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Re: [ARSCLIST] Philips U.S. releases in the 60's
Remind me by a later email of your last paragraph after ARSC. I can check
my catalog files then.
Steve
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 7:46 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Philips U.S. releases in the 60's
Returning to this thread ...
When Philips first bought Mercury, they immediately issued a bunch of
titles in the U.S. and used the Philips label for classical, jazz and
world music genres to build their brand. Many of the classical titles
released in the U.S. -- at least some of which had been issued previously
on Epic -- were remastered by George Piros at Fine Recording. Look in the
dead wax for something like "P17" or the like. There's another mark on
some of these "RR," which I'm not sure about. Later Philips had "MR" to
denote Mercury Richmond IN pressing plant. I also just picked up a
still-wrapped cut-out-punched copy of one of these Philips albums, I
Musici "A Decade of Eloquence." This version, probably from the mid-60's,
differed from the first-issue version in that it didn't have the
Mercury-style laminated glossy lithographed sleeve. Instead it had the
non-shiney kind of later Mercury-style cover, circa 1967 or so. However,
the LP inside had the same P17 mark so they were still using parts from
the original master (I don't imagine this sold enough copies to wear out
parts). This particular album was definitely first released in the U.S. on
Epic because I have the Epic quarter-track reel.
Also, as collectors are probably aware, Mercury's team made a few
recordings for Philips of Richter and Rostrapovich (sp?), in London. The
Richter with orchestra recordings were reissued on CD in the 1990's,
remastered from the 35mm masters by the original producer. I'm not sure if
there were later Philips recordings produced by the Mercury team under
Harold Lawrence.
One final interesting Philips tidbit. Mosaic Records has recently reissued
the Philips albums made by Woody Herman in the early and mid 60's (they
did a great reissue job, by the way). In the booklet is a short essay by
original producer Jack Tracy. He notes that Mercury President Irving Green
was unsure about Woody Herman's sales potential, so he told Tracy to
assign him to this new Philips label they had. He also said to make a
small-group record first, which was Woody's quartet "Swing Low Sweet
Clarinet," which wasn't included in the Mosaic set (and is an excellent
album that shouldn't be out of print). That sold well enough to get Tracy
the leeway to pay for a full big-band session, which led to "Woody Herman
1963" which was successful enough to keep the big-band recordings going.
The Philips jazz label was short-lived but there were some good titles
released. Georgie Auld's "Here's to the Losers" is good and the import of
a European album by Elek Baczek (sp?) made for a good LP.
I think that most of the stereo-era Philips material first issued on Epic
was reissued via Mercury/Philips later in the 60's, some of it in the nice
Mercury style packaging and some in the discounted World Series later on.
What I wish I had was a distributor listing of in-print titles for Philips
from the early, mid and late 60's. That would be the source to triangulate
against late 50's and very early 60's Epic listings.
-- Tom Fine