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OldNeumanntapr's Collection

Rolling Stones   ??/??/1961

How Britain Got the Blues, Various, England
Source Various SBD / FM Broadcast
Media FLAC
Notes Pitch, phase and level corrected, de-thumped and retracked at Remasters Workshop July 16 & 17, 2010 from the 2000 CD on Bad Wizard BW 6134.

This CD was pirated by an unidentified label and issued as "Beginning Of The English Blues." It was for sale briefly on Amazon (it's unavailable now and will probably remain so), where a reviewer left these (edited for coherence) comments:

A great compilation of obscure 1961-1964 recordings. What will pique the interest of the hardcore Stones aficionado the most are the first eight tracks: the very earliest Rolling Stones recordings, which have rarely, if ever surfaced on other CDs. The first four songs are labeled as dating from a tape of Little Boys Blue, a pre-Rolling Stones lineup of the group, recorded (probably at a private rehearsal) in late 1961. Dick Taylor (later of the Pretty Things), guitarist Bob Beckwith, and Allen Etherington (on maracas) were part of Little Boys Blue on this recording. While the track listings are vague as to what actual future members of the Stones also participated, it's certain that Mick Jagger's on lead vocals, and possible that Keith Richards and Brian Jones are on the guitars.

Included are unreleased versions of the Jagger-Richards compositions "It Should Be You" and "My Only Girl" (aka "That Girl Belongs To Yesterday"). There's also "Leave Me Alone," a Jagger-Richards original not released by anyone! There's also the unreleased studio effort "Goodbye Girl," a routine blues-rocker dated as having been recorded in November 1964 and written by Bill Wyman. While these are no doubt fascinating for the Stones fan, as well as historically important, the subsequent 24 BBC session tracks are better music. Those BBC performances include many songs that didn't appear on the group's early releases, such as covers like "Roll Over Beethoven" (a different version than a more commonly circulated one also recorded around this time for another BBC session), "Meet Me In The Bottom," Jimmy Reed's "Ain't That Loving You Baby," "High Heel Sneakers," and Bo Diddley's "Crackin' Up." The fidelity on these is generally very good, with the performances different enough from the studio versions to make them quite interesting!

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Track 1 was in a sorry state in its original incarnation. It's a mono recording, but the levels on the two tape tracks were wildly varied and would occasionally drop out in one channel or the other. These anomalies were straightened out, gaps filled by cloning and levels fixed so that it sounds as normal as possible. There was also a repeated segment of a couple of lines; I don't know whether the original CD is that way, or it came that way on the recording I received, but I edited it out. This may be the best version of this track available now.

All the recordings but two were at the wrong speed - some a little bit and some a lot, and all were out of phase. The makers of this CD added stereo reverb to everything (can't leave a good thing alone), but its effect is negated because after phase correction, the channels were combined to true mono. Levels were all over the place, with volume swells and dips in many places; those are fixed now, too. Occasional thumps that are often heard on tape recordings via microphone from tube radios have been eliminated.

The early studio recordings were very, very dull. They have been brightened here so you can tell what's going on. No EQ was applied to the other tracks. All work was performed in 32-bit in Adobe Audition 3, and the tracks were split on sector boundaries in CD Wave.

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FLAC Tags Via xACT 2.53 By OldNeumanntapr
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Trades Allowed Yes   Traded from: The Midnight Cafe
Ratings Sound: A-
Lists Rolling Stones
Owned by OldNeumanntapr · Last Updated Dec 5, 2024