Charles Fox "Seasons"

Gordon:

I just conducted a search for this song on the All Music Guide website, but unfortunately I didn't come up with any results. I am not aware of this song appearing anywhere on CD.

"Seasons" is a favorite of mine. Just finding a clean pressing of the 45 was a challenge at the time; I ended up using portions of three of my four 45s in order to come up with a clean rip, which I posted on Napster last century. If you have a variable bitrate mp3, it probably came, in part, from this copy.

There may very well be an entire thread's worth of pop songs that were based on the Pachelbel Canon in D Major. In addition to "Seasons" and its B-side, "Pachelbel's Canon in D Major," two songs come to mind that, coincidentally, were both from 1968:

Los Pop Tops - "Oh Lord, Why Lord" (#78)

Aphrodite's Child - "Rain And Tears", a European hit. Note the Philips U.S. misspelling of Vangelis' last name. Or perhaps he really was Russian. ;)

Edited by Yah Shure

Mark, when you say "this album", what is the title of the album? Was there a whole Charles Fox LP from the era? a soundtrack LP?

Also, I completely forgot about this post when I found this song available on CD last year - a Various Artist Readers Digest compilation, released quite a few years ago. And the source was master tape and sounds great!! The title is "Popular Melodies That Will Live Forever" - and I believe it was 4 (or 3) CDs. So that's another way to get the song on CD and sounding great.

There was a version on Napster years ago, that sounded great but was from cleaned vinyl. In fact, I really couldn't tell it was from vinyl until I A-B'd it with the Readers Digest CD I bought, and that's when I realized there was some (but not much) evidence it really was from vinyl.

Edited by EdisonLite

Gordon, I have that Readers Digest Popular Melodies That Will Live Forever set, and can attest that "Seasons" doesn't sound as crystal clear on it as the Varese version does. The RD source tape has noticeably more analog compression on it - evident right from the start - which makes it sound similar to the single master tape used for the Handshake 45. As Mark stated, there is "not a hint of compression or limiting" on the Varese version. It really does sound that much clearer. On the other hand, I'm so used to having heard that analog compression all these years that the Varese track sounds a little stark without it!

As for the version you found on Napster, check out the first paragraph of my nearly eight-year-old previous post above. ;) I had very few restoration tools at my disposal when I first cobbled that file together 17 years ago, which was why I ended up assembling it from three previously-unplayed 45s.

The problem was that those Handshake 45s were all styrene, which produces more playback rumble during the quieter portions on a stereo 45 than a comparable vinyl pressing would, even if both were sourced from the same lacquer cutting. I used just enough noise reduction during the intro to reduce the rumble up to a point; any more than that would have adversely affected the piano and strings.