Suggestions for Dutton Vocalion Multichannel SACD Releases

[rustyandi]

Yes I will be looking forward to see what they have

 

[GOS]

My top secret informant in the Dutton organisation - we'll call him Michael D. to protect his identity - has told me that there are more popular music quad titles of all varieties in the pipeline. So hang tight, reinforcements are coming, they just have to fit in the work on these discs around their recording and mixing sessions for the original classical stuff that they release as well.

Just saw this post. Most excellent! I'm in!! @:

 

[4-earredwonder]

My top secret informant in the Dutton organisation - we'll call him Michael D. to protect his identity - has told me that there are more popular music quad titles of all varieties in the pipeline. So hang tight, reinforcements are coming, they just have to fit in the work on these discs around their recording and mixing sessions for the original classical stuff that they release as well.

Fabulous news, Dave, and bless Michael Dutton. He's probably one off THE busiest men in the business today and still manages to turn out quality, and I MEAN Quality products.

Encouraging news that he will be releasing more popular fare and was just wondering if sales of the two Rock albums D~V did release sold well?

Dutton Vocalion basically remains our only hope of EVER releasing RCA/Columbia's back QUAD catalogues.:banana:

 

[quicksrt]

I hope this secret informant's idea of "popular" music is more of what we consider popular in today's market rather than the 1950's and 1960's popular genre. "Popular" can mean Peter Nero, Ray Conniff, and Percy Faith. It can also mean Edgar & Johnny Winter, Nilsson, and Aerosmith.

 

[Simon A]

I hope this secret informant's idea of "popular" music is more of what we consider popular in today's market rather than the 1950's and 1960's popular genre. "Popular" can mean Peter Nero, Ray Conniff, and Percy Faith. It can also mean Edgar & Johnny Winter, Nilsson, and Aerosmith.

I see what you mean but then again we have to remember that Dutton/Vocalion has been a major player in the Peter Nero, Ray Conniff, and Percy Faith reissue market. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones as I enjoy both.

 

[bmoura]

I see what you mean but then again we have to remember that Dutton/Vocalion has been a major player in the Peter Nero, Ray Conniff, and Percy Faith reissue market. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones as I enjoy both.

Yes, that is their core market. What they call "Easy, Light & Latin" music. There is plenty of Quad material in the Sony Music catalog from the artists you mention and in that vein:
Peter Nero, Ray Conniff, Percy Faith, Chet Atkins, Henry Mancini, Floyd Cramer, Hugo Montenegro, Perry Como, Mac Davis, John Keating, Andre Kostelanetz

D/V also highlights this focus in the mission statement on their web site.
Note their reference to The John Wilson Orchestra as representing "progressive, contemporary" music.

"Who we are …

2015 marks the eighteenth year of the Vocalion label’s existence, during which time we’ve gone from strength to strength. Starting with our acclaimed series of vintage British dance band reissues – which were the first titles to appear under the Vocalion banner in 1997 – we’ve since added the CDLK, CDLF, CDNJT and CDVS prefixes, all of which concentrate on the very best in easy-listening, big bands, pop and vocalists of yesteryear.

Our CDSA series of modern digital recordings, launched in 2000, contains several landmark albums by The John Wilson Orchestra, while the CDSML series, established in 2005 and dedicated to music of a progressive, contemporary nature, has broadened our scope even further. Within our extensive range, you’ll find an abundance of superb music by many of the biggest and brightest names from the golden years of the music industry, with each and every recording resplendent in the crystal clear sound that is our hallmark.

THE DUTTON VOCALION TEAM "

https://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/

 

[fredblue]

Is it too much of a stretch to include Jose Feliciano in that "Easy, Light & Latin" category?

Sick to the back teeth of the extreme craptitude of my Feliciano CD-4 records and would dearly love DV to release his (numerous) Quads on MCh SACD.

"Listen to the pouring rain, listen to it pour.. and with every reissue I love Quad even more.."

 

[bmoura]

Is it too much of a stretch to include Jose Feliciano in that "Easy, Light & Latin" category?

Sick to the back teeth of the extreme craptitude of my Feliciano CD-4 records and would dearly love DV to release his (numerous) Quads on MCh SACD.

"Listen to the pouring rain, listen to it pour.. and with every reissue I love Quad even more.."

I would put Jose Feliciano in that category. But it's up to D/V, of course on Quad reissues.
His albums Feliciano! and Alive Alive-O are two that I requested as future D/V Surround SACDs.

Time will tell if that comes to pass.

 

[GOS]

I'd damn well take some Mac Davis! :banana:

 

[fredblue]

I'd damn well take some Mac Davis! :banana:

Yee-haw! Loads of them there Big-Mac Davis Quad burgers to be SACD-ised with fries on the side, make a real happy meal.. on a related tangent, I wonder if there ever was a Quad done of "Forever Lovers" after all (speculation about an unreleased Quad mix of that one @QQ one time iirc?)

 

[sjcorne]

Would love to see all the enoch light quads come out on SACD...who owns the project 3 catalog?

 

[4-earredwonder]

My [kinda] wishlist would include the Best of Mountain and Avalanche (gimme some Leslie West], Papa John Creach, John Denver [Poems, Prayers & Promises], Guess Who, Harry Nilsson, Original Cast album of HAIR, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand, Jefferson Starship, Neil Diamond, Art Garkunkel, Original Cast album of Stephen Sondheim's COMPANY, Pure Prairie League, ANYTHING Philadelphia International, Ramsey Lewis, The Youngbloods (Best of), Hues Corporation, HOT Tuna, Jefferson Starship.......etc., etc., etc.:banana:

And to facilitate this massive undertaking, Adam [FREDBLUE] who lives only a few miles away from the Dutton Vocalion headquarters is going to apprentice his time and ensure that every QUAD album ever released by RCA/Columbia will eventually be released on SACD@::ugham:

And as a D~V apprentice, this is part of the initiation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdFLPn30dvQ

 

[steelydave]

I hope this secret informant's idea of "popular" music is more of what we consider popular in today's market rather than the 1950's and 1960's popular genre. "Popular" can mean Peter Nero, Ray Conniff, and Percy Faith. It can also mean Edgar & Johnny Winter, Nilsson, and Aerosmith.

Popular refers to anything non-classical, which includes pop, rock, jazz, R&B, soul, etc.

Vocalion and Epoch have made their reputation (and a good one at that, look at the happy customers on their facebook page) over the last 20 years primarily releasing classical, soundtrack, and easy listening music, including the artists you appear to be turning your nose up at in your post. They'd be foolish to neglect their core demographic going forward as that's what got them to where they are today.

By the same token, they'd be foolish to ignore easy money making opportunities (ie reissuing rock quads on SACD) if they were available, just because they had some stylistic preference for non-rock music. This isn't the case at all. As I said some months ago on this thread, Michael Dutton told me himself that he's not averse to releasing rock quads - hell, he cut his teeth working at Morgan studios in London as a tea boy when Jethro Tull was cutting Songs From The Wood there.

The thing is, when you get in to reissuing rock and pop quad titles, you're overlapping with one of the most desirable periods for titles (1969-1977) that reissue companies go after. So that means that when Vocalion is trying to get anything rock/pop/jazz/soul/R&B from the 70's they're going up against all the other UK CD reissue labels, which include some heavy hittlers like BGO, BBR, Cherry Red, Expansion, Ace as well as loads of other smaller ones. When any of these labels license a title for reissue it can take it out of circulation for other potential licensees for 3-5 years, or even more - some of the BGO titles that are licensed from Sony they've had in print for more than 10 years.

Between the email requests D-V get, posts on their facebook page, requests here (they do check in from time to time) and suggestions from myself they have a very good idea of what people are after. They're not living in some alternate universe where they're scoffing at the quality of Aerosmith and the Winter brothers whilst simultaneously plotting to release the complete quadraphonic oeuvre of Ray Conniff. They're filling a gap in the market that other labels aren't covering, and also expanding their horizons to try and offer a broader selection of titles. I think when they released their first issue of 5 or 6 quad SACDs at the end of 2015, they didn't entirely realise that there was a network of people like us who were looking for all sorts of different music in quad - they just added the SACD quad layer as an extra to boost sales in their core customer base, and because Mike Dutton is a fan of surround sound himself. Now that they know how much was produced during the quad era, and what people are after, they're doing their best to connect you the customer with what's sitting in the major label vaults.

If you want to know what's available to them, a little research goes a long way. Take a look at Aerosmth for example - look up their three albums that were released in quad on discogs for example and you'll see that they've never been reissued by anyone other than Columbia/Sony. In fact, the stereo versions of the albums that are on CD currently appear to be the same ones that were released in the early 90's, which would suggest to me that there's a financial or contractual issue preventing re-release - surely someone like MoFi would have had a go by now if it was possible. As for the Winter brothers, you can look them up on amazon UK, you'll see that the majority of their albums have been reissued in the last few years by either BGO or Music On CD. This is what D-V faces when it gets in to the arena of reissuing rock quads, as I'm sure all CD reissue labels do. It just burns us more, obviously, because when they reissue something on CD in stereo we lose the ability to get it in quad. That isn't to say there's nothing available - as licenses expire, new things become re-available on a yearly basis, but you have to work with what those things are, not to mention compete with other labels to get them.

On top of that, even for titles that they do manage to secure licensing for, locating quad master tapes that haven't been touched since Watergate isn't as simple as phoning up Iron Mountain and saying 'send it over!'. Vault searches can take (and have taken) months or even longer, and spanned continents and still not turned up things. For all the quad things that D-V have released so far, there are just as many that are either on hold or not happening because they couldn't find the tapes.

I haven't even touched on the time and money involved in all of this, but suffice it to say that paying an upfront guarantee to a major label, legal and contractual costs, along with the costs of stereo and quad tape transfers, stereo and quad SACD mastering, stereo CD mastering, hybrid SACD authoring, disc replication, artwork, printing and packaging aren't cheap. I think if D-V were in a position to choose at will what they'd release, they'd give us everything we wanted - they're not avoiding it or holding it back out of a perverse desire to make Danny Davis an international sensation 40 years after the fact. I think when you consider all the hoops a label like D-V (or AF when they were doing quad) have to jump through to get even one quad SACD out it starts to seem like more of a minor miracle than anything. They might not be releasing exactly what you want, or on the timescale you want, but they are trying hard to unearth stuff from the major label vaults that would presumably never see the light of day otherwise.

 

[steelydave]

Yes, that is their core market. What they call "Easy, Light & Latin" music. There is plenty of Quad material in the Sony Music catalog from the artists you mention and in that vein:
Peter Nero, Ray Conniff, Percy Faith, Chet Atkins, Henry Mancini, Floyd Cramer, Hugo Montenegro, Perry Como, Mac Davis, John Keating, Andre Kostelanetz

D/V also highlights this focus in the mission statement on their web site.
Note their reference to The John Wilson Orchestra as representing "progressive, contemporary" music.


https://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/

I'm not sure it's helpful to quote a mission statement that's over 3 years old - before they started releasing SACDs at all - and misquote it as well. The 'progressive, contemporary' quote applied to the CDSML series (which includes the recently released Main Ingredient and Tower Of Power quad SACDs) whereas the John Wilson Orchestra is part of their CDSA series which is for modern digital orchestral recordings.

 

[quicksrt]

Popular refers to anything non-classical, which includes pop, rock, jazz, R&B, soul, etc.

Vocalion and Epoch have made their reputation (and a good one at that, look at the happy customers on their facebook page) over the last 20 years primarily releasing classical, soundtrack, and easy listening music, including the artists you appear to be turning your nose up at in your post. They'd be foolish to neglect their core demographic going forward as that's what got them to where they are today.

By the same token, they'd be foolish to ignore easy money making opportunities (ie reissuing rock quads on SACD) if they were available, just because they had some stylistic preference for non-rock music. This isn't the case at all. As I said some months ago on this thread, Michael Dutton told me himself that he's not averse to releasing rock quads - hell, he cut his teeth working at Morgan studios in London as a tea boy when Jethro Tull was cutting Songs From The Wood there.

The thing is, when you get in to reissuing rock and pop quad titles, you're overlapping with one of the most desirable periods for titles (1969-1977) that reissue companies go after. So that means that when Vocalion is trying to get anything rock/pop/jazz/soul/R&B from the 70's they're going up against all the other UK CD reissue labels, which include some heavy hittlers like BGO, BBR, Cherry Red, Expansion, Ace as well as loads of other smaller ones. When any of these labels license a title for reissue it can take it out of circulation for other potential licensees for 3-5 years, or even more - some of the BGO titles that are licensed from Sony they've had in print for more than 10 years.

Between the email requests D-V get, posts on their facebook page, requests here (they do check in from time to time) and suggestions from myself they have a very good idea of what people are after. They're not living in some alternate universe where they're scoffing at the quality of Aerosmith and the Winter brothers whilst simultaneously plotting to release the complete quadraphonic oeuvre of Ray Conniff. They're filling a gap in the market that other labels aren't covering, and also expanding their horizons to try and offer a broader selection of titles. I think when they released their first issue of 5 or 6 quad SACDs at the end of 2015, they didn't entirely realise that there was a network of people like us who were looking for all sorts of different music in quad - they just added the SACD quad layer as an extra to boost sales in their core customer base, and because Mike Dutton is a fan of surround sound himself. Now that they know how much was produced during the quad era, and what people are after, they're doing their best to connect you the customer with what's sitting in the major label vaults.

If you want to know what's available to them, a little research goes a long way. Take a look at Aerosmth for example - look up their three albums that were released in quad on discogs for example and you'll see that they've never been reissued by anyone other than Columbia/Sony. In fact, the stereo versions of the albums that are on CD currently appear to be the same ones that were released in the early 90's, which would suggest to me that there's a financial or contractual issue preventing re-release - surely someone like MoFi would have had a go by now if it was possible. As for the Winter brothers, you can look them up on amazon UK, you'll see that the majority of their albums have been reissued in the last few years by either BGO or Music On CD. This is what D-V faces when it gets in to the arena of reissuing rock quads, as I'm sure all CD reissue labels do. It just burns us more, obviously, because when they reissue something on CD in stereo we lose the ability to get it in quad. That isn't to say there's nothing available - as licenses expire, new things become re-available on a yearly basis, but you have to work with what those things are, not to mention compete with other labels to get them.

On top of that, even for titles that they do manage to secure licensing for, locating quad master tapes that haven't been touched since Watergate isn't as simple as phoning up Iron Mountain and saying 'send it over!'. Vault searches can take (and have taken) months or even longer, and spanned continents and still not turned up things. For all the quad things that D-V have released so far, there are just as many that are either on hold or not happening because they couldn't find the tapes.

I haven't even touched on the time and money involved in all of this, but suffice it to say that paying an upfront guarantee to a major label, legal and contractual costs, along with the costs of stereo and quad tape transfers, stereo and quad SACD mastering, stereo CD mastering, hybrid SACD authoring, disc replication, artwork, printing and packaging aren't cheap. I think if D-V were in a position to choose at will what they'd release, they'd give us everything we wanted - they're not avoiding it or holding it back out of a perverse desire to make Danny Davis an international sensation 40 years after the fact. I think when you consider all the hoops a label like D-V (or AF when they were doing quad) have to jump through to get even one quad SACD out it starts to seem like more of a minor miracle than anything. They might not be releasing exactly what you want, or on the timescale you want, but they are trying hard to unearth stuff from the major label vaults that would presumably never see the light of day otherwise.

Well good then, if I am reading you correctly, they could be picking up where AF left off and "popular" does not mean exclusively orchestral cover versions.. Thanks for lengthy comments.

You know, it would not hurt for Michael Dutton at D-Vocalion to get in touch with Marshall at AF, and have a good conversation on what AF found out was available, available but expensive, available but lost or damaged tapes, and not currently available due to artist/management issues. Let D-V have a head start on where they might pick up the torch if AF is now sitting on the 4.0 sidelines and not pursuing those popular rock titles. Marshall might not mind sharing (some of) his quad insight gained in the last three years. Thus saving D-V a ton of research time, even if only a few emailed exchanges with lists of no-go, and green lit titles.

 

[fredblue]

My [kinda] wishlist would include the Best of Mountain and Avalanche (gimme some Leslie West], Papa John Creach, John Denver [Poems, Prayers & Promises], Guess Who, Harry Nilsson, Original Cast album of HAIR, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand, Jefferson Starship, Neil Diamond, Art Garkunkel, Original Cast album of Stephen Sondheim's COMPANY, Pure Prairie League, ANYTHING Philadelphia International, Ramsey Lewis, The Youngbloods (Best of), Hues Corporation, HOT Tuna, Jefferson Starship.......etc., etc., etc.:banana:

And to facilitate this massive undertaking, Adam [FREDBLUE] who lives only a few miles away from the Dutton Vocalion headquarters is going to apprentice his time and ensure that every QUAD album ever released by RCA/Columbia will eventually be released on SACD@::ugham:

And as a D~V apprentice, this is part of the initiation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdFLPn30dvQ

nice idea Ralphie baby and of course I'd be delighted to help DV, in my layman's way, anyway I can.. though I wouldn't get too hung up on the proximity chez moi to DV HQ's geographical location, it's a small world now what with the interwebs and all that.. I mean, you've got our hero of the hour sir steely of dave slaving over a hot typewriter with DV already doing those sumptuous liner notes and he's many miles from the home of the Hornets.

ps. love the list :upthumb any/all of those fabulous Philly Soul Quads would be a dream come true :worthy

 

[GOS]

If the very next DV release were a Johnny Mathis...I think my jaw would drop to the floor. I would buy it so fast that...well...you know. :yikes
Or, John Denver? :yikes:yikes Another winner for the GOS catalog.

 

[GOS]

Now, I would be silly not to mention that I would absolutely LOVE any "classic rock" titles from the 70's. Of course, that would be my preference if I had to state one....

Just in case our good DV friends are reading this thread.

 

[bmoura]

Or, John Denver? :yikes:yikes

There is a John Denver album on RCA (Poems, Prayers & Promises) that was released as a Q8 only (no CD-4 disc) Quad release.
That would be a D/V reissue candidate. Included it on my last list of suggested titles to D/V.

Time will tell if it makes it to a D/V Surround SACD.

 

[GOS]

There is a John Denver album on RCA (Poems, Prayers & Promises) that was released as a Q8 only (no CD-4 disc) Quad release.
That would be a D/V reissue candidate. Included it on my last list of suggested titles to D/V.

Time will tell if it makes it to a D/V Surround SACD.

Thank you Brian! It would be excellent.