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Tracklisting & More Information
Rosemary Squires was an incredibly talented singer with a career that stretched back to entertaining troops around Salisbury during the second world war right through to the famous 'Now Hands That Do Dishes' TV Commercial for Fairy Liquid that ran for nearly forty years on UK TV in various forms.
She still continues to perform occasionally today.
This album, along with 'My Love Is A Wanderer', have gone down in history as the most shining examples of her recorded work. The first LP was only ever available in Mono and it is often thought that this, her second, was the same.
With both LPs now staggeringly rare, you can see why this would be the case.
In fact, although they now exist only in handfuls, stereo copies of the second album were made. In order to pick one up at the time, you would have needed to specially order one at your local record shop as the copies supplied to retail were all mono. Stereo was very much a new thing in the UK at that time.
As an example, the first Beatles album took six months before a stereo copy could be ordered. They didn't even bother to press stereo copies for the first batch released. Consequently, finding stereo copies of anything from this era is very difficult indeed.
What we have here is a very rare stereo copy of that elusive album. Even the 'sample' review copies that were sent out were mono.
We've had four copies of the mono version over thirty years of trading. We've even had acetates of the mono LP that were sent out for review. Until now, we had never had a stereo copy. We had not even seen one and could not confirm that it existed.
It does exist - and here it is !
Condition:
The Sleeve:
This is the commonly seen front laminated flipback design favoured by EMI at the time, printed by Garrod & Lofthouse.
Amazingly, this isn't simply a 'Stereo' stickered Mono sleeve but has 'stereo' in large block letters on the front and the CSD catalogue number printed on the back panel.
The front remains lovely and white with bright colours and no major creases to the laminate. There is the tiniest amount of scuffing at the opening where the laminate does not reach the edge, but otherwise very little to note.
The pinched spine is still clearly readable and edge scuffing is limited to a miniscule amount at the corners.
The unlaminated back shows almost no wear. There are a few minor spots of discolouration, but, as can be seen in the scan, these are insignificant.
The only real defect to note is some paper loss to the right hand side of the top flipback, but as you can see even this has not yellowed over time.
The usual pickup at the edges of the flips where the laminate stops can be seen as a darkened line, but this is common to almost every album of this vintage that has spent fifty years on a shelf with other LPs.
You would be unlikely to find another stereo sleeve that has fared this well over the years. It has taken us over thirty years to find this one.
The Vinyl:
This is very nice indeed and shows just light evidence of play.
There is just one small hairline running across the end of track four and the beginning of track five on the second side that you really have to hunt for under bright light. Upon playtesting, it can be confirmed that this has no impact upon play and can hardly be heard.
There is a small degree of background noise that can be heard occasionally between tracks and in the quieter passages but nothing too obtrusive. The disc is free of the 'poly rash' sometimes associated with this type of inner, which often leads to surface noise.
Modern styli tend to emphasise this effect as they have a much smaller radius than that of the early sixties stereo pickups, which were also round rather than elliptical and were designed to track at far heavier pressure than a modern pickup. This results in a modern stylus getting lower in the grooves and being sensitive enough to pick up areas that would not have been touched with a wider radius heavy pressure stylus.
I mention this for completeness' sake, just to show you that you are indeed listening to an original 1963 Stereo recording and not a more modern re-press.
There is no obvious 'burring' evident and Rosemary's voice shines like a beacon from your speakers.
When, or if, we will ever find another of these, I don't know.
When, or if, there is a better copy of this to be found still in the wild, I also don't know.
What I do know is this is the extremely rare stereo version of this classic album in astonishing condition. With all the luck in the world it is unlikely that you will ever better this copy.
Tracklisting:
01. Carioca
02. Street Of Dreams
03. All You Want To Do Is Dance
04. Smokey Eyes
05. Get Out Of Town
06. Lullaby Of The Leaves
07. Day In, Day Out
08. I Poured My Heart Into A Song
09. Have You Met Miss Jones ?
10. Crazy He Calls Me
11. Mr. Snow
12. Tess's Torch Song (If I Had A Man)
LP RECORD
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