In which I waste hours finding old articles about Steve

Not all that's vinyl is golden. Take the unfortunate case of MCA's new "Heavy Vinyl" series. MCA has gone to great lengths to duplicate the success of the many small labels that have fed the vinyl revival. MCA's first batch of vinyl includes "Buddy Holly," "Who's Next," the soundtrack from "Out of Africa" and Buddy Guy's "I Was Walking Through the Woods," a safe, something-for-everyone entrance into the market.

The covers are thick, beautifully reproduced gatefolds. The pressings are 180 grams of vinyl, remastered with no noise suppression or bass rolloff.

Terrific. So when the cartridge touches down on "Buddy Holly," why is there such disappointment? The sound is good, but not as good as it should be. The answer is buried in the album's fine print: MCA used digital transfers.

That's like buying a Rolex with a digital readout.Analog is analog. If digital is introduced at any stage, the album might as well be a CD. Digital, in any form, does not belong on the same platter with a 180- gram, $25 LP.

There's vinyl done right and vinyl not quite.

MCA is not quite, but DCC Compact Classics is start-to-finish done right. "Greatest Country and Western Hits" by Ray Charles could almost pass as an MCA release -- Kevin Gray, who did the "Heavy Vinyl" mastering, is second engineer here -- but it's all-analog and mastered by Steve Hoffman and Charles. A vacuum-tube cutting system adds an extra dimension.

Compare DCC's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" soundtrack (two albums, $40 retail) with MCA's "Out of Africa" and the different techniques become obvious. "Raiders" is almost as spellbinding as the movie. And DCC's remastering breathes new life into Verve's Stan Getz-Charlie Bird collaboration on "Jazz Samba" ($30). On vinyl, simple is better.

Although rumors persist that the new regime at MCA isn't wild about "Heavy Vinyl," the company says a reissue of The Who's "Tommy" is being considered.

But next time, MCA, do it all right. Make it all-analog.

DCC Compact Classics is a niche recording company, specializ­ing in CD albums only. It also specializes in enhanced “yester­day's music,” the earlier recordings
of such performers as Ray Charles, Sammy Davis Jr., the Beach Boys, Leon Russell. Music from the vaults, played on compact discs.

Until he had seen a PBS docu­mentary about Josephine Baker (the first feature film on her life will be shown tonight on HBO), Blonstein knew little about the black performer who fled to Paris to find success in nightclubs during the '20s, '30s and '40s. Fortunately for him, a business associate, Jacques Huber, was a collector of Baker memorabilia and recordings as well as a consultant on the HBO film. Since Blonstein specializes in older music, his reasoning turned to a Josephine Baker album.

Also fortunately for Blonstein, he had a recording genius working for him. Steve Hoffman took Hub­er’s Baker record collection, put each item under . a microscope, determined what kind of stylus cut each of the original Odeon and Pathe records, pulled the proper playing styluses out of his personal collection, determined the equali­zation curves (the amount of bass and treble, for example, used in each disc), re-recorded the songs on digital tape, editing the pops and hisses out in millisecond opera­tions. "If you do it correctly you won’t hear the loss. We did it right,” he said.

These labor-intensive proce­dures were followed for each of the 50 songs in the two-disc album. Meanwhile, Blonstein and Huber were shifting through Huber's collection of photographs and posters to produce a booklet for the Baker project, all the time watchful of the March date of the HBO film.