Bob Wills - The Tiffany Transcriptions 10 CDs torrent

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This is a Compilation of the 10 Bob Wills Tiffany Transcription studio recording CDs.
They were released from 1982 until 1990.
Codec: Mp3
Bitrate: 128kbps from mono source
Much more information about these recordings can be found here:
http://www.tiffanytranscriptions.com/wordpress/tiffany-music-company/

The Tiffany Music Company
To me it’s a page in my life I’d like to forget. – Cliff Sundin
First of all, they were never called the Tiffany Transcriptions. They were called the Bob Wills Transcriptions (or Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys Transcriptions as on the actual transcriptions labels.) Recorded in 1946 and 1947 they were produced by Tiffany Music Incorporated located in the Fox Oakland Building in Oakland, California. But everyone called them the Tiffany Transcriptions and they were legendary. For years collectors passed copies of them around on poorly dubbed reel to reel tapes, and later on cassette. But those tapes contained less than one half of the recorded output of Tiffany sessions. The information about the recordings, what songs were recorded, how many, the exact recording dates, who were all the musicians on them, and the entire circumstances of Tiffany Music Inc. was unknown. This is the story as we know it today, but it keeps changing as more information is discovered.
The Tiffany Music Company was formed sometime in 1945 1 by band leader Bob Wills, songwriter Cliff Sundin, and radio personality Cliffton Johnsen, known on the air as “Cactus Jack”. Cliff Sundin, who apparently financed much of the enterprise, had three of his songs recorded by Wills in 1945: Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima (for which he gets no credit either on the label of the Wills recording or subsequently on the Harry Fox or BMI websites), Empty Chair at the Christmas Table, and White Cross on Okinawa. Cactus Jack was a well known radio DJ who had success on the radio playing the music of the Southwest to the many transplants from that region who had come to the San Francisco Bay Area to work during the war. Bob Wills was one of the top band leaders in the country and had moved to California from his original base in Texas and Oklahoma to try to create a touring circuit on the West Coast.
The idea behind the Tiffany Transcriptions was to create a transcribed Bob Wills radio show that could be syndicated to radio stations all across America. The music would be supplied on 16-inch transcription discs, which were the standard of the day for distributing syndicated radio shows to stations in the pre-tape (and now digital) days.
This service was available to stations from 1947 through 1949. The company was ready for success; they printed hundreds of transcription labels, ready to be applied to the discs when they were ordered, hundreds of the famous Tiffany Promotional Flyer, posters, advertising graphics, as well as stationery, envelopes, package address labels, everything to turn out transcriptions to hundreds of stations nationwide. But it was not to be.
The Recordings
As far as we know, there were thirteen or fourteen recording sessions, eight in 1946 and five or six in 1947 (see discography for details). The 1946 recording sessions were held in San Francisco at Universal Studios, in the basement of the Mark Hopkins Hotel atop San Francisco’s famous, and famously steep, Nob Hill. Fiddler Joe Holley recalled, “The only problem was getting that big long bus to the top of Nob Hill. It took some real maneuvering to find a suitable route over those narrow hilly streets.” M.H. DeWitt is believed to have been the recording engineer.
In 1947 the sessions were held at Sound Recorders, 421 Powell Street at the foot of Nob Hill. Jack Hawkins is believed to have been the recording engineer.
The sessions were usually held on a Monday, a day the band wasn’t touring or performing. These sessions were not treated like many of their regular sessions for record labels. They were far more casual, involved very little planning, and usually musical arrangements were made on the spot. They were cut live onto 16-inch or 17-inch acetate master discs at 331/3 rpm, usually three or four songs per disc. This allowed some of the songs to be longer than the normal three minute limitation of a standard 10-inch 78 rpm commercial record. Many songs are over three minutes in length, and several are over four minutes, while St. Louis Blues (Part 2) is five seconds short of being six minutes in length.
The songs ranged from Bob Wills hits, western swing standards, and top hits of the day, to sentimental ballads, western movie cowboy songs, Texas fiddle tunes, blues, and hot swing instrumentals. They were loose, raw, energetic, and well recorded. The Wills band at that time was a stripped-down version of his big band orchestras of the ’30s and early ’40s. Down to one horn (Alex Brashear – trumpet), the electric guitar, steel guitar, and electric mandolin stepped up to fill the gap. They wailed and were fearless.
Many years later band members recalled the sessions in the notes to the Kaleidoscope Records reissues:
Steel guitar player Herb Remington: “…I remember just how relaxed and ‘off the cuff’ the mood of the band was each time we recorded the Tiffany Transcriptions. We were usually between tours when we did them: periods when we were not in a big rush and we were rested and just having fun. You can feel it when you listen.”
Fiddler Joe Holley: “…They were unique because Bob did not rehearse the band. We simply set up and played as if it was a dance. Everything was spontaneous – in Bob’s words, ‘not so cut and dried.’ ”
Steel guitar player Roy Honeycutt: “…The band would usually tour all week and end up in Oakland for the weekend. Then Monday morning we would all head out in the bus together to the recording studio up on Nob Hill. We’d usually record, without any rehearsal, until Bob figured we’d had enough for one day. He would usually listen to a lot of it afterwards to see what he thought, and then we’d all take the bus back to Oakland for another week of touring.”
Electric mandolin player Tiny Moore: “…This is the way the Wills Band sounded on the many dances we played. In not trying to get the ‘perfect take’ we had a relaxed yet driving quality that is hard to get on a record. I don’t remember any pressure at all during these sessions. It was fun!”
During 1946 and 1947 the band recorded over 458 individual tracks, including complete takes, incomplete takes, false starts, intros, outros, mic checks, etc. Of these, 360 were complete takes. From the complete takes, 213 were issued on the original 26 transcription discs (this includes the opening and closing theme).
The Discs
The Tiffany Transcriptions were recorded between 1946 and 1947 in San Francisco onto 16- or 17-inch acetate master discs, usually going at 331/3 rpm. There were a few that were recorded at 331/3 for the first songs of the disc and then 78 rpm for the last song. This helped minimize inner groove distortion (the inner grooves of the spiral of a record contain the same amount of information as the outer grooves, but have a much smaller diameter, so the information is more compressed together and more likely to have distortion).
On the Tiffany Transcriptions Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys recorded only the music, no talking or introductions. Songs were then selected from the masters and assembled on the transcription discs which were pressed on both black and red vinyl. They were 16-inch discs, which played at 331/3 rpm — this was the radio transcription standard size and speed. (They were not the 331/3 micro groove recordings that were later introduced in the 1950’s for home use; these were played with the same diameter stylus as 78 rpm records and were only used in the radio industry.) Each side of a disc was indicated as a “record” so “record number one” had “record number two” on its flip side. 26 discs (or 52 “records”) were completed yet only 24 discs were ever distributed to the radio stations. There were generally four or five songs to a side.
The Transcription Radio Show
The Tiffany Music Company hoped to syndicate the radio show to stations throughout the United States. The stations would enter into an agreement 2 with the Tiffany Music Company to broadcast the shows and would be sent an initial set of transcriptions, to be supplemented with new ones as they were recorded. The discs were not meant to be played all the way through, and in fact it was impossible to do so, since there was a locked-groove at the end of each song so it would not track to the next song. The discs were supplied along with a script (called a Continuity – view a contimuity 3
The radio station would have a local announcer host the show, read the continuity and then play the song indicated by the transcription record number and track number (or track letter as they were designated). This way, with a set of transcriptions, the songs could be shuffled to create an infinite number of shows. The station would sell local advertising and the host would give it a local flavor. Each show started out with the Texas Playboys Theme intro, and ended with the outro theme. This theme was adapted from an old hokum blues song, “Eagle Ridin’ Papa”, recorded by Georgia Tom Dorsey on July 8, 1929.
The Tiffany 78
There is evidence that the Tiffany Music Company was planning on releasing a commercial 10-inch 78 rpm record for sale to the public. Although the Tiffany Music Company kept very good business records and Cliff Sundin saved most of those records to be discovered 50 years later, there is no information about the 78. There is only one issue, a 10-inch 78 rpm record with Milk Cow Blues on one side and Sweet Jennie Lee on the other. Less than 10 copies of this record have surfaced, making it an extremely rare disc. The Country Music Foundation has one that differs from the one shown here in that it has “Vocal by Tommy Duncan” stamped on the label. Since very few seemed to have been made, they were probably test pressings, although they do have official labels on them.
Was this an attempt to release the recordings to the public? In 1946 Bob Wills was recording for Columbia Records as he had been since 1935. His last session for Columbia was on October 16, 1947 in Chicago. He then signed with MGM Records and started recording for them on October 30, 1947 in Los Angeles. Since he was under contract to either Columbia or MGM to release his commercial discs, it doesn’t seem likely that the Tiffany Music Company would have been allowed to release a 78 during that time. Did they plan to release 78s but then realize the contractual conflicts? No information has yet been discovered.