Thelma Houston UNSUNG tonight on TV One

[woodward]

As far as I can determine, tonight at 9 PM on TV One Thelma Houston will be the featured artist.

If anyone has conflicting information please advise. It is not easy to determine when a show will be broadcast. I had seen on another link that
it is to be 11 PM tonight. Their schedules seem to be "erratic."

https://www.x1023.com/lets-get-up-cl...helma-houston/

[reese]

Indeed, Thelma's episode premieres tonight at 9pm est and is repeated at 11pm est.

[mysterysinger]

Love Thelma Houston and had high hopes when she joined Motown all those years ago. Glad she scored a major hit with DLMTW but I love Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes more on that one. She's a beautiful lady and still a powerhouse it seems.

[carlo]

It's already up on YouTube, albeit it's kinda choppy and edited in some spots, particularly with some of the music removed, in order to keep the video from being removed due to copyright claims. It seems that a bit of the beginning is missing as well. She looks great and she is so vibrant.

Here it is...

[reese]

It was a nice profile but it went by so fast. They couldn't really devote time to each era properly. Thelma really needed 90 mins. or even 120.

[smallworld]

It bugs me that her Qualifying Heat album was digitized from a vinyl record. That album deserves an expanded edition from the master tapes.

[carlo]

I agree, Reese. This episode of Unsung felt far too short.

Smallworld...I don't have this CD pressing of Qualifying Heat, as I had noticed many of the reviews mentioned the issue of it being sourced from vinyl. Any idea why this was the case? I doubt that the masters have gone missing. It's surprising to see that this was one of FunkyTownGrooves early reissues, as I thought they usually source from the master tapes. Making it even more confusing is that Discogs lists this CD reissue as an unofficial release? Is this truly the case? As the artwork seems to have MCA's imprint on it and FunkyTownGrooves also traditionally released officially licensed reissues.

[thommg]

I have that CD reissue of Qualifying Heat and it doesn't sound like it's sourced from vinyl. Of course, I have some needle drop mp3's and this one sounds much cleaner than those so they did do some remastering. I'm just glad to have the tracks in my mp3 player. Thelma is one of the few artists that I have a complete discography for [[except for some singles released that I haven't tracked down).

[smallworld]

I agree, Reese. This episode of Unsung felt far too short.

Smallworld...I don't have this CD pressing of Qualifying Heat, as I had noticed many of the reviews mentioned the issue of it being sourced from vinyl. Any idea why this was the case? I doubt that the masters have gone missing. It's surprising to see that this was one of FunkyTownGrooves early reissues, as I thought they usually source from the master tapes. Making it even more confusing is that Discogs lists this CD reissue as an unofficial release? Is this truly the case? As the artwork seems to have MCA's imprint on it and FunkyTownGrooves also traditionally released officially licensed reissues.

I recall reading that "Qualifying Heat" was released on CD without a license from Universal, hence the poor quality image scans, the audio sourcing from vinyl and the "unofficial" label that has been added to the discogs listing.

Discogs notes that the initial FTG pressing of Aretha Franklin's "Who's Zoomin' Who" album featured some vinyl sources, whereas a repress contains the same tracks from master tapes... Now how would that happen? From what I've read, some of these UK reissue labels try to cut corners by sourcing tracks from vinyl, thus avoiding a masters transfer fee from the major label that owns the audio. I expect the repress only happened because enough fans complained.

[carlo]

Thanks smallworld. That's interesting. I have seen/heard sourcing from vinyl a number of times when it comes to including 7" and 12" remixes as bonus tracks on officially licensed reissues, as I know it wasn't always commonplace for the labels to keep the masters for those remixes back in the 70s and 80s. I seem to remember that being the case for some of those FTG Aretha reissues as well, as they had claimed that they couldn't find the tapes. In those instances, it makes sense to me. However, in regards to the CD issue of Qualifying Heat, I wonder if the reissue labels were just being cheap and hence them issuing it as an unofficial release...or if they knew it would never be possible to officially license the material due to some legal complications? I tend to think that perhaps it's the latter case, as we've never seen Thelma's 1983 MCA album on CD either and I would think that David Nathan or someone would have definitely jumped at the chance to issue it on CD, if it were feasible to do so.

Thommg, thanks for your review of the Qualifying Heat CD. I may take a gamble and pick this one up, despite it being an unofficial release sourced from vinyl.

[milven]

Some of the comments here remind me of the early days of the CD and something called AAD that was printed on a CD .

The code's three positions refer to recording, mixing, and mastering respectively. The first two positions may be coded either "A" for analog or "D" for digital; the third position [[mastering) is always "D" on digital CDs.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code

I hope someone here can correct my memory if wrong, but I remember the early Motown CD releases being nothing much more than analogue on CD.

I was slow to switch from vinyl to CD, but when NEVER BEFORE RELEASED SUPREMES was only available on CD, I finally gave in and got a CD Player