Really great albums that never got a proper CD release

And the Lowe album kinda-sorta got a CD release if you count the (now out of print) UK CD of Jesus of Cool...

T-Bone Burnett - Proof Through the Night / Trap Door EP (although rumor has it they're coming out next year)

That's indeed a headscratcher.

and yeah... the Lowe LP, despite being put out already... has ben long out of print, and is probably one of the rare exceptions where I believe the US release is superior to the UK (Jesus Of Cool as a live version of one track, and the running order is weaker)

OTM. Though you hate to admit the record company was right.

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: August 19, 2006

The other day a song popped into my head, just a few up-tempo instrumental phrases — guitar, bass, drums and a Hammond B3 organ. I knew instantly what it was, though I hadn’t heard it in at least 20 years. It was a passing moment from “Martha’s Madman,” the first song on the first side of an LP called “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood.” I bought the record when it was released in 1970. I was a freshman at Berkeley.

It would have been easy to see the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood performing that year, though I never did. Its lone record was a sunny mixture of straight-up jazz with a blues spine, a music that wants the latter-day word “fusion,” though that word does so little good. Above all, it was a reminder of the eclecticism of the time. Audiences that would soon diverge found themselves packed in a hall together all night long, like one October weekend at Fillmore West when the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood shared the bill with Van Morrison and Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band.

I heard “Martha’s Madman” in my head, and I did what I usually do. I went to the iTunes Music Store. Nothing. Same at Amazon. So I walked down to the barn, where all my old albums are stored, and dug out my vinyl copy of “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood,” which is now sitting on my desk. I no longer have the equipment to play it. Nearly every album in those boxes in the barn was converted to CD long ago — some of them several times over. But not “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood.”

We live, of course, in an age of accelerating digital replication. Before long, it seems, every recording of every kind in existence, along with all the outtakes, will have been turned into a CD or a DVD or a digital file for download over the Internet. But some things get left behind.

Digital conversion seems almost effortless, a virtual transcription of the world as we know it. But there is a financial friction to it nonetheless. These days it’s no longer necessary to produce an actual physical CD to sell in record stores. Downloadable files will do — no packaging required — but even making these has its costs.

What it takes to push a work from analog to digital is a marketing opportunity. The death, for instance, of Johnny Cash and a movie based on his life was a wonderful chance, as one industry spokesperson put it, to revisit his inventory, which, as it happens, is partly on Columbia, a company now owned by Sony BMG.

There will probably never be a movie based on the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood, no commercial incentive to remaster and rerelease this album. The story of the band is a good one but all too familiar — the inevitable clash between the artistic and business sides of the recording industry. The band fell apart disputing the honesty of its manager.

What’s left is an orphaned vinyl LP. The inner sleeve, a space for record company promotion, says, “If It’s in Recorded Form, You Know It’ll Be Available on Records.” Well, I wish it were available on CD.

I talked to Jerry Hahn the other day. He teaches jazz guitar in Wichita, his hometown. He’ll be 66 in September, with grandkids. He sounds good. “You should have heard us,” he said. He also said that the master tapes of “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood” are stored somewhere in New York State. The man who produced the record has retired to Hawaii, where he and his wife own several restaurants. I haven’t been able to track down the manager. I’d like to hear his side of the story.

And as for hearing “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood,” one fan has posted the whole album in MP3 form — ripped from the vinyl — on the Web. I downloaded it the other day. It’s a digitally compressed version of an analog recording that was, according to Hahn, too compressed to begin with.

Even through the mist you can still hear the brightness of the music. But someone needs to find those master tapes, breathe some air into them, and do this minor masterpiece (and all the outtakes) justice at last. I’d buy a copy, especially if I thought that some of the purchase price might make its way to the artists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/19/opinion/19sat4.html

This one must have vanished from schedule... wasn't it supposed to come out around the same time as the Rumours and Tusk 2CD sets?

Brian Eno's Music For Films II should have had a standalone re-issue.

Isn't it simply because B or N (or both) would rather not see it reissued (a la Paul Simon Songbook & Carole King's City, though both of these have subsequently seen the light of day, of course...)?

Music For Listening To is in print on CD in the States.

The first one. Although we could do the second one too, if you want :-)

Burnett: I saw an int w/T Bone where he mentioned that there were plans to reissue everything but given that the new record hasn't sold much I'm not holding my breath. I'm still dumbfounded at the omission of 'Hold On Tight' from the compilation.

i didn't know starsailor was a small pressing; i picked up my copy at a blockbuster music in 1995. it's indeed odd that they're still out of print.

bill dixon's intents and purposes hasn't made it to cd yet; first released in 1967, reissued once in France in 1976, nothing since.

http://www.winnicott.it/images/album/starsailor.jpg

http://tisue.net/orourke/covers/kangaroo.jpg