Crazy Good Vinyl recording fidelity on COMMAND label

I’ve always wondered why those cheesy but cool looking covers from the 60’s have recordings that sound so darn good. Command records. You probably have some already. I did a deep dive today and found out some cool info regarding their 35MM recordings.

I should point out that being an ex drummer. I’m a bit more interested in the percussion aspects than most folks. One of the cool but slightly unknown Enoch Light albums he did was a tribute to the Beatles. There are quite a few on eBay at the moment.

Everything below is from a variety of online sources.


35mm recordings were severely expensive to make. Those custom Westrex machines and their custom heads were over triple the price of an Ampex 300-3 back then. Magnetic film was triple the cost of 1/2" Scotch 111. And the industry was going from 3 tracks to 4 tracks, on 1/2" tape and 1” 8 track was already being used by a few studios. Command primarily was the last user of 35mm magnetic film, and ABC/Paramount Records bought the label from Enoch Light in 1965. Enoch Light stayed with the label until the late 1960's and then founded Project Records.

Even with all of his ping pong and other gimmicks Enoch did try to faithful capture the actual live sound of the instruments. He wasn't a fraud to use a ribbon mic to capture the faithful sound of an instrument where a condenser mic might add too much emphasis to high frequencies. He was very careful in choosing his mic and the way he grouped sections of musicians to get an accurate blend. He was not only a great musician, but had a great ear. I really enjoyed some of his classical symphonic recordings. He had a real ear for how percussion instruments should be captured.

From what I've been able to determine, the 35mm gear used by Everest, Mercury and Command was actually the same exact machine, sold from one label to the next for various reasons. So while it may appear that lots of labels were doing this, it was in reality just one at a time. Of course there was nothing stopping them from pressing records form master tapes made with 35mm film long after they sold the stuff...
 
Those custom 35MM machines were built by Westrex for Belock Recording, the original owner of the Everest label. When they went kaput, I believe Bob Fine was the purchaser, who used them for many recordings for Mercury, Command and others.

Enoch Light created Grand Award, which marketed many cheesy albums in the late '50s - early '60s before morphing into Command (and making a fortune!).