The Four Seasons Partnership don’t seem to have invested consistently in their Back Catalogue and another story has come to light which may make them have ‘Second Thoughts’ about this. The question I have asked since 2006 has been ‘Are The Masters ‘preserved’?’
Back in 2006, my now late Friend Stefan Wriedt [highly respected German Studio Sound Engineer] discussed with me the ‘preservation’ of the Four Seasons Master tapes from the early 60s on. He was had completed the first CD release of The Night - Inside You 1972 – 1975 in 2000 and just completed the pre 1962 Bootleg releases of Frankie’s 45s and all of the Four Lovers tracks from RCA masters.
Firstly we were concerned re the FSP’s own stored Masters but also for the many 16 Track Session Tapes we knew existed in the Motown Vaults stored by Universal at the Iron Mountain Storage Company in Pennsylvania. The alternative, back then for ‘preservation’ was STUDIO DUBS from mint quality vinyl, which was a huge project.
But we started with the MONO vinyl 45 mixes and I completed the MONO ARCHIVE back in 2015 after Stefan’s untimely passing. That is all stored in Volume 2 of our DIGITAL LIBRARY. But is it going to remain intact? I loaded it to Cloud Storage for the time being after watching the videos about the industry storage and the Iron Mountain Storage.
This video from last year showed the size and amazing facilities which is the location of the Motown Universal Tape Storage. Thousands of analogue tapes and Hard Discs stored in climate controlled caverns.
It is the only source of multi-tracks of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons catalogue and doing the Snapper Music Box Set research has showed the huge limitation in the stored quality of what is an amazing back catalogue.
It had long been reported that at the end of the 60s, Bell Studio had dumped their multi-track master tapes in a skip when Bob Crewe failed to collect them in time. Multi track Masters [3/4/8/16 and even 24 track] were generally stored at the studio they recorded at back in those ‘analog tape’ days and from the research during the Snapper Project when all album and other tapes were salvaged from the FSP Storage in LA and again transferred to ‘digital’ storage it soon became clear that the FSP stored only ‘back-up’ Safety Copies in MONO and STEREO….throughout their recording sessions up until 1985. There have been several Tape Transfer CD projects since 1986 according to Bill Inglot.
The only Studio to effectively maintain storage throughout Frankie and the group’s career has been Universal Motown from their period at Motown where the Tapes are stored from ALL of their sessions with the STEREO Mix-downs for single and album release. These analogue 2 inch Tapes are stored at Iron Mountain.
Back in 2011 when we realised from paper records what was there, we had comcernsthat these could deteriorate with age, or simply be mislaid.
But the Snapper Project gave hope that these Motown 16 Track recordings have been copied and transferred to Digital Storage so are ‘preserved’. The 13 approved ‘masters’ were superb STEREO flat mixes[ready for Mastering]. We’ve got them now in the Snapper Box Set. I am still researching where the rest are….the ‘unreleased’ tracks.?
Then ‘post release’ we heard that Andy Skurow at Motown Vault Services had been ‘let go’….and maybe his boss too and I now wonder if Vault Services had been completely disbanded?. That wouldn’t be a surprise as Iron Mountain have all of the facilities to extract tracks in a full studio of tape players and HDD controllers as the video illustrates. But perhaps the main reason for lack of investment in such work is the collapse of physical media sales and the lack of any commitment to letting out ‘unreleased’. The lack of resources I previously reported on ‘Clearance’ of tracks by Universal Motown with Independent Record Companies has added to this story and compilers concerns.
But this week we read a story which makes us even doubt the integrity of any storage medium over time and wonder how music is best preserved?.
https://www.mixonline.com/business/inside-iron-mountain-its-time-to-talk-about-hard-drives
We know from interview with Bob Gaudio in 2002 with the late UK fan club rep Stuart Miller that Bob Gaudio had started to transfer analogue to digital on Pro-tools but with Bob Sobo’s passing the question of whether this was completed remained unanswered and there are clear questions re the integrity of what was done. Where is the digital storage if not in the LA Store that Bill Inglot accessed to transfer the original album tapes for Snapper? And who is managing it?. Bob Gaudio did not give Snapper access to any other digital storage.
The Snapper Music Box Set transfer is not [I believe] an adequate base for preservation. WHY?
Firstly ‘Source Tapes’ integrity…..whilst the VEE-Jay Delivery tapes from 1966 [when they went bankrupt] are superb - as I have reviewed 3 of the dozen tapes and they were top quality transfers - and hopefully these are safe in a digital store. The Philips album tapes were [it appears] in poor condition and several have clearly ‘degraded’ as ‘Safety Copies’. The 1990s CD past masters of the STEREO albums are clearly superior from my Snapper Box Set Sound Tests Review.
The other reason is that the transfer standard described in the article above for ‘preservation’ must be 24 bit 192 khz…..and Snapper and Bill Inglot used 16 bit 44 Khz. The argument that human hearing cannot hear or perceive the difference has been well publicised but the few 24/192 transfers we found in the Snapper Research have greater clarity and dynamic range…...they just sound ‘so good’ [even with the odd tape fault]. Only the late arrival masters for the Snapper Box Set done by another LA studio are at the higher definition quality as wav files. Too much of the digital transfer of FSP assets into the Box Set is not to the best standards in my opinion.
So as far as we know and based on 20 years of ‘music detective’ work, no-one has the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons Catalogue from the ‘analogue era’ in top quality ‘preserved format’ except for maybe Motown Universal who digitised many tapes of the 1970s contract and sent them to Bob Gaudio. But what was sent and what standard?….. we don’t know.
SO given the work in doing the Snapper Box Set as Master Track Adviser I made a decision to salvage and preserve the BEST available MASTERS from that research and past CD issues when better digital transfers would have been done. All of the ‘important’ album CD releases Stefan and I had jointly collected [as shown on our web site CD discography] have been reviewed and the most suitable masters for preservation re-mastered with today’s software for storage on SSD. Now we have to BACK-UP and share the set and effectively act as the FSP Digital Storage [unpaid] Contractors. But as always it is a labour of love for the music and it’s production.
We have also collected Out-Takes that are of interest to ‘collectors’ which didn’t make the Box Set Final Playlist and the DIGITAL LIBRARY is as below in 12 Volumes. For now it enables rare and new mixes to be shared via You Tube and maybe we will donate the LIBRARY to a ‘past music’ research focused University. But the lesson to all is ‘manage the masters’ and ‘manage the storage media’. Back-up...Back-up….Back-up
For now, you have the Box Set and 70% of it is OK/passable for most consumers today who still collect ‘product’. The Rest of the LIBRARY as I have compiled it is as you can see below.
We hope that Bob Gaudio and/or Motown Universal will preserve the 70s unreleased [which is unique as 16 track Tape ‘with vocals’] and the catalogue will be available in the future, in whatever format of release survives the ‘streaming age’ we are in now. Alternatively they could claim ownership and ‘commission’ Iron Mountain to collate all of the Motown Released and Unreleased of Frankie Valli and/or The Four Seasons into DIGITAL Storage. I cannot confirm that all of the P and T tapes on the microfiche Artists Cards and the Tape Index Spreadsheet have been recovered from analogue tape and are preserved. I have not had access. So one immediate question is obvious…..WHY NOT?
As the article says…..”artist’s estates, with little budget for asset preservation, are generally letting drives[and tapes...ed] sit in the archive.” Well the Four Seasons Partnership has the funds, but will it allocate them to preserve the assets?
Ken Charmer – Sound Engineer and Music Historian
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