Bob Wills - The Tiffany Transcriptions 10 CDs

Here are the 10 "Bob Wills Tiffany Transcriptions".
Much more information about these recordings can be found here:
www.tiffanytranscriptions.com/wordpress/tiffany-music-company/
The sessions were usually held on a Monday, a day the band wasn’t touring or performing. These sessions were not treated like many of their regular sessions for record labels. They were far more casual, involved very little planning, and usually musical arrangements were made on the spot. They were cut live onto 16-inch or 17-inch acetate master discs at 331/3 rpm, usually three or four songs per disc. This allowed some of the songs to be longer than the normal three minute limitation of a standard 10-inch 78 rpm commercial record. Many songs are over three minutes in length, and several are over four minutes, while St. Louis Blues (Part 2) is five seconds short of being six minutes in length.
The songs ranged from Bob Wills hits, western swing standards, and top hits of the day, to sentimental ballads, western movie cowboy songs, Texas fiddle tunes, blues, and hot swing instrumentals. They were loose, raw, energetic, and well recorded. The Wills band at that time was a stripped-down version of his big band orchestras of the ’30s and early ’40s. Down to one horn (Alex Brashear – trumpet), the electric guitar, steel guitar, and electric mandolin stepped up to fill the gap. They wailed and were fearless.
Many years later band members recalled the sessions in the notes to the Kaleidoscope Records reissues:
Steel guitar player Herb Remington: “…I remember just how relaxed and ‘off the cuff’ the mood of the band was each time we recorded the Tiffany Transcriptions. We were usually between tours when we did them: periods when we were not in a big rush and we were rested and just having fun. You can feel it when you listen.”
Fiddler Joe Holley: “…They were unique because Bob did not rehearse the band. We simply set up and played as if it was a dance. Everything was spontaneous – in Bob’s words, ‘not so cut and dried.’ ”
Steel guitar player Roy Honeycutt: “…The band would usually tour all week and end up in Oakland for the weekend. Then Monday morning we would all head out in the bus together to the recording studio up on Nob Hill. We’d usually record, without any rehearsal, until Bob figured we’d had enough for one day. He would usually listen to a lot of it afterwards to see what he thought, and then we’d all take the bus back to Oakland for another week of touring.”
Electric mandolin player Tiny Moore: “…This is the way the Wills Band sounded on the many dances we played. In not trying to get the ‘perfect take’ we had a relaxed yet driving quality that is hard to get on a record. I don’t remember any pressure at all during these sessions. It was fun!”
During 1946 and 1947 the band recorded over 458 individual tracks, including complete takes, incomplete takes, false starts, intros, outros, mic checks, etc. Of these, 360 were complete takes. From the complete takes, 213 were issued on the original 26 transcription discs (this includes the opening and closing theme).
The Discs
The Tiffany Transcriptions were recorded between 1946 and 1947 in San Francisco onto 16- or 17-inch acetate master discs, usually going at 331/3 rpm. There were a few that were recorded at 331/3 for the first songs of the disc and then 78 rpm for the last song. This helped minimize inner groove distortion (the inner grooves of the spiral of a record contain the same amount of information as the outer grooves, but have a much smaller diameter, so the information is more compressed together and more likely to have distortion).
On the Tiffany Transcriptions Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys recorded only the music, no talking or introductions. Songs were then selected from the masters and assembled on the transcription discs which were pressed on both black and red vinyl. They were 16-inch discs, which played at 331/3 rpm — this was the radio transcription standard size and speed. (They were not the 331/3 micro groove recordings that were later introduced in the 1950’s for home use; these were played with the same diameter stylus as 78 rpm records and were only used in the radio industry.) Each side of a disc was indicated as a “record” so “record number one” had “record number two” on its flip side. 26 discs (or 52 “records”) were completed yet only 24 discs were ever distributed to the radio stations. There were generally four or five songs to a side.