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What was the longest long playing record?


medjuck

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Listening to the Disc 6 of the Clifford Jordan Mosaic, which is the equivalent of Glass Bead Game Lp I noticed taht it was 64 minutes long. I don't ever remember another Lp that long. IIRC one of the 2 releases from Mile's '64 Philharmonic Hall concert was about 30 minutes a side but I can't think of any other Lps that had 60 minutes of music. Were there many and didn't the length cause sound problems?

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Class Bead Games was a 2-LP set in its original release.

I think I have a Don Ellis Columbia record where one side is at or a little over 30 minutes...but not the other one. Still, if you can do it on one, you can do it on both. But I guess they didn't like to do it, because you had to pull the bass down to make it all fit or something like that, maybe compress the dynamic range. All of which sounds so quaint today, eh? That quality concerns were at least a factor in the reluctance to stuff in as much as possible.

As to the original matter, here's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LP_record#Playing_time

However, in 1952, Columbia Records began to bring out extended-play LPs that played for as long as 52 minutes, or 26 minutes per side.[citation needed] These were used mainly for the original cast albums of some Broadway musicals, such as Kiss Me, Kate and My Fair Lady, or in order to fit an entire play, such as the 1950 production of Don Juan in Hell, onto just two LPs. The 52+ minute playing time remained rare, however, because of mastering limitations, and most LPs continued to be issued with a 30- to 45-minute playing time throughout the lifetime of their production.

An extremely limited number of albums would eventually exceed even the 52-minute limitation, with single albums going to as long as ninety minutes in the case of Arthur Fiedler's 1976 LP 90 Minutes with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, made by Radio Shack.[14] However, such records had to be cut with much narrower spacing between the grooves, which allowed for a much smaller amount of dynamic range on the records, and meant that playing the record with a worn needle could damage the record. It also resulted in a much quieter sound. Other notably long albums included the UK version of The Rolling Stones' Aftermath, with each side exceeding 26 minutes in length; Genesis' Duke, with each side exceeding 27 minutes; Bob Dylan's 1976 album Desire, with side two being just shy of thirty minutes; Brian Eno's 1975 album Discreet Music, whose A-side exceeded 30 minutes; Miles Davis' 1972 album Get Up with It, totalling 124:15 min over four sides; Todd Rundgren's 1975 album Initiation, totaling 67:32 min over two sides, and his 1973 album A Wizard, A True Star, whose second side reaches almost thirty minutes; La Monte Young's Dream House 78' 17", whose two sides were each just under 40 minutes (the running time of the album is indeed 78:17 min); and André Previn's Previn Plays Gershwin,, with the London Symphony Orchestra, whose sides each exceeded 30 minutes.[15] Single-LP releases of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony contained over 30 minutes on each side, with the third movement split into two parts. The Greenpeace International Record Project released in 1985 also approaches 40 minutes per side over its' two sides. An extremely rare two-disc German pressing restores full sonic clarity and dynamic range lost by the compression to single-disc.

Spoken word and comedy albums, not having a wide range of musical instrumentation to reproduce, can be cut with much narrower spacing between the grooves; for example, The Comic Strip, released by Springtime Records in 1981, has a side A lasting 38:04 min and a side B lasting 31:08 min, for a total of 69:12 min.

I mean, Arthur Fielder, 90 minutes on a single LP? Geez!

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I remeber there was a series of budget-priced pop/rock LPs in the mid- to late 70s that were marketed with the explicit statement that each LP featured 60 minutes of music. I cannot recall the label but to the best of my recollections the records (most if not all of them "Best of" reissues) came from the UK and one of them featured Lonnie Donegan.

EDIT:

Coming to think of it, the title of this album series was (fittingly): Golden Hour"

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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The maximum playing time depends on the dynamic range of the material. I suppose you could make a very long LP with only silence on it. I have a classical album somewhere on which each side exceeds 40 minutes.

I had a quick look among my classical LP:s and didn't find the one I was thinking of, although I found a London pressing of a 70s Decca recording of Mahler's fifth symphony where side one is 39:59. However, side two is only just over 20 minutes.

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  • 7 years later...

This LP compilation of Vladimir Horowitz's solo piano interpretation of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at An Exhibition" and Arturo Toscanini's conducting of Ravel's orchestration of "Pictures at An Exhibition" is over an hour.

Time side one: 29:24; side two: 31:30 

I bought this LP when it was released in the 1970s, I remember hearing someone else in the dorm who had an earlier mono copy of the Horowitz performance and it sounded far better, since it didn't have the electronic fake stereo added.

Pictures at An ExhibitionR-6395667-1634777681-6876.jpeg.jpg

I had heard the orchestral suite played in concert by Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra circa 1967-8 when they performed in Ft. Lauderdale and my father had long owned the Toscanini original mono LP.

 

 

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