's All Right Mama, which has superb sound (as Artie points out), and Canned Heat Blues, which has a fantastic track selection but abominable sound with almost no high end. A total wasted opportunity. I suspect the original metal masters survived for the Crudup tracks but not for the 1928-1930 stuff.

HOWEVER, RCA must have learned something by the time of the When the Sun Goes Down series: I have several of them and they sound much better. The CD First Time I Met the Blues is the best place I'm aware of to hear Ishman Bracey's Saturday Blues and Blind Joe Reynold's Married Woman Blues (an ESPECIALLY good mastering on the latter); the CD That's Chicago's South Side has a superb mastering of the Sparks Brothers' Every Day I Have the Blues, and their CD Walk Right In contains the best-mastered version of Tommy Johnson's Cool Drink of Water that I'm aware of (Yazoo has never bothered to reissue it).

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#15

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 890

Nov 2 10 5:45 PM

QUOTE (Professor Shorthair @ November 02, 2010 04:59 pm)

The Crudup and others from the older series say "RCA Heritage Series" above a Bluebird logo. I don't have the Nighthawk, but the others from the later series say "Blues & Heritage Series" under a Bluebird logo on the back. They also say "Bluebird Blues & Heritage Series" along the left side of the inlay card, which you can read through the clear CD tray.

I seem to recall a gap of several years between the two series. That later series seemed to be just blues releases, while the earlier series had a wider range.

Yep, Prof. this seems to be the case...I think your observations are probably on the mark...

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#16

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Pale Blue

Posts: 0

Nov 2 10 6:24 PM

QUOTE (LD50 @ November 02, 2010 06:19 pm)

I can't contribute too much to this since I dont have too many of these RCA's, but I have two CDs from the RCA Heritage series: Arthur Crudup's That's All Right Mama, which has superb sound (as Artie points out), and Canned Heat Blues, which has a fantastic track selection but abominable sound with almost no high end. A total wasted opportunity. I suspect the original metal masters survived for the Crudup tracks but not for the 1928-1930 stuff.

HOWEVER, RCA must have learned something by the time of the When the Sun Goes Down series: I have several of them and they sound much better. The CD First Time I Met the Blues is the best place I'm aware of to hear Ishman Bracey's Saturday Blues and Blind Joe Reynold's Married Woman Blues (an ESPECIALLY good mastering on the latter); the CD That's Chicago's South Side has a superb mastering of the Sparks Brothers' Every Day I Have the Blues, and their CD Walk Right In contains the best-mastered version of Tommy Johnson's Cool Drink of Water that I'm aware of (Yazoo has never bothered to reissue it).

Canned Heat Blues is one of the CDs I was referring to earlier with my remarks about poor sound. Excellent music, rotten sound... Same goes for two country CDs in that series: the Bill Monroe CD and the Are You From Dixie: Great Country Brother Teams of the 1930s collection.

RCA's "When the Sun Goes Down" series generally has good to excellent sound. The sound on the Robert Lee McCoy, Tommy McClennan, Sonny Boy Williamson I and Big Maceo Merriweather sets that came out in the late 1990s is OK too. There were more sets in that late 1990s series, such as the Memphis Slim, Jazz Gillum and Tampa Red CDs.

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#17

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 616

Nov 2 10 6:36 PM

I just compared bits of Canned Heat Blues with the Crudup CD and with Document's Complete Tommy Johnson, and you are so right. I hadn't realized that the sound was so washed out on Canned Heat.

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