"Someone" - The Contrails

I normally don't pose questions about non-Top 40 singles on this forum, but I do have one to bring up here...

For years, I would occasionally hear a sad, sweet little doo-wop style ballad called "Someone" on local oldies stations here in Pittsburgh. I had no idea who performed the song but it sounded to me like it could've been a big hit sometime back in the '50s. Yet whenever I tried to research information about this mystery song, I'd come up empty and it drove me nuts!

Then finally at long last, I recently learned that "Someone" was a huge local hit in 1966 by a Pittsburgh duo called The Contrails. Back then, it was a hugely popular request on "Late Nite Radio" and at school dances all over the area. Incredibly, this song must've never really caught on outside of the western PA/eastern OH region because it failed to crack the Billboard Hot 100 (though it did get released nationally on commercial 45).

Now here's my question... Has anyone familiar with "Someone" ever come across a clean sounding copy of the song anywhere on CD? Every dub I've heard sounds like it came from noisy, crackling styrene or vinyl.

And anyone interested can hear the song on YouTube by clicking here:

"Someone" - The Contrails

Edited by Todd Ireland

The song was first issued on the local Reuben records label and then picked up for release by Diamond records. Jack Stanizzo of the Contrails claims to still have the master tape for the song yet the version of the song he has released himself appears to be a cleaned up disc dub.

As I collect the Diamond record label, I have had multiple copies of this single over the years and now have one stock and one promotional copy. Both of them have noisy left channels on the intro to the song.

Even stranger still, the Reuben records pressing was bootlegged sometime in the 70's and is apparently fairly hard to detect from an original issue, except by playing it.

I have never found any proof that this 45 was pressed outside of the US (some Diamond 45s were on Apex in Canada or Stateside overseas) so unless the original Diamond masters could be located, we may be stuck with noisy copies of the song forever....