Fats Domino--Blueberry Hill

I've always wondered about this one. My original 45 of this song
(Imperial 5407) has a belt slip, or flutter, at about the 1:06 mark, on
the line "But all of the vows we made," with the slip on the word
"made." I've never heard this belt slip on any CD version, although
the only two CD versions I have are on They Call Me The Fat Man[/
I] (EMI 96786) and Heart & Soul Fifties (JCI 3204). Does anyone
else have this version? Does this qualify as a 45 version, or just an
error at the manufacturing plant?

Edited by Paul Esch

My RED label Imperial 45 also had the glitch. Mom bought it for me in 1956 but, alas, it is long gone.

GM

I've since learned that the 78 does NOT contain the tape problem contained in the first 45 pressing. Also, later 45 pressings and subsuqent reissues apparently edit a later part of the song and put it where the slipped part of the song was...so it's possible that some versions on cd that don't have the slip may be the 78 version or they may all be slightly different than the 45.

Tom Daly just sent me a detailed explanation of the history behind the release of Blueberry Hill which I thought everyone would enjoy reading:

The master for “Blueberry Hill” had splices in it that got stuck in the tape machine when the production master was dubbed that was used to cut the 45 rpm stampers. This same tape found its way to the master reel for the vinyl LP, This is Fats Domino. This is probably why everyone thinks that THE tape suffered damage, however the 78 rpm issues, released simultaneously with the 45s had no such issue, and it is the 78 rpm master that has been used since United Artists Records bought Imperial from Liberty, after Liberty had bought the label from Lew Chudd. Bob Hyde, who ran Capitol/EMI Music Special Markets when I first began mastering ERIC Records’ CDs, gave me the lowdown on the pedigree of those tapes a long time ago when we conversed about low-generation sources. To confirm what Bob had told me about the history of “Blueberry Hill,” I sought out a 78 rpm Imperial shellac disc, played it and what I heard confirmed what Bob had told me. The 78s had no trace of a tape snag anywhere in the recording where they occurred on the original 45s and the LP pressing of This is Fats Domino. Liberty/UA has always used the 78 rpm master tape for subsequent reissues, and only original red, orange or black label Imperial 45s and the aforementioned LP have the tape snag. Interesting sidebar: the master containing the snag had RIAA pre-compensation on it. The master for the 78 is flat. I just thought you might be interested in this info that will probably die with me if I don’t share it with someone else who cares. Bob Hyde has been gone for the past 15 years, so he won’t be sharing the info with anyone else!

Tom Daly

Yah Shure wrote: The "Blueberry Hill" 45 was counterfeited in the early '70s on the late-'50s-1964 black Imperial label with the five multi-colored stars. I bought one of these in 1971, and it has the same tape wow as my original maroon label stock copy. The counterfeit is off-centered and the vinyl is predictably hissy. The transfer itself isn't half bad. Interestingly enough, I bought another counterfeit 45 at the very same time: Freddy Cannon's "Palisades Park" on the white and reddish-brown Swan label. This one tried to be a little craftier in mimicking the legit Swan issues, using the widely-spaced deadwax letters and numbers typically found on Cameo/Parkway and Swan 45s; but the knockoff's characters still aren't as large as the jumbo-sized legit ones. It's also missing the Reco-Art mastering house deadwax logo present on my original Mallard and RCA Rockaway "Palisades Park" pressings. The vinyl is bargain-basement quality, too, although one could often say the same thing about Mallard's 45 product.

These bootlegs were pressed in Utica, NY by a guy named Stanley Markowski and they found their way to Transcontinental Music Corporation, which was a distributor out of Woburn, MA. TMC ran a bunch of Boston-area stores called Krey's Disc Shops, where I worked part-time as a college student. Wanting to know the "ins and outs" of the business, I frequently discussed the sources of some of the singles with our district manager, whose office was in the main warehouse in Woburn. He told me some guy used to come by with a station wagon full of cases of singles, and the company would buy the whole kit and kaboodle from him and ship them out to the stores. I never suspected we carried anything but legit product until we began carrying ABC/Dunhill's line of "Goldies 45s," all of which were mastered from records, and many of which sounded horrible, so I began questioning where the stock was coming from. The Goldies 45s all came directly from ABC/Dunhill, but then our district manager told me about the bootlegs and almost bowled me over! TMC got taken over by U.S. Record Company and rebranded Musicland, along with the Sam Goody's shops in New York. U.S. Records was a subsidiary of Pickwick (yes, THAT Pickwick!), and while lousy pressings still showed up, the store no longer stocked the bootlegs. I just thought I'd share this info with the forum, as many collectors are probably still sitting on Stanley Markowski's crummy bootlegs! One sidebar to this story is that we got what appeared to be nice, original Coral pressings of Buddy Holly's "True Love Ways." The labels were perfect, the vinyl had no pits or visible defects, and they weren't pressed on garbage vinyl. Imagine my surprise when I played a copy in the store and the sound was in full true stereo! Coral never issued this as a stereo single, and if they had, the label would have been a special one designed for a stereo single. This one had the standard orange label with the horizontal bars and CORAL in a semi-circle at the top of the label. I know this came from Stanley Markowski, but for once, the guy did a commendable pressing job.