This is a very thorny problem! I personally have made many enquiries simply to find out in the first instance where the master tapes might be located. If I had been successful in doing that, I would then have gone on to make the strongest plea possible that a couple of CDs might be released with all 28 tracks. Phillips and Fontana have not been in the music making business for many years. I obtained a lead that their master tapes might have gone to Universal Music and after several unsuccessful trails, I finally spoke on the telephone with a man there who was able to use his computer to tell me that Ruby Murray's master tapes did not appear in their archives. Amusingly enough, he also told me that I might get more information if I visited http://www.rubymurray.org and we had a laugh when I told him that I had designed the Home Page!MARTIN FOSTER wrote:Gerald, are Ruby's Phillips/Fontana recordings likely to be released on CD at any point?
Martin
The man, kindly realising that I was very determined, volunteered the information that he thought some of the tapes which Universal had acquired from various sources but no longer wanted had gone to Decca. He said he felt that he could not give me an address, but if I liked to write to him he would forward it to a contact whom he had there. This I did, and subsequently the trail went cold since I never received a reply from him or his confidential contact.
Of the 28 tracks, the four songs on two singles were only ever released on two 45 rpm records (TF 838 and TF 914). The remaining 24 songs appeared on the two LPs "The Spinning Wheel" and "This is Ireland" both available as stereo records. Phillips did issue one CD containing 20 songs from these two LPs. The CD was confusingly titled "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" (a pity, since EMI had already issued a CD with this title which in turn was derived from Ruby's very first LP title) but did carry the additional word "Reflections" which I guess was part of a series of re-issues from a number of artistes. This CD was issued in 1993 and full details are in the Song Listings. I managed to obtain a copy and listened to it very carefully on headphones - I cannot be sure, but something in the sound suggested to me that there were a couple of very minor defects and this made me think that it might have been made from the LPs rather than the master tapes. I cannot prove this, of course, and it does carry the Phillips label, but whether this caused it to be withdrawn early in its shelf life, or whether it simply did not sell I do not know. All I do know is that it is an extremely rare CD and I have never seen one for sale on E-bay.