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jimct
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| Posted: 16 December 2013 at 6:04am | IP Logged
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Before I file away my final volume (12B) of the Complete Motown Singles
set, series researcher (and Harry Weinger's right-hand man) Keith Hughes
included a page with some interesting info on it, on page 126, titled
"Function At The Junction: Motown Pressing Plants". I thought our resident
experts on this, most notably John (Yah Shure), would especially find it to
be of interest. I also enjoyed it, and my kudos to both series compilers,
for opting to share this bit of might be viewed by some as "inside
baseball", to consumers. Although I will provide this page's full info
verbatim, to me, the last paragraph would be of the most interest, for the
45 collectors among us:
Apart from a brief reference in Volume 5, nothing has been said about
where Motown singles were manufactured. This brief overview will help fill
that gap.
Smokey Robinson has often recounted a story of picking up precious
boxes of the first Tamla pressings in Owosso. MI, the site of the American
Record Pressing Company, where many of the earliest Motown regional
releases were made. Motown also used the Monarch Recording
Manufacturing Company in Los Angeles, CA, whose discs are stamped
with the "Delta" number so valued by discographers, who are able to use
the numbers to determine the pressing date to within a month.
By 1961 Columbia Custom Pressings--mainly their Chicago factory,
Columbia Transcriptions--had become Motown's main plant. They
retained that position for a couple of years, but towards the end of 1962,
RCA Victor Custom Record Division, also in Chicago, took over the role,
and remained Motown's chief supplier until the end of our period.
(Columbia essentially put themselves out of contention in 1965, when the
record company division issued a pair of label recordings from the Four
Tops' early days, at the time that "I Can't Help Myself" was at the top of
the charts. Reportedly Gordy vowed never to use them again, although
their name crept back on the suppliers list as an occasional backup in the
early '70s.)
When Motown had a big order, they called in independent suppliers. It's
one of the reasons why alternate pressings of songs turn up: a master
tape would go to the main plant and, rather than provide the backup plant
a copy of the DM--the "Duplicate Master" of the approved mix--Motown
engineers would sometimes create a new mix in the Hitsville basement,
using the DM as a guide; they would, occasionally, add reverb, change the
balance of instruments, use different vocal parts and/or extend a fade.
The most frequently used independents were Southern Plastics of
Nashville, still going today after a name change in 1971 to United Record
Pressing, which contains a Motown Suite that may be seen by visitors
touring the facility, and the ARP facility in Owosso, until it burned to the
ground on Saturday, October 28, 1972.
-Keith Hughes
Edited by jimct on 16 December 2013 at 6:07am
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Hykker
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| Posted: 16 December 2013 at 7:12am | IP Logged
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Got to admit that before joining this board I never
really gave a thought to pressing plant variations. My
thanks as well to YahShure for his informative posts on
the subject.
Curiously, did Berry Gordy specify lower grade and/or
regrind vinyl for his singles? Most of the 60s-vintage
Motown singles I have are on par with ABC/Dunhill as far
as being noisy. Got to admit, though that they didn't
seem to get any worse with repeated playings.
Being an east-coast guy, I don't have many Monarch-
pressed singles in my collection, mostly from those 10-
for-99ȼ packs of cutout singles. Many of them are rather
distorted-sounding too.
I just ask because most of my RCA singles from that same
time frame sound just fine. I assume (never a good idea)
they came from the same plant?
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aaronk
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| Posted: 16 December 2013 at 9:46am | IP Logged
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Quote:
| Motown engineers would sometimes create a new mix in the Hitsville basement, using the DM as a guide; they would, occasionally, add reverb, change the balance of instruments, use different vocal parts and/or extend a fade. |
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And the million dollar question is: Why?
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Aaron Kannowski
Uptown Sound
91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop
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Hykker
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| Posted: 16 December 2013 at 12:36pm | IP Logged
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aaronk wrote:
Quote:
Motown engineers would sometimes
create a new mix in the Hitsville basement, using the DM
as a guide; they would, occasionally, add reverb, change
the balance of instruments, use different vocal parts
and/or extend a fade. |
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And the million dollar question is: Why? |
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Can't answer that, but from reading discussions here of
differences between different pressings Motown sure wasn't
the only label that did this.
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Yah Shure
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| Posted: 16 December 2013 at 2:05pm | IP Logged
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Pressing plants are *so* overrated. ;)
Jim, thanks for posting that information. Perhaps Berry was merely returning Columbia's earlier Four Tops cash-in "favor" when Motown continued to release its own vault material in the wake of the Jacksons' departure for Epic.
This statement - RCA Victor Custom Record Division, also in Chicago, took over the role,
and remained Motown's chief supplier until the end of our period. - could use some clarification. It was the mastering that was done by RCA in Chicago, not any actual record pressing (Indianapolis and other RCA plants would've handled that.) The RCA Chicago-cut lacquers (not sure if any metal parts would have been done there) went out to either its own plants (up through about 1971-72) or the indies (ARP/Southern Plastics/Monarch.) This is why you'll see both the ARP script logo and RCA's machine-stamped deadwax numbers and letters in ARP-pressed Motown 45s (or Monarch logos and delta numbers and RCA's machine-stamped deadwax figures on Monarch's styrene 45 pressings.) My own experience may not be universal, but from the mid-'60s into 1972, I'd encounter RCA-pressed Motown LPs far more often than RCA-pressed Motown 45s. That's not surprising, given that Southern Plastics was only in the 45s business during those years. As for those "occasional '70s backup" Columbia-pressed Motown 45s I have, all are Santa Maria vinyl copies. A good rule of thumb in determining whether a Motown 45 was pressed by RCA or Columbia is that the type fonts are typical of what you'd normally find on those labels.
Because Motown was an RCA Custom client, RCA's own labels had priority, so it's possible that some of the Hitsville Studios' alternate mixes may have resulted from times when RCA was temporarily unable to accommodate outside clients. Labor-related issues at RCA may also have been a factor. Not that that addresses Aaron's million-dollar question... unless Motown was in the habit of sending the actual, first-generation single master tape to RCA Chicago. If that were the actual case, you'd think they'd have a better Plan B in the event of a last-minute snag at Nipperland. Maybe Richard Carpenter worked at Hitsville on retainer. ;)
Most of what hit the stores in Minnesota was from ARP, and, like Steve's experience, the majority of Monarch-pressed Motown 45s only made it this far north and east via the cutout bins. I'm not sure it was a matter of Berry specifying the lowest vinyl grades for his singles as much as it was the hit-and-miss quality control nature of the independent plants he chose. Then again, it may not have been entirely coincidental that Motown's cut-hot-for-radio singles tended to mask noisy vinyl, up to a point.
I do recall seeing mailing labels from Nashville's Dixie Record Pressing Co. on boxes of the Motown promo LPs arriving at our distributorship, but that would have been some four or five years past the end of 1972. The giveaway that you have a 1970-72 RCA-pressed Motown LP? One word: Dynaflex.
Edited by Yah Shure on 16 December 2013 at 2:07pm
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aaronk
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| Posted: 16 December 2013 at 2:56pm | IP Logged
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Yah Shure wrote:
| Not that that addresses Aaron's million-dollar question... unless Motown was in the habit of sending the actual, first-generation single master tape to RCA Chicago. If that were the actual case, you'd think they'd have a better Plan B in the event of a last-minute snag at Nipperland. |
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That's certainly what it sounds like from the statement "a master tape would go to the main plant." It seems odd that they would send their first generation master tape to a plant. Why wouldn't that be kept in house at all times? What if it was lost in the mail or accidentally damaged by one of the plant workers? It also seems odd that they would make a completely new mix & master instead of just running a copy of the first generation master (the "duplicate master" as explained above). Seems pretty inefficient and inconsistent.
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Aaron Kannowski
Uptown Sound
91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop
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Topic: Motown pressing plants insight.....
