Ran-Dells-"Martian Hop"

Thanks for the info, Jim.

It was indeed the Ace UK CD The Golden Age Of American Rock 'N' Roll: Special Novelty Edition to which I was referring. The desciption you give of your U.S. 45 matches the version on this CD.

There are three CDs listed in the database containing this song, all with run times of (2:10). The only one I have is the Varese Sarabande CD, 25 All-Time Novelty Hits, on which the first two or three seconds have been cut off. Tom Diehl states in the other thread that the Halloween Hits CD also has the version with the shorter intro. The third CD is also a Varese Sarabande CD, so it most likely is also missing the first couple of seconds. (Hopefully Pat can confirm this; on both versions what sounds like a bell is heard four times before the vocals start - the version with part of the intro cut off starts with the first bell sound, while on the 45 version there are two or three seconds of sound effects before the first bell is heard.)

The Canadian CD, Crazy Tunes, and the re-issue 45 on the Canadian Underground label (issued in the mid-to-late 80s) both feature the version with the cut off intro.

Gene, I no longer have my email exchanges
with the Ran-Dells leader, the late Steve
Rappaport, due to an email server crash
several years ago. However during our
exchanges, I brought up the sound quality
of the song on CD.

He explained to me that it was recorded on
a 4 track machine and he kept bouncing
down tracks to one mono track and adding
new overdubs, so that the final mono
mixdown had 9 different tracks on it. Both
he and his label never imagined it would
become a hit, so, in order to save money,
as soon as the disc was pressed, the mono
master was also wiped and reused. The
label quickly found themselves in a
predicament and ended up having to dub a
new master from a 45 for all future
releases, domestic and foreign. The tape
used for CD release these days does in
fact contain a disc dub.