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Re: [ARSCLIST] Fortissimo
Hi David/Aaron:
I just read something somewhat relevant to this, in one of the Orin Keepnews Collection CD reissues
booklets. Apparently, Bill Gauer, Keepnews' partner at Riverside, was a racing car nut and was very
into making these "environmental audio" recordings. The "super-fi" records were not mentioned in
Keepnews' notes, this was to a Blue Mitchell album. The reference was that Keepnews was down in
Florida with Gauer helping out on one of these racing-cars recordings. Cannonball Adderley insisted
Keepnews go with him and hear Blue Mitchell in a club during the trip, and Keepnews was duly
impressed and signed Mitchell to Riverside. To everyone's chagrin, the Mitchell records on Riverside
never sold well, and it's a credit to Keepnews that he still felt strongly enough about Mitchell's
talent to include "Blue Soul" in the Keepnews Collection reissues.
Tying in to Aaron's post, Ray Barretto provided some tasty percussion on that album.
-- Tom Fine
PS -- one of the earliest "stereo spectacular" albums featuring race cars was "500 Miles to Victory"
on Mercury, recorded by Bill Putnam and originally issued in stereo on a 2-track tape in 1956.
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Lennick" <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2008 12:56 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Fortissimo
Anyone remember, or even hear of, a label called FORTISSIMO produced by Riverside in 1961?
Super-quiet surfaces (wonder how they managed that? Riverside never turned out a quiet disc in
their lives), discs cut from the inside out (changer owners must have loved that), master tapes
recorded at 60 IPS "with the heads oriented horizontally" (whaaaaa..?), a 400hz alignment tone,
and repertoire such as Racing Cars, Jets, Pipe Organ (miked from inside, I think) and Banjo
Polkas.
Amazing what turns up in some of these old audio magazines that I've never run across in over 45
years of record collecting.
dl