Cy Payne & His Orchestra – Children’s TV Themes (1972, FLAC from vinyl)

https://mega.nz/#!MKAiwCKR!ElC36JaF-T3NzQ7lc0TkhZwTFGzLU8IZ6lbNJonEZFE

My transfer from vinyl in FLAC. Scans included. Requests for LOGs and CUEs will be signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

A lot of this kind of thing was coming out in the 1970s… a naff, underpowered house-band plays limp arrangements of popular tunes.

Yawn, we’ve heard it all before, right?

But this is one of the special ones. Cy Payne was one of the foremost bandleaders of the time, and he’s still busy with his orchestra today.

The arrangements on this album are fantastic – classy, jazzy, a bit different, nicely recorded, and the band is on fire. This is how you do these things right. This may have been part of the "pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap" mentality of the time, but there was some real love going on behind the scenes here.

I mean, who ever imagined The Magic Roundabout would work so well as a loungy, ultra-cool saxophone-led big band showpiece?

I’ve been wanting to do this one for a few years now. It turns up online from time to time, and seems to generate a nostalgic smile when it does – but I’ve never heard a transfer done properly… so here it is, finally.

This album is short and sweet at just over twenty-seven minutes so did not give any of the issues inherent with overstuffed or badly mastered vinyl. The record was, however, insanely noisy – despite numerous attempts at cleaning, nothing worked except wet play with isopropyl alcohol – all the noise vanished instantly. I barely did a thing to this. It sounds glorious.

Enjoy 🙂
TT