John P. Mitchell wrote:
> Gregg;
>
> I hope you're still reading posts here. I have a question about the
theme
> music on the season 6 dvd set. When the "heart with satin" plays I've
> noticed that the theme song sounds newly recorded. It doesn't sound
like
> the music in previous dvd sets. Was a studio orchestra brought in?
Thanks
> for the good job you've done. I hope that the Lucy Desi Comedy Hours
will
> be put on dvd in the future.
>
>
> John Mitchell
It's a vintage recording. As far as we can determine, the last time CBS
had the original master recording of the I Love Lucy theme that appears
on the syndicated versions was in 1981, when it was apparently loaned
out to Desi Arnaz, who was putting together a "30th Anniversary" LP of
"I Love Lucy" music. In keeping with the musical styles of the time,
Desi added some "reverb" to the theme before putting it on the album.
What happened to the master after that is anybody's guess. So in
producing the DVDs, our only choices for the I Love Lucy "syndication"
theme have been the optical soundtrack, which unfortunately contains a
bit of distortion (which we're all so used to hearing by now that we
miss it when it isn't there!) and Desi's much cleaner version, which
unfortunately contains the added "reverb" effect.(This is the version
you get when you buy "TV Theme Songs" collection CDs, or the "Babalu
Music" CD). We didn't want to put the reverb version on the DVDs, so
we've been using the optical soundtrack version up to now. But we were
lucky enough to find a pristine master recording of the theme that
Wilbur Hatch and the Desi Arnaz Orchestra recorded for the closing
credits of the show's sixth season. So Tom Watson and I decided to use
a ****tion of that recording for the opening theme for the sixth season
box set in place of the distorted optical track version.
- Gregg Oppenheimer
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