Curtis Mayfield's Roots was definitely Q8-only, and aside from being quite rare, those early Ampex Q8s are amongst the crustiest sounding tapes ever produced. Not as oversaturated or frequency-restricted as the abysmal black and white U/A Q8's but not that much better either - I'd be surprised if there's much above about 8kHz, alongside a healthy dose of wow and flutter as well.
Ampex was the early quad tape licensee of both WEA (who took their Q8 production in-house when CD-4 came along in September 1973, and licensed their reel-to-reel tapes to Stereotape/Magtec) and ABC, who moved to the slightly-better GRT around the same time, and you have to feel like this poor quality (along with a more limited distribution network) was the reason that these companies jumped ship, and that Ampex got out of the consumer tape business by the end of 1975.
One thing we do have Ampex to thank for are the quad master tapes (the Curtom quads included) that were produced as a result of their push to release quad product in the earliest days of the format. Their reps aggressively pursued companies they licensed from the labels they did business with, and may have even subsidized or even entirely bankrolled the creation of some of these mixes. I can't find it at the moment, but in a Billboard story circa 1972 one of the people involved said that they'd be releasing more quad product and more frequently if only they could get their hands on more master tapes, such was their eagerness.
The quad mix of Roots isn't showy - Back to the World is a little bit better in that regard - it reminds me a lot of some of the other quad mixes of the era like War's The World is a Ghetto and the Al Green albums, where a lot of the material is 'double stereo' with discrete elements pinned in the corners. I think this is sort of an extension of the stereo mixing philosophy for R&B, where a lot of the mix is effectively mono (rhythm section mainly) or close to it to give it power, with backing vocals and other things in stereo. But regardless, Roots is a landmark album, not just for Mayfield, but for R&B as a whole. Norman Whitfield had the Temptations speaking about social issues in the couple of years before on albums like Ball of Confusion, but Marvin Gaye's What's Going On in May and then Roots in October of 1971 really signaled that the era of black artists taking control of their own artistic and creative destiny had begun, and the autonomy enjoyed (and the mega-success that flowed as a result) by artists like Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind & Fire, and The Isley Bros., not to mention labels like PIR, Stax and all of George Clinton's projects all starts in 1971 with Curtis and Marvin.
If it does come to pass that Roots is one of the quad mixes released as part of this batch, it comes as an incredibly positive development. I think it was mentioned upthread, but before he sold his catalog to Rhino in the mid-'90s, Mayfield apparently kept all his masters in the basement of his house, and a story circulated that an unknown number of these tapes suffered an unknown amount of damage after a fire. If the quad master did survive it's fantastic news, and scattering thousands of 192kHz/24bit copies of the stereo and quad mixes across the globe should assure that it's available in Perfect Sound Forever. To say that Mayfield's catalog is in kind of weird shape would be an understatement, I think - before the Rhino sale he signed some kind of deal with Charly in the UK to put all his albums out on CD, but several of them were sourced from poor-sounding needledrops, and others were clones of CD masterings from other countries. There are still a few albums that (as far as I know) have never been digitally reissued from a master tape source - the 2019 Rhino box set Keep On Keeping On: The Curtis Mayfield Studio Albums 1969-1974 is the first digital appearance of 1974's Future Shock that isn't from one of those needledrops, and thank goodness, it's a great album. So a Quadio reissue of Roots would just be another step in restoring and preserving the great man's legacy - hopefully a similar reissue of Future Shock would follow, along with CDs and digital downloads of the missing stereo albums.
From a quad perspective too, there's a real dearth of R&B quad from the early days of the format, especially in terms of digital availability, which would make a Quadio of Roots even more special. The major labels that jumped into quad early were really in the business of selling music (even the stuff made by black artists) to white audiences, and this is reflected in what they made available: beyond Sly and the Family Stone's Greatest Hits for Columbia, the four Friends of Distinction albums and Morning, Noon and Nite-Liters for RCA, and Aretha at Fillmore West, MJQ's Plastic Dreams and Mongo Santamaria's Mongo at Montreux I think you'd be hard pressed to name (m)any other black artists released in quad by a major label prior to 1972. That isn't to say there is no R&B quad from before 1972, but at this point the companies that control the Stax (Isaac Hayes, Staple Singers), Hi Records (Al Green, Syl Johnson, Ann Peebles) and Motown (Marvin Gaye, Supremes, Temptations) catalogs haven't seen the value in either reissuing or licensing those quad mixes.
...and on a personal note, I have to say the amount of intentional willful ignorance and grumbling (both veiled and otherwise) about this Black History Month-themed batch is really disappointing. It only represents a fraction of what will presumably be released this year by Rhino between dedicated Quadio releases, box sets, and Atmos + quad Blu-Rays, but I guess it's your prerogative if you want to announce to the world that you're sticking your fingers in your ears when it comes to some of the best quad mixes and music that the '70s produced.
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