ReDiscoveries

Here's what real influencers do: If you're Carl Perkins, every song on your first LP was covered by Beatles, either together or as solo artists. If you're Muddy Waters, the Rolling Stones named their band after one of your songs and covered the first song on your first LP on their first album. If you're Chuck Berry, you influenced anyone who has ever considered themselves rock'n'rollers. And if you're Johnny Cash, you were the original Outlaw Country artist, and you invented the country-rock nexus. Oh, and your first LP was also your label's first long-player.

Key early albums from these legends have gotten the all-analog deluxe vinyl reissue treatment: Sun Records gems by Perkins and Cash from Intervention Records, and Chess Records classics by Waters, Berry, and Howlin' Wolf (another true rock-music influencer) from Universal Music/Acoustic Sounds.

Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar! was Sun Records' first 12" release. Dance Album of Carl Perkins was its second. Both date from 1957, with songs recorded as early as 1955. Intervention Records owner Shane Buettner said the albums needed to be reconstructed, and finding the master tapes was an adventure. Sun was purchased by Nashville producer and label owner Shelby Singleton in the 1960s. Its library of songs was resequenced and reissued many times over decades. The original LPs were cut from the master tapes of each track then spliced together in sequence, not from a compiled and copied "cutting master."

The Sun tapes are now in the Iron Mountain vaults, where high-resolution archival digital transfers were made. Buettner previewed audio for every version of every song on the Cash and Perkins albums. To his delight, there was a tape for each song that sounded like a first-generation master. Once tapes were selected, Iron Mountain engineer Kelly Pribble dubbed the mono masters onto correctly sequenced two-track cutting masters on modern low-noise, high-output tape using top-line Studer machines. Kevin Gray then cut the two-tracks to two-channel mono 45rpm LPs. Original cover art and liner notes by Barbara Barnes were perfectly reproduced, and each album includes a two-sided color insert with new notes by author Colin Escott.

I asked Buettner if his goal was to transmit the master tapes' sound through the vinyl or to sound like the original 1950s records. He said: "I took the approach my friend and mentor Joe Harley takes with Blue Note" with the Tone Poet Series: "Go after what's on the tapes! I can definitely say that these new LPs are the purest expression of the world-famous Sun Records sound!"

Beyond rock influencers Perkins and Cash, Sun was the first home to Elvis Presley, the King of rock'n'roll. Founder Sam Phillips preferred stripped-down arrangements and raw emotion over fancy production. For Cash's huge voice, he used slap-back tape echo, which thickens the sound and suggests an auditorium PA system. For Perkins, the quick, blistering guitar solos sound like a small Fender amplifier is sitting between your stereo speakers.

The Best of Muddy Waters was Chess Records' third LP release, compiled from singles dating back to the 78 era. In fact, "Rollin' Stone," the song that Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards named their band after, is a crackly 78 dub. The first track on Waters's album, "I Just Want to Make Love to You," was covered by the Stones on side 1 of their self-titled first album in 1964. The last track on Waters's LP, "I Can't Be Satisfied," was covered on the Stones' second album. Much further down the road, in 1981, the Stones sat in with Waters at Chicago's Checkerboard Lounge.

The Best of Muddy Waters has been reissued by Universal and Acoustic Sounds, along with several other important early Chess LPs, mastered by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab and pressed at QRP.

Chess Records, the home of Waters, Wolf, and Berry, was the penultimate influencer of rock'n'roll's forward trajectory. And there was cross-pollination: Sun's Phillips recorded Wolf 's first sides including "Moanin' at Midnight," the first track of his first Chess LP, Moanin' in the Moonlight. Another song from that album, "Smokestack Lightning," was covered by the Yardbirds with Eric Clapton. In the sessions for Derek and the Dominos' aborted second album, Clapton's band covered another Howlin' Wolf song, "Evil." About "Evil": The Chess cutting master for Moanin' in the Moonlight contains a dubbing or editing error. The original single has an extra chord at the beginning (footnote 1). The single version is what's on the 1980s Chess compilation Wizards from the Southside, my introduction to Chicago electric blues (footnote 2).

As for Chuck Berry's third Chess LP, Berry Is on Top, albums don't get much more influential. The Stones covered three of its 12 songs and recorded their cover of "Around and Around" at Chess's studio on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The Beatles covered "Roll Over Beethoven" as the opening track on their US Capitol Second Album.

Some of these albums sound higher fidelity than others. The Cash record is the best of the bunch, throwing a strongly centered mono sonic hologram of a mighty artist on the rise: confident and at home in the spotlight. Waters also stands strong in the listening space, his life force undeniable. Perkins's songs are about the beat as much as the singing; the drums coax the listener to the dance floor, as the album title suggests. The albums by Wolf and Berry are made up of singles recorded at various times prior to 1959, Wolf 's earliest dating back to the pre-tape days. As expected, the fidelity spans from low to high, but rarely at the expense of the musical essence.

---

Footnote 1: Compare the LP version—open.qobuz.com/track/52482655—with the single version of the same master recording: open.qobuz.com/track/55470941.

Footnote 2: See shorturl.at/ToJjO.