OK, I'm embarrassed... I've had this record for years (been collecting for 30 years!), but tonight is the first time I've actually played it and it sounds like it was recorded in a gym! Echo all over the place. Does anyone know what the deal is with this? Both sides are full of reverb which for the time doesn't sound good and electric reverb (even spring reverb) didn't exist at the time... would've had to been the room acoustics. What were the Sooy brothers thinking?!??! The number is 19814 (September 1925) so I would think by then they were done doing tests with the new Western Electric equipment. From all the research I've done, acoustic studios weren't "live" like that by any means. What gives? It's as annoying as the "Paddelin' Madeline Home" foghorn noise that sounds like a ship pulling out of the harbor next to the Victor plant.
Heheh It actually might not have been one of the Sooy brothers because those sides were recorded in Los Angeles, according to the Rust Victor Master Book. Both sides are electric since the first issued Orthophonic sides were made in Oakland on August 24th. The matrix numbers are PVE 131 and PVE 132 in the Pacific Coast matrix series that Victor had inaugurated in 1924, but discontinued in 1927. I haven't heard these sides, but I have heard Freshie made in Los Angeles four days later and I know what you mean about the acoustic: it sounds like an empty gymnasium, but was probably one of the hotel ballrooms in LA.
Jim
I don't have the VMB, just Rust's dance band books; very strange sounding though, compared to other scroll label releases of the day. Now speaking of Oakland, I need the Spike Jones "vomit voice" disc too... I have "Freshie" as well - need to listen to it too.
scullylathe wrote: ...I need the Spike Jones "vomit voice" disc too...
OK, I give up. What is the Spike Jones "vomit voice" disc? I've been a fan of the Spiker since childhood, but I never heard of this one. Tell me more! Perhaps I know it by another name? Burps and belches were an important part of Spike's repertory, but vomit...?
There are two different pressings of Ghost Riders that can be differentiated by the print positioning on the label, one that was released on the European market and contained a dig at Vaughn Monroe 'ol Vomit Voice (not in that exact context, though) but a few copies containing the Monroe reference got issued on the west coast; Monroe was a Victor artist as well as a stockholder and demanded that an alternate version be issued in the U.S. The copies with the Monroe reference are rare.
OK, gotcha. I have the tune in the original (Monroe) version, on RCA Victor 20-3411-A, b/b "Single Saddle." Cf. the Spike Jones takeoff, on an LP re-issue, RCA AYL1-3870(e). By the way, the official title is "Riders in the Sky" ("A Cowboy Legend"). On the Spike version, the vocal attribution is I.W. Harper, Sir Frederick Gas, and the Sons of the Sons of the Pioneers. Spike fans will appreciate those names: only someone deep into I.W. Harper could hallucinate this "legend"!
The business in re: the objectionable reference to Vaughn Monroe is further elucidated by Jordan R. Young in "Spike Jones and his City Slickers" (LC 84-12051, ISBN 0-940410-71-0), and is worth quoting (pp. 78-79):
Dick Morgan, in top form as a drunken cowpoke (alias I.W.Harper), and Sir Frederic Gas [Earl Bennett], as his Yiddish-accented partner [sounds just like a PA Dutch accent to me!], introduced the song on Jones' radio program. The closing verse did not exactly flatter the singer who made it popular: "When Johnny comes marching home again, hooray, hooray./He'll make the guy who wrote this song pay, and pay./'Cause all we hear is "Ghost Riders" sung by Vaughn Monroe./ I can do without his singing---but I wish I had his dough." Monroe, whom Spike made the butt of countless jokes, was a major stockholder in RCA. He took most of Jones' derisive remarks in stride, but decided the funster had gone too far this time. RCA released an alternate take with the last line deleted; in its place, Morgan yodeled, "Yippie-i-yay..."---interrupted by a gunshot, followed by a moan. The objectionable version---which Jones passed out special pre-release pressings of on his own---inexplicably found its way to stores on the West Coast. "We always tried to start little feuds with Monroe and everybody, to get publicity," observes Eddie Brandt [a writer and gag man for Jones]. We couldn't do Irving Berlin in those days, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter. Spike always wanted to do "Begin the Beguine," but Porter wouldn't allow it.We couldn't do a lot of the classics. The writers were big; they had complete control. Now the songs are in catalogs, the writers are dead and nobody gives a damn about anything."
BTW, the reference to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" calls attention to the fact that the melody and structure of "Riders" is a direct "borrowing" (you could say "steal") of that Civil War song.
I don't have a problem with the heavy reverb on those location sides. Played back on modern equipment they sound fine. On certain vintage phonos, though they may end up sounding murky / swampy.
What does he mean by the " Western Electric Carbon Valve System" ? The Western Electric system did not use a carbon microphone, if that's what he means. The system was designed for condenser mics.
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I've had this record for years (been collecting for 30 years!), but tonight is the first time I've actually played it and it sounds like it was recorded in a gym! Echo all over the place. Does anyone know what the deal is with this? Both sides are full of reverb which for the time doesn't sound good and electric reverb (even spring reverb) didn't exist at the time... would've had to been the room acoustics. What were the Sooy brothers thinking?!??! The number is 19814 (September 1925) so I would think by then they were done doing tests with the new Western Electric equipment. 
From all the research I've done, acoustic studios weren't "live" like that by any means. What gives? It's as annoying as the "Paddelin' Madeline Home" foghorn noise that sounds like a ship pulling out of the harbor next to the Victor plant.
I have "Freshie" as well - need to listen to it too.
(not in that exact context, though) but a few copies containing the Monroe reference got issued on the west coast; Monroe was a Victor artist as well as a stockholder and demanded that an alternate version be issued in the U.S. The copies with the Monroe reference are rare.
