Author |
|
jimct MusicFan
Joined: 07 April 2006 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 3906
|
Posted: 01 May 2008 at 12:14pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Inside the thread for Boston's "Don't Look Back", Hykker asked if any pre-1974 Elton John promo 45-only edits existed, so I thought I'd reply in a new thread. Although this song only got to #41 in Billboard, 1972's "Tiny Dancer" meets Hykker's criteria. Both my commercial 45 and the "Long Version" side of my promo 45 have listed times of (6:12) and actual times of (6:13), whereas the "Short Version" of my promo 45 has a listed time of (3:45), but an actual time of (3:41).
|
Back to Top |
|
|
sriv94 MusicFan
Joined: 16 September 2005 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 1457
|
Posted: 01 May 2008 at 12:20pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Great (OK, in my case, good) minds think alike--except I posted inside the thread. And I didn't go into as much detail.
__________________ Doug
---------------
All of the good signatures have been taken.
|
Back to Top |
|
|
jimct MusicFan
Joined: 07 April 2006 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 3906
|
Posted: 01 May 2008 at 12:24pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Apparently, my post beat yours by a single minute, sir. It was so close that I had to go Pat's timestamp to figure it all out! Nice job as always, my friend! :)
|
Back to Top |
|
|
sriv94 MusicFan
Joined: 16 September 2005 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 1457
|
Posted: 01 May 2008 at 3:00pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Not the first time people have written whole posts while I was trying to think about what I was going to say. :)
__________________ Doug
---------------
All of the good signatures have been taken.
|
Back to Top |
|
|
eriejwg MusicFan
Joined: 10 June 2007 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 3509
|
Posted: 01 May 2008 at 4:23pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
I've never understood why the promo 45 of this song wasn't edited differently to include the beautiful ending that the 6:12 version has. Instead, just faded out...to 3:41.
|
Back to Top |
|
|
Hykker MusicFan
Joined: 30 October 2007 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 1386
|
Posted: 01 May 2008 at 5:13pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Never knew there was an edit of this song. It didn't get much airplay up this way, maybe because it was a long song by an artist who'd only had one or two hits. I worked weekends at a small-market "chicken rock" station in '72...I'm pretty sure we played it, but it might have been from a stock copy...the station didn't get very good record service & had to trade out for a lot of their currents.
Does anyone have an mp3 they could send my way?
Edited by Hykker on 01 May 2008 at 5:14pm
|
Back to Top |
|
|
eriejwg MusicFan
Joined: 10 June 2007 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 3509
|
Posted: 01 May 2008 at 6:25pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Steve: The promo 45 is the LP version faded from about 3:35 to 3:41.
|
Back to Top |
|
|
Yah Shure MusicFan
Joined: 11 December 2007 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 1317
|
Posted: 01 May 2008 at 8:15pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
There were at least two different promo 45s for "Tiny Dancer." In addition to the 3:45/6:12 version, a 3:45 starred-side version was backed with "Razor Face," the stock B-side. This second variation had "SHORT VERSION" printed at the bottom of the label, and no production credits were listed.
|
Back to Top |
|
|
Todd Ireland MusicFan
Joined: 16 October 2004 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 4219
|
Posted: 02 May 2008 at 7:33am | IP Logged
|
|
|
eriejwg wrote:
I've never understood why the promo 45 of this song wasn't edited differently to include the beautiful ending that the 6:12 version has. Instead, just faded out...to 3:41. |
|
|
I've wondered this very same thing, John. There are other spots in the song that could've warranted an edit in order to preserve more of the instrumental ending.
|
Back to Top |
|
|
EdisonLite MusicFan
Joined: 18 October 2004 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 2237
|
Posted: 27 February 2021 at 2:32pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
eriejwg wrote:
I've never understood why the promo 45 of this song wasn't edited differently to include the beautiful ending that the 6:12 version has. Instead, just faded out...to 3:41. |
|
|
Yeah, the promo 45 of Tiny Dancer just fading the song from the full 6:12 length to a length of 3:41 (excluding the cold ending) doesn't seem like a great way to go.
I just did my own custom edit - and kept the piano ending. It's funny I was listening to the song a week ago and noticed it takes until 2:33 to get to the start of Chorus 1! A time of 2:33 is longer than quite a few top 40 hits from the '60s and early '70s. Anyway, I did some edits and got the song from 6:14 to 4:54, which is still rather long for a 45 from the early '70s. But any more edits would have really not been good. In fact, when I just finished this, I thought, "If someone heard this edit back then, as the first time hearing the song, it would probably/hopefully sound fine (in terms of smooth edits) - but to all of us who have known the song as it is for the past 49 years [which is the whole world], it probably sounds bizarre - like, why is it missing sections? :)
Some people might consider editing long Elton John songs as sacrilege. But that aside, does anyone have (or maybe have personally made) custom edits for these long Elton singles that they can share:
Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
Levon
Honky Cat
I realize there's a slightly shorter fade for the single of Lucy in the Sky, but it only fades about 11 seconds of the song. These songs are all over 5 minutes (with Lucy being over 6 minutes). And it seems like there would be some custom edits of them somewhere along the way.
BTW, Gary just shared with me his custom edit of "Philadelphia Freedom" (4:06 instead of 5:19) and it's good.
One last comment - there's something non-intuitive, ironic and nonsensical about all this - at least from the point of view of an alien :) - If someone looked down and observed us taking songs we enjoy and going to all these efforts to hear LESS of them, it really doesn't make sense to many people.
But it does to those of us who like to hear compact, radio-length singles.
Edited by EdisonLite on 27 February 2021 at 3:15pm
|
Back to Top |
|
|
EdisonLite MusicFan
Joined: 18 October 2004 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 2237
|
Posted: 27 February 2021 at 2:36pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
PS - Wow, I realized I brought back a thread that had its most recent post almost 13 years ago. This board really has been going on a while :)
|
Back to Top |
|
|
garye MusicFan
Joined: 02 August 2017
Online Status: Offline Posts: 156
|
Posted: 27 February 2021 at 5:21pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
You can do an edit like I did with Tiny Dancer by
letting the first part of the song go to 2:38 and then
edit the final two choruses starting with Hold Me closer
Tiny Dancer of the song which times out about 3:45.
A better edit than the silly fade on the promo.
|
Back to Top |
|
|
Bill Cahill MusicFan
Joined: 27 June 2005 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 595
|
Posted: 03 March 2021 at 5:51am | IP Logged
|
|
|
Some iHeartRadio stations play an edit of "Tiny Dancer" exactly as described here as it sounds silly to fade it as nobody remembers that. I wonder if Elton had a "no edit"
clause in his contract, but Uni figured a "fade out" is not an edit, and only radio stations were supplied the fade out, stock copies were full length. K-Tel of course had no
issue with editing "Levon".
Edited by Bill Cahill on 03 March 2021 at 5:52am
|
Back to Top |
|
|
LunarLaugh MusicFan
Joined: 13 February 2020 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 364
|
Posted: 03 March 2021 at 12:28pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Bill Cahill wrote:
Some iHeartRadio stations play an
edit of "Tiny Dancer" exactly as described here as it
sounds silly to fade it as nobody remembers that. I
wonder if Elton had a "no edit"
clause in his contract, but Uni figured a "fade out" is
not an edit, and only radio stations were supplied the
fade out, stock copies were full length. K-Tel of course
had no
issue with editing "Levon". |
|
|
It seems unlikely that Elton would have had such a
clause in his contract so early in his career. He only
had a small handful of hits to his credit at that time
and I'm sure any airplay was better than no airplay at
all to him. Of course, as the early 1970s rolled into
the mid 1970s, he became a mega-star.
__________________ Listen to The Lunar Laugh!
|
Back to Top |
|
|
VWestlife MusicFan
Joined: 02 April 2020 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 140
|
Posted: 10 March 2021 at 10:53am | IP Logged
|
|
|
At 3:05 in this video you can hear a clip of a soundalike cover of "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" by "The Realistics", whose solution to shorten the song was to abruptly skip over half of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u70QwdUCFc
|
Back to Top |
|
|
VWestlife MusicFan
Joined: 02 April 2020 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 140
|
Posted: 23 February 2022 at 7:30pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
On the 12/3/1990 disc of "New Gold on CD with Dick Bartley", I found Westwood One's edit of "Tiny Dancer". It jumps from the first chorus (which, as mentioned above, is more than 2½ minutes into the song) to the last, with a total length of 3:18. It perserves the original ending and is even shorter than the official early-fade DJ edit, but feels like a lot of build-up for very little payoff.
|
Back to Top |
|
|