> 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
Thank you. It's a great job. I really thought that it was a recently
recorded track.


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