Sonny & Cher - Just You

I'm not Jim, David; but I'll bite. :) My sister bought the stereo Look At Us Atco LP in 1965. I thought I had it, but apparently not. I did spend my share of time listening to it back in the day, however, and every track was in stereo.

I hadn't listened to the "Just You" 45 in quite some time, and in comparing it with the vinyl stereo LP track, the balance is more natural (the stereo mix is very wide, with vocals centered and most everything else panned hard to the sides; consequently the instrumentation sounds pretty wimpy when summed to mono. The bass is centered, but it's more muted than on the single.)

But one thing about the 45 mix really caught my ear: at the 2:45 mark, there are strings that come in. They're mixed so far off in the background, they sound more like the reverb decays rather than the actual strings, themselves. But on the stereo LP mix, those strings (which appear at 3:08) are mixed almost ear-piercingly loud in the left channel. Even when the stereo LP mix is summed to mono, those strings remain far more prominent than they are on the mono 45. Seems odd that the decision was made to really bury them on the single, although its extended ending there could have been a factor. Those strings serve as a climactic ending to the stereo LP version, which fades out soon thereafter. Meanwhile, the 45 still has a few more grooves to get under its belt at that point.

Edited by Yah Shure