|
The
Unimportance Of A Hit
It's 1965 and
I'm a nineteen year old engineer on a Motown assignment of
coordinating the disc mastering done at RCA's Chicago's
studios with the work we do in Motown's Detroit studios.
So many Motown disc masters have to be made that we need 4
mastering suites cranking out master and "reference" discs
every week. The Motown headquarters had one room and RCA
handled the additional workload.
RCA's Chief
Engineer, Joe was talking. "Normally, for an RCA artist,
we will cut six sets of masters for the three RCA pressing
plants; one primary master for each plant and a backup in case
the master is damaged in processing or if more pressings are
needed for the release." It all sounded reasonable and
about what I expected, but then Joe continued. "Of course if
it is an Elvis Presley release, we'll cut 12 sets of masters
because we know we have press at least one million copies."
I was
shocked! I said to myself, "You gotta be kidding! -
Elvis Presley who hasn't had a hit in years!" I Said to Joe,
"Does Elvis Presley really sell a million copies of every
release? - He hasn't had a hit in ages."
. |
