Recording Dates

[Gerald Lawrence]

When Bernie discovered the acetates for "Come Into My Heart" and "Jimmy Unknown", neither had been released, and there was no indication of recording dates. So, some of you will remember, we invited guesses for likely recording dates (on the old Message Board) so as to slot them into the correct places in the chronological sequence that I had prepared. (You will find this list stored in the Library, under the Lyrics Section). We agreed on late 1954/early 1955 for "Come Into My Heart" and early 1956 for "Jimmy Unknown".

We had hoped that EMI might have confirmed the dates on the new CD release, but this did not happen, and at my suggestion the new songs were put at the end of the last CD. So, unless anyone has a better idea, I am proposing to be a bit more specific and suggest:

December 1954 "Come Into My Heart"
March 1956 "Jimmy Unknown"

Now we are lucky enough to have another two to think about, which also went at the end of the fourth CD. After hearing them for the first time, my guess was that "If I Were A Blackbird" and "Isle Of Innisfree" were recorded at the same time, and I wondered if they were recorded around the time of the "Endearing Young Charms" LP. When I mentioned this to Brian Henson, he tended to agree, and suggested to me that perhaps a couple of additional tracks were recorded to turn the LP into a 12" one for the American Market.

I have just found another clue. After Bernie's first visit to EMI last year, he gave me a copy of a document from EMI listing all the songs which they had in their catalogue, and on which Albums and CDs they have already been released. Unfortunately it does not have any recording dates, but for "If I Were A Blackbird" and "Isle of Innisfree" in the notes column it says the following:

COORTIN' IN THE KITCHEN/DOONEREE/ETC (the spelling is EMI's not mine!) together with the words CUT FOR MASTER

So that more or less convinces me that we should assign the same dates as for the other songs on "Endearing Young Charms", that is December 1958.

I welcome your comments on this.

Finally, the inlay brochure to the 4 CD set contains a copyright date for all the other songs, but this is not always in agreement with the dates we have agreed for the original release of a song. I will be having a look at this in greater detail some time in the future.

[Bernie Burgess]

Gerald,

'If I Were a Blackbird' and "Isle Of Innisfree'

I am somewhat puzzled on the question of dates. After our marriage I took Ruby to the studio every time for recording sessions and I cannot recall her recording either track. At the end of December '58/59, I would have been in pantomime in Wolverhampton, the last engagement I undertook with The Jones Boys and used to travel home to Oxshott after every Saturday nights performance but during the week we would have been apart. In which case it might be possible that Ruby could have done a recording session whilst I was in panto.

I will try to delve a little to see whether I can come up with anything that might be relevant.

It's all very facinating.

Adios Amigo Bernie.

[Gerald Lawrence]

Further to my previous message, I realise that I am mixing up recording dates with release dates. While "Come Into My Heart" and "Jimmy Unknown" were never released it was reasonable to assign a date as close as possible to the likely recording date, but in fact the actual release dates for these two are 21st March 2005. The same is true for the other two new songs.

It would be nice to know the recording dates of songs, but these seem not to have been registered at EMI, or at least, have not emerged during the preparation of the Golden Anniversary Collection. There are a few songs that appear to have been recorded some time before they were released, judging by the orchestration etc, and I know Brian Henson has some views on this, but without confirmation from the recording company, these must remain just guesses.

So for the time being, I will stick to what we know, and use UK Release Dates for sequencing the songs. That means all four new songs now go to the end of the list. If and when some data emerges about recording dates, then we can consider a list based on that information.

[Brian Henson]

Apart from the four previously unreleased tracks, the title that is most out of chronological sequence as far as recording dates are concerned must be 'A Voice In The Choir'. Those of you who had the UK Columbia single will recall that it was the B-Side to the late 1959 release 'A Message To Jimmy'. At the time of its release I was sure it had been recorded much earlier than 1959, both from the younger sound of Ruby's voice and the fact that it was Ray Martin's Orchestra accompanying her. Ray hadn't backed Ruby since 1956 - all of which convinced me that Columbia had pulled a 3 or 4 year old track out of the archives.

It wasn't until several years later that I discovered that 'A Voice In The Choir' had been released in America on a 1956 Capitol single as the B-Side to 'Please Hold Me Tightly'. Why it was left on the shelf for more than 3 years before being issued in UK is a mystery. However, if we ever have access to actual recording dates, my feeling is that we will find that 'A Voice In The Choir' was recorded early 1956 - quite possibly at the same session as 'Please Hold Me Tightly'.

Brian

[TheIrishInMe]

EMI must have the recording sheets in their archives. If someone gets in touch and requests the info, they will photocopy the papers you request for a small fee.

[Bernie Burgess]

THANK YOU FOR THE INFO THEO - BERNIE> THE JONES BOY

[TheIrishInMe]

Bernie - contact EMI Archives and request the info. They did this for me a few years ago, the lady I spoke to was called Sonita Cox.

It would be nice to have exact dates for the EMI years - and all the data is likely to exist, as EMI kept good records.