Great Music on Vinyl!

Welcome to Channel WABCRADIO77, where we feature original vinyl 45 RPM Records, Radio Airchecks & Great Music!

The goal of this channel is to present classic "oldies" music the way it was meant to be - in it's original form exactly as it sounded when the song was a hit on the radio.

While that goal may sound simple, and some may wonder what the big deal is, for after all you can simply tune into your local oldies radio station and hear all the great oldies music almost 24/7. So why does someone create a YouTube channel to present what anyone can tune in on the radio to hear, or even better - download from itunes for just a $1 a song (which I do encourage everyone to do to support the artists).

The answer is simple - In almost all cases, music from the time period from 1958 to about 1972 was made to sound it's best in mono, which we heard also in mono on our AM radio. Those AM stations were taking the original 45 RPM vinyl record and either directly playing it on the air, or making a recording of it onto "tape cart" and playing the tape in order to prevent wearing out the record. Therefore, if you grew up in the 50's, 60's & 70's, this is how you heard pop & rock music originally, and that is the exact sound that made the record a huge hit that you remember! Remember, Pop music on FM Stereo radio was almost non-existant before 1970. The big powerhouse radio stations like WABC in New York, WLS in Chicago, KQV in Pittsburg, WOKY in Milwaukee, WKBW in Buffalo, WFIL in Philadelphia and Boss Radio KHJ in Los Angeles - ruled the airwaves! They were all on AM, and of course all MONO!

Now here's the problem - what you hear today on oldies radio is often NOT the original version or mix of the music heard originally. It might be a stereo mix (rather than the mono mix), or a longer version (rather than the short versions released originally), or even worse it might be a re-recording (NOT the original!).

To solve the "originality" problem, about the only and best way is to simply go back to the original vinyl 45 RPM record, for that is in most cases the original version of the song you heard when growing up!

Artists and their producers (and in some cases the record companies themselves), completely focused on making the song sound it's best in mono, and on the AM Radio. Because in order to "break" a record so that it became a hit that everyone rushed out to the record stores to buy, it had to first get played on the AM Top 40 Radio Stations. The mono mix was called "the money mix", as that is what got made into a vinyl record and played on the radio. The stereo mixes were after thoughts that most record producers rarely wasted their time on. The stereo mix was often left to the recording studio engineering staff and that was that.

Flash forward to today.

The stereo mix is now the version that gets played on the radio today, not the superior mono mix. That is because program directors think that most people want to hear the stereo version of oldies music. As a result, history is being re-written because most people think that the version they now hear today is the hit version. It isn't.

Good example - Listen to the record "Sounds of Silence" that I have posted. This powerful "hot mono mix" is never heard today on the radio. So go ahead and YOU listen - and decide what sounds better - the digital CD / MP3 stereo version, or the original mono vinyl version.

The Beatles just released a remastered Box set of almost all of their commercial releases. They came out with a stereo and a mono version of the box set. The stereo is available anywhere, but the mono version is a limited release. This was done, for there are many Beatles fans who recognize the power of the mono mixes, and believe that the mono version sounds a lot better, and is more true to the original sound when the record was a hit.

I've posted a few AM Radio airchecks - from both WABC and WNBC radio. You can hear how these great mono mixes sounded like on the radio when the records were hits originally. These airchecks tell the complete story why the mono mixes were focused on, and also remind everyone what these records sounded like when they first heard them on the radio when they were young, growing up, and in their "Wonder Years".

So go ahead, enjoy this great music the way you remember it - for it's original mix, short version and vinyl sound!

The way it was MEANT to be heard!

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