The Day the Music Burned, an Incredible Loss

[G_j]

Last edited Wed Jun 12, 2019, 10:11 AM - Edit history (1)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html?module=inline&fbclid=IwAR1g3irXw16SCzKW9qzgH5_GkjiGnfDmEwGShrK5WNYw1TY0MFP47So4pys

It was the biggest disaster in the history of the music business — and almost nobody knew. This is the story of the 2008 Universal fire.

By Jody Rosen
June 11, 2019

1. ‘The Vault Is on Fire’

The fire that swept across the backlot of Universal Studios Hollywood on Sunday, June 1, 2008, began early that morning, in New England.

—-

The archive in Building 6197 was UMG’s main West Coast storehouse of masters, the original recordings from which all subsequent copies are derived. A master is a one-of-a-kind artifact, the irreplaceable primary source of a piece of recorded music. According to UMG documents, the vault held analog tape masters dating back as far as the late 1940s, as well as digital masters of more recent vintage. It held multitrack recordings, the raw recorded materials — each part still isolated, the drums and keyboards and strings on separate but adjacent areas of tape — from which mixed or “flat” analog masters are usually assembled. And it held session masters, recordings that were never commercially released.

—-

Among the incinerated Decca masters were recordings by titanic figures in American music: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland. The tape masters for Billie Holiday’s Decca catalog were most likely lost in total. The Decca masters also included recordings by such greats as Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five and Patsy Cline.


Berry’s Chess masters and multitrack masters, a body of work that constitutes Berry’s greatest recordings. The destroyed Chess masters encompassed nearly everything else recorded for the label and its subsidiaries, including most of the Chess output of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, Etta James, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy and Little Walter. Also very likely lost were master tapes of the first commercially released material by Aretha Franklin, recorded when she was a young teenager performing in the church services of her father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, who made dozens of albums for Chess and its sublabels.

Virtually all of Buddy Holly’s masters were lost in the fire. Most of John Coltrane’s Impulse masters were lost, as were masters for treasured Impulse releases by Ellington, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders and other jazz greats. Also apparently destroyed were the masters for dozens of canonical hit singles, including Bill Haley and His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock,” Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats’ “Rocket 88,” Bo Diddley’s “Bo Diddley/I’m A Man,” Etta James’s “At Last,” the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” and the Impressions’ “People Get Ready.”

..more..

[denbot]

1. I remembered the fire, but not about the masters.

Damn.

[cbdo2007]

2. It's kind of sad, but it isn't like a million remastered versions of all of these songs are gone

forever.

The only true event is the live event as it happens...and whether it is the first recording of it or the millionth copied recording of it, they are still just copies of the original event.

[regnaD kciN]

4. But you lose audio quality with each generation copied...

...at least with analog copies. Digital cuts the other way, because you take the initial hit in the digitization process right away (no digitization, no matter how high-res, is completely transparent), and then subsequent generations resemble the digitized master, but you've still lost the highest-quality source.

In addition, there may well have been a number of multitracks (say, the 4-, 8-, or 16-track original recordings. Without them, you can't ever do a remix (like the Sgt. Pepper and White Album reissues of recent years) or a surround version.

And, then, there are the unreleased tracks that are usually included in special editions. None of them would be backed up. And there are a lot of artists from the pre-CD era whose work was never issued in digital format, and is now gone for good.

Just because you can go online and buy a download from iTunes of Dark Side of the Moon, it doesn't mean that everything is available.

[miyazaki]

3. kick -nt

[regnaD kciN]

5. I do have a bit more information...

I can confirm that, despite what's written in the article, Buddy Holly's master tapes -- at least of the two albums released during his lifetime, which contain almost all his hits -- were not destroyed and are still in excellent condition. This may be true of the rest of his material as well. It also appears that the Lynyrd Skynyrd and Patsy Cline tapes were unaffected. Tom Petty's first two studio albums, along with a third and part of a live album, are diplomatically listed as "unavailable," but second-generation backup tapes do exist. All of his remaining master tapes survive. Apparently, Neil Diamond has possession of all his own master tapes.

Also, the article lists many British/Irish (Elton John, Cat Stevens, U2, The Police, etc.) acts from the '70s and '80s who were actually signed to U.K. labels such as Island or DJM, and A&M was merely their U.S. affiliate. Master tapes for these acts would remain with their European companies, and UMG would have only received "American masters" (i.e. second-generation copies of the masters used so LPs and CDs could be made locally).

Finally, some of the big names mentioned are from the WWII or earlier era, before tape recording existed. The "master tapes" of these artists were actually needledrops made for remastering purposes -- the original metal stamper parts (the real "masters" in these cases) are being preserved by the Library of Congress.

So, still a disaster, but, until we get a further public accounting of this (which may emerge from lawsuits promised for next week), possibly not quite as big a disaster as is currently being reported.

[pstokely]

8. the tapes of more obscure artists burned

Last edited Sun Jun 16, 2019, 01:36 AM - Edit history (1)

almost many unreleased songs by well known artists, but due to mislabeling and poor inventorying, we'll probably never know the complete list of what burned and what still exists

http://www.billholland.net/words/Labels%20Strive%20to%20Rectify%20Past%20Archival%20Problems.pdf

[icymist]

6. K & R

[pstokely]

7. it's UCS for them

[Crunchy Frog]

9. I don't know why they don't make multiple digitized copies

Of that stuff, and then store them in multiple locations.

You keep everything crammed in one single place, of course you're going to have devastating losses.