About A Date With Elvis (Mono) (Speakers Corner) by Elvis Presley:
Good products are worth their weight in gold when times are a little harsh – and this album was certainly a genially placed stopgap. In 1959, at the time when RCA launched this record on the market, the label’s shining rock star was out of the country doing his military service in good old Germany. In order to comfort all his fans during his forced absence, the record bosses produced an album with a smartly uniformed Elvis on the cover, smiling widely to let his faithful followers know that he’d be back soon. There was a special calendar too, so that his fans could count off the days until his return. This marketing ploy was extremely successful. The record became a highly desirable collector’s item and even years later illegal dollars still flowed from pirate copies.
The RCA producers kept mum about when and where the tracks were recorded. But who cares about that when listening to Elvis giving the 'blue grass' classic "Blue Moon Of Kentucky" his unmistakable, rockabilly sound? The other titles, all of them performed by a well-proven ensemble of rock-’n’-roll musicians, are filled with the honest, powerful language of the young – or from today’s viewpoint, old – Elvis. Which takes us back full circle to the date. What better way is there to celebrate the 50th birthday of rock-’n’-roll than with this early album by its 'King'?
Musicians:
- Elvis Presley (guitar, vocal)
- Scotty Moore (guitar)
- Bill Black (bass)
- D.J. Fontana (drums)
- The Jordanaires (vocal)
Recording: July 1954 at Memphis Recording Service, Memphis, Tennessee (USA), and other venues till 1957
Production: Sam Phillips
About Speakers Corner
At the beginning of the 90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the situation was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and, of course, Speakers Corner all maintained a mutual, unwritten ethical code: we would only use analogue tapes to manufacture records.
During the course of the present vinyl hype, many others have jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source to master from: CDs, LPs, digital files, MP3s – or employed existant tools from the 80s and 90s for manufacturing.
A digital delay is gladly used when cutting a lacquer disc because tape machines with an analogue delay have become quite rare and are therefore expensive. When cutting the lacquer, the audio signal is delayed by one LP revolution against the signal, which controls the cutter head, and for this a digital delay is very often employed. Of course, the resultant sound signal is completely digital and thus only as good as this delay.
We should like to emphasise that Speakers Corner Records on principle only uses the original master tape as the basis for the entirely analogue cutting of lacquer discs. In addition, the pressing tool is newly manufactured as a matter of principle. We have one digital recording in our catalogue (Alan Parsons / Eye In The Sky“), but even in this particular case we used the analogue tapes for cutting.
We only employ existing tools for manufacturing if an improved result is not forthcoming, e.g. the title Elvis Is Back, which was mastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray, or several titles from our Philips Classics series, which in any case Willem Makkee cut from the original masters at the Emil Berliner Studios in the 90s. It goes without saying that we only used the mother and that new tools were made for our production.
To put it in a nutshell: we can ensure you that our releases are free from any kind of digital effects – excluding the exception above – and that the lacquer discs are newly cut.
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