New Gold on CD Radio Program

I recently came in connection with a lot of hundreds of
"New Gold on CD" radio programs from Westwood One. The
CD contains 5 short feature programs about an individual
song BUT it also includes the songs self-contained on
their own on separate tracks. From what I can tell this
show was produced from around 1990 to 1997 or so. From
my understanding these were the 1st time oldies hits
(50s-70s) were put on compact disc for radio. (Thus the
name "new gold on CD".)

Does anyone know the source of this audio? The mastering
seems to be normalized about the same as TM Century
Gold/Hit discs. I'm currently ripping these hundreds of
discs as fast as I can!

Edited by radiomichaels

During the Dick Bartley era, many of the tracks were transferred from vinyl, with a preference for the stereo album versions rather than the mono 45 versions. There are some custom edits and early fades -- for example, they cut "Hey Jude" down to less than 4 minutes.

Also they used some kind of processing to shift single-channel passages to the center of the stereo image. For example, "I've Been Lonely Too Long" by the Young Rascals starts out as mono and then gradually widens out to full stereo when the vocals come in.

And they dug up an unusual wide stereo version of CCR's "Bad Moon Rising" with double-tracked vocals:

CCR - Bad Moon Rising wide stereo w/ double tracked vocals

Edited by VWestlife

I just found probably 300-500 of these program discs.
Each one has about 10 songs in the clear on them in
addition to the 5 programs for a given week. Some look
like they were used quite a bit for airplay but I've only
run into a couple songs that have errors when ripping so
far.

There seems to be a variety of everything top 40 from the
50's through 70s and even a rare early 80s song. (a
couple billy joel 80s tracks) This will be a nice mostly
complete oldies library when I'm done ripping all these
to .wav files. It's almost as good and finding a stash of
gold discs that have been sitting away collecting dust
for years.

Back in 1979, my good friend (and part-time employee/helper in my store), Mike, & I would be doing inventory work in the record store, and we
would have on in the background, "The Original Saturday Night Oldies" show on WFYR-FM 103.5 hosted by Dick Bartley. Mike would ask, "Why
doesn't he play more of the stereo recordings of the hits of late 50's through the 60's?" "He probably isn't aware", I answered. "Can we call
him up?" "They won't patch us through, let's plan to ambush him at his next personal appearance!". We went to some place in downtown Chicago,
where Bartley was hosting some event on a weeknight. I remember walking up to him and asking, "If you're so enthused about the quality of the
sound on your WFYR show, why do you still play the MONO version of Bobby Darin's 'Mack The Knife'"? "There's a STEREO version?" Mike had made
up a list of oldies that he had in stereo and better-quality sound than the ones Dick had. They exchanged phone numbers and that started a
friendship that lasted to the current day, even though I think Dick is now retired.
So, to answer 'RadioMichaels' initial question, "What was the source of the audio..." Sure, a lot may have come from Dick's personal
collection, but I would say most of the early Westwood One 'New Gold On CD' were sourced from Mike. -Bill.

ChicagoBill wrote:    And just in case someone needed to know, I think the Stereo version of 'Bad Moon Rising' came from the 'Creedence Gold' L.P.. -Bill.

Yes, some later 'Creedence Gold' vinyl pressings were
accidentally the Quad mix pressings.

Andy