The popularity of compact disc technology has led to wonderful discoveries in the area of old music. There are a lot more high sound quality oldies out today than we could have even dreamed of in 1980. Why? Because the advent of the compact disc, with no inherent background noise, has forced record companies to go back to the original source tapes if they want their music to sound even passable on CD. If not for CDs, and a few digital producers who cared about quality, we would probably never have heard "The Angels Listened In" by the Crests in stereo, or "Distant Shores" by Chad and Jeremy, or "Patricia" by Perez Prado, or hundreds of others.

To understand just how important the CD revolution has been to the oldies reissue business, it's necessary to look back many years. In late 1970s, the oldies of the '50s and '60s were ten to twenty years old, and with the rare exception, were not likely to sell in large enough quantities to chart (sales in the 50,000 plus range over a fairly short time would get an album in the lower reaches of the charts. Oldies reissues albums would typically sell in the single-digit thousands up to 10,000 or so spread out over many months, depending on the artist. Some oldies reissue albums, even with national distribution, sold perhaps a total of 700 copies.) Because of the rather poor economic return, major labels were not very interested in spending studio time (at $200 per hour) to remaster old songs for reissue when they could be spending the same studio time producing contemporary music which had a better chance of return on investment. As for oldies, there was what I call "the special products mentality."

As early as the 1950s, record companies had discovered that the old material they had stored in their vaults was not earning any money just sitting there. Since the production was already paid for and the finished tapes were ready to go, they could rent out these songs to advertisers who were interested in putting together custom specialty albums with the names of products or companies on the jackets. The particular songs on the album didn't much matter, since the albums were giveaways or special offer items anyway. The whole thing could be done quickly and cheaply from the record company standpoint (grab some songs out of the vault to fit some loose theme, write a short paragraph on the back of the album, and get them printed/pressed up). Almost no studio time, almost pure profit.

There was no lack of customers. In the 1960s, Columbia Special Products (probably the first and certainly the biggest) pressed about 1000 of these custom albums, and the 1970s saw that number dwarfed. Capitol Special Markets, RCA Special Products, Warner Special Products, Decca Special Products, and others were born and churned out album after album. The one thing these special products divisions had in common was that they were money machines. Quick and easy was the (publicly unstated) motto. Grab the tapes, press the records. As simple as that.

Sound quality was not the main focus of the special products divisions. If the sound was okay, it was good enough usually for the purposes at hand. This is not to say that the sound quality was bad, because often the handiest source tapes happened to have good sound. But if a song had not yet been issued in stereo, it was very rare indeed that the project manager of a special products album would take the studio time to have it mixed down to stereo. If the source tape retrieved from the vault wasn't the first generation master, but a third or fourth generation copy, it was rare that the project manager spent time getting a better source tape. If these sorts of costly things happened often, the project manager was not long for the job, which after all was to make money, not spend it.

This "special products mentality" soon spread to regular oldies reissues on the parent labels, also, and to tapes rented out to other labels for use in multi-label oldies reissue compilations. For the companies trying to reissue oldies, if the tape the special products division sent you was what you wanted in terms of sound quality, great. If not, tough. There wasn't much you could do about it. By the end of the 1970s, hundreds of reissue albums were being released each year, with hit-and-miss sound quality, and very, very few from original, first generation masters.

Two other industry practices were widespread in the late 1970s, also fueled by the high cost of reissuing oldies from original sources: tape trading due to reciprocal licensing agreements, and the use of records as sources for other records. Back in the 1960s, very loose licensing agreements were sometimes written that seemingly gave labels or companies the rights to reissue certain songs forever, and some contracts even allowed these songs to be traded to other labels. The source tapes for these traded songs was far from first-generation, and as years went by, the sound quality of many of these often-traded songs deteriorated with each reissue. At other times, labels arranged licensing rights to reissue songs, but no source tapes at all were available from the owner of the songs, so the best available source was used, and many times, that source was a record.

To sum up, the late 1970s was a dismal time indeed if you liked oldies and were looking for some high quality reissues. Major labels were firmly committed to the special products mentality, and minor labels and reissue labels were making records from whatever sources they could find, and taking whatever they could get from the major labels' special products divisions.

By the early 1980s, a few oldies reissue labels began making their reputations on putting out high sound quality on their oldies reissues. European labels such as Ace and Bear Family, and California's Rhino Records were such labels. Not that the albums put out in the early 1980s were uniformly good on even these labels, mind you; they were still having big trouble with source material, but at least they tried. By late 1982, it was clear that compact disc technology was practical and that it would soon be available as an alternative to vinyl and cassette tape. Record companies didn't pay too much attention, however.

In 1983, compact discs became commercially available here. These early discs were uneven in quality as producers struggled with how to present the analog sound on a digital medium. Often the result was strange, harsh, equalization, loads of tape hiss, and a generally lifeless sound. Over the intervening years, there has been a remarkable improvement in the sound quality of CD releases in general, partly due to experience, and partly due to the use of better source material.

It was quickly apparent that any deficiencies of the source tape, such as the hiss level which increased as multiple generations of tape were made, came through loud and clear on CDs. Unlike on vinyl or cassette, where the additional background noise was at least partly masked by the background noise inherent in those media, source noise on CD stood out clearly. Records used as source material were immediately obvious, since any surface noise heard on CD could only come from using a source which included that noise.

Source tapes sent to reissue labels began to be rejected outright as not good enough for compact disc use. This certainly raised some eyebrows, since if the tapes were rejected, no money could be made. But not much was done about it just yet. Maybe nothing would have been done about it, either, had not a group of producers working independently at several record companies took the step of demanding high quality source tapes for CD reissue. Many times this meant demanding the original session tapes, the 3, 4, or 8 track recordings laid down at the original recording sessions, a tape generation earlier than the source used to make the 45 or LP (which was the mixdown master). Not only did these producers demand quality, they also believed that true stereo sound in the 1980s was preferable to mono, and if that meant spending the studio time to remix to stereo, it had to be done. Some of these digital oldies production pioneers are (in alphabetical order): Walter DeVenne (Relic, Rhino, and other labels); Dennis Drake (PolyGram, Time-Life); Ron Furmanek (RCA, Capitol, EMI); Steve Hoffman (MCA, DCC Compact Classics); Bob Hyde (Murray Hill, Rhino, Capitol); Bill Inglot (Rhino and independent projects for other labels); and Bob Irwin (Sundazed, Sony Music's Columbia/Epic/Legacy). You will many times see these folks mentioned in the pages of the book Oldies on CD, usually in reference to a highly-rated CD.

So here it is, 1997. Do we have the oldies reissue sound quality problem solved? Hardly. Producers have noted that some of the master tapes from the 1970s and 1980s are in as bad a shape as any they've seen from the 1950s or 1960s. Although the early CDs taken from records were so offensive to almost everyone that the practice has decreased drastically, companies today sometimes use other CDs as source material. Special products divisions and some reissue labels are still churning out quickie CDs of dubious quality, but over time, the work spent digging up old first-generation masters is starting to pay off. Never have we had available such an immense variety of truly excellent oldies reissues.