Today marks the official debut of my book on the golden age of Decca records, published by Winston Ma and First Impression Music, Decca:Supreme Stereophonic Legacy. It is being released first at the Hong Kong Audio Show this weekend and then in the US about the 15th of August.
Gary Koh has heard the test pressings of the four FIM CD's that accompany the book and has made a few comments in another WBF thread.
Several years ago, Winston told me that he had talked to Decca (Part of Universal Records) about doing a book about the great era of stereo recordings done by them from the late 1950's to about 1980, when digital recording displaced analog. However, he said he was too busy to do the book. We talked about my interest in Decca and I gave him a few references to follow.
About 18 months ago Winston called me and asked whether I would be interested in writing the book. As some of you know, Winston has has some major health issues and felt he was not able to do the project alone. We spent several days together at his home in Redmond, talking about the scope of the project and taking breaks listening to his wonderful system. I began writing in earnest in May of last year, researching and interviewing, first in London, with several of the retired Decca staff, engineers and others. The first draft was completed in about 6 months, and followed by extensive editing and graphical work, including over 180 photos, many from the private collections of the Decca staff and the Decca archives.
No work of FIM (Winston's company) would be complete without superb CD's, and Winston had Michael Bishop and Robert Friedrich (both multi-Grammy winners) of Five/Four Productions remaster excerpts of some of the greatest Decca recordings of that era. As anyone knows about the sound quality of FIM's productions and Winston's insistence on only the very best, the sonics of these CD's (at least in the test pressings that I have) are IMHO superior to the best that FIM has ever produced.
The book is being issued in a two volume set, the first, 260 pages in length is the main book, while the second, 100 pages long contains extensive liner notes and the four CD's. I was responsible for writing both the book and liner notes. the latter also including some of Winston's notes from the original FIM release of several of the albums and the original Decca liner notes, and Winston produced the entire project, with Michael and Robert doing the engineering on the CD's.
Both Elusive Disc and Acoustic Sounds are featuring the book and CD's at a discounted pre-publication price and details on the musical content are on their websites.
The good news is that the Asia distributor for FIM has ordered the vast majority of the books for the Asia market and the resulting bad news is that I haven't received any copies yet. However, more are on the way and Elusive Disc and Acoustic Sounds should have them by mid-month.
I have attached the flyer for the book. The size of the book is 7.5" square.
Larry
Gary Koh has heard the test pressings of the four FIM CD's that accompany the book and has made a few comments in another WBF thread.
Several years ago, Winston told me that he had talked to Decca (Part of Universal Records) about doing a book about the great era of stereo recordings done by them from the late 1950's to about 1980, when digital recording displaced analog. However, he said he was too busy to do the book. We talked about my interest in Decca and I gave him a few references to follow.
About 18 months ago Winston called me and asked whether I would be interested in writing the book. As some of you know, Winston has has some major health issues and felt he was not able to do the project alone. We spent several days together at his home in Redmond, talking about the scope of the project and taking breaks listening to his wonderful system. I began writing in earnest in May of last year, researching and interviewing, first in London, with several of the retired Decca staff, engineers and others. The first draft was completed in about 6 months, and followed by extensive editing and graphical work, including over 180 photos, many from the private collections of the Decca staff and the Decca archives.
No work of FIM (Winston's company) would be complete without superb CD's, and Winston had Michael Bishop and Robert Friedrich (both multi-Grammy winners) of Five/Four Productions remaster excerpts of some of the greatest Decca recordings of that era. As anyone knows about the sound quality of FIM's productions and Winston's insistence on only the very best, the sonics of these CD's (at least in the test pressings that I have) are IMHO superior to the best that FIM has ever produced.
The book is being issued in a two volume set, the first, 260 pages in length is the main book, while the second, 100 pages long contains extensive liner notes and the four CD's. I was responsible for writing both the book and liner notes. the latter also including some of Winston's notes from the original FIM release of several of the albums and the original Decca liner notes, and Winston produced the entire project, with Michael and Robert doing the engineering on the CD's.
Both Elusive Disc and Acoustic Sounds are featuring the book and CD's at a discounted pre-publication price and details on the musical content are on their websites.
The good news is that the Asia distributor for FIM has ordered the vast majority of the books for the Asia market and the resulting bad news is that I haven't received any copies yet. However, more are on the way and Elusive Disc and Acoustic Sounds should have them by mid-month.
I have attached the flyer for the book. The size of the book is 7.5" square.
Larry
