BOB DYLAN DEBUT LP STEREO ???

I remember that a lot of early stereo pop LPs were like that, voice on one side and accompaniment on the other. The first couple of Beatles albums, for sure. Can't remember what else. I thought it was really cool, having grown up on Mono. I don't think I regularly started buying Stereo recordings until I was in college and when these early pop LPs first appeared in Stereo it was trippy to listen to them with headphones, sometimes with certain chemical listening aids. Back then albums were available in both Mono and Stereo versions, and usually the Stereo LPs cost a bit more. Never knew if it was a naive approach to engineering or maybe some sort of gimick to get people to junk their Mono equipment and buy Stereo.

Perhaps someone even older than me knows....

thats the way the stereo version is supposed to sound. nice find.

I remember that era very well. The early "serious" music knew what stereo was and used it well. Examples include Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, the Dave Brubeck albums, and all that great classical and light classical music on RCA Living Stereo, Mercury Living Presence, and Columbia Masterworks. Up until about 1967, stereo versions of albums cost at least $1 more than mono, which is equivalent to a $7 surcharge today.

When it came to pop music, much of it was recorded in 2-channel to keep instruments and voices separate for clarity, mixing, and partial retakes, but not with the idea of a left-to-right stereo sweep. When stereo started becoming the big thing, enthusiasts wanted to buy all their new records in stereo. So the pop labels simply took the 2-track masters and mastered stereo LPs with them. George Martin has gone on record that he recorded the early Beatles albums in 2-channel for mixing purposes and had no intention of releasing them as "stereo," describing the effect of voices and instruments at hard right and hard left as "ghastly."

It's also why many early collectible pop albums are worth more in the mono versions, because the hard right-hard left versions are distracting. Conversely, Kind of Blue and Mercury Living Presence are worth more in stereo because they were done right.

Some of the stereo small group jazz albums from this era are stunning, as they're recorded live in-studio with a palpable soundstage that positions the instruments in 3-D space. The stereo Kind of Blue and the Brubeck albums (all 6-eye Columbia) do this.

I find many early stereo mixes unlistenably artificial and weird. Why are the drums all over there? Where's the middle? Why (as with the Dylan) is the guitarists mouth six feet to the side of his instrument?

The mono mixes re way better. But I still prefer stereo well done to mono.

Yuck.

It's a case in point for those old-fashioned preamps that had a Mono button.