paper lace the night chicago died

my commercial 45 for the paper lace song "the night chicago
died" issued as mercury 73492 states the run time on the
label as 3:30 and does run that length.....the reason for
the post....the vinyl 45 starts off with the sirens at the
0:04 mark of the song in the left channel while the version
on the cd 'super hits of the 70's vol 13' has the sirens in
the right channel.....question is...do any of the cd's in
the db have the sirens in the correct channel?....thanks
john for flipping the channels for me....

Good question... If the left and right channels are reversed during the entire song, it's a very easy fix on any digital editing software program.

Thanks to Ed and Tom, we know that the 45 and LP versions run 3:28 and 3:30, respectively, and that the siren-y keyboards at 0:04 should be in the left channel.

The song sounds great on Rhino's Have A Nice Day Vol. 13 (1990), where it runs 3:29. Unfortunately, the siren-y keyboards at 0:04 are in the right channel, so the left and right channels are swapped. The following CDs use the same analog transfer as Have A Nice Day Vol. 13, and all also have their left and right channels swapped:

• Warner Special Products' 2-CD 40 Summer Fun Hits (1993)
• Time-Life's AM Gold Vol. 21 1974 (1996) - digitally exactly 0.3 dB louder
• Time-Life's 2-CD Singers And Songwriters Vol. 17 1973-1975 (2002) - digitally exactly 0.192 dB quieter

Time-Life's Sounds Of The Seventies Vol. 31 AM Top Twenty (1993) uses the same analog transfer as Have A Nice Day Vol. 13, but reverses the left and right channels and shortens the fade a tiny bit. This fixes the left/right error of Have A Nice Day Vol. 13, so that the siren-y keyboards at 0:04 are correctly in the left channel. (Most of the tracks on Sounds Of The Seventies Vol. 31 AM Top Twenty are based on earlier CD masterings, but swap the left and right channels. They just got lucky with this one track, where two wrongs make a right. The AM Top Twenty disc is the bane of my existence, because of all the left/right errors that propagated into later CDs.) The following CDs use the same analog transfer as Sounds Of The Seventies Vol. 31 AM Top Twenty, and all have their left and right channels correct:

• Reader's Digest's 4-CD American Pie (1998)
• Time-Life's 2-CD Seventies Music Explosion One-Hit Wonders (2005) - digitally exactly 1.4 dB louder

Razor & Tie's Those Fabulous '70s (1990) isn't based on any of the above, has its siren-y keyboards at 0:04 correctly in the left channel, and fades a little early. This disc uses the same analog transfer:

• Razor & Tie's 2-CD Suddenly '70s (1997)

My recommendation:

Manually swap the left and right channels on Rhino's Have A Nice Day Vol. 13 (1990).