Mystery of "Mystery of a Miracle" by Ruth Christie

[mykedotme]

Hi friends:

I've noticed a strange phenomenon with the Ruth Christie track "Mystery of a Miracle" [Tide T-45-2011, 1966].

This version clearly has Ruth's voice, which is higher-pitched and more nasal. (That same version also here and here.)

However, there's also this version, which is credited to Ruth, but is clearly not the same voice. (That same version also here and here.)

The semi-legit Tide Records compilations on Deezer have the latter version, but they have "?" as the artist, not Ruth Christie.

Anyone ever gotten to the bottom of this?

[Woodbutcher]

First one sounds like it's had the Pinky and Perky treatment , the vocal's definitely been messed with to these ears.

[mykedotme]

If you listen to any of Ruth's prior sides, that higher timbre sounds like her natural voice.

[Weingarden]

Many Brico youtube vids come from CD comps and not original 45s. I would surmise that in this case, the higher-pitched vocal is from the 45, the lower-pitched one from some unreleased-on-vinyl master-tape relic that was included on a compilation.

[Woodbutcher]

35 minutes ago, Weingarden said:

Many Brico youtube vids come from CD comps and not original 45s. I would surmise that in this case, the higher-pitched vocal is from the 45, the lower-pitched one from some unreleased-on-vinyl master-tape relic that was included on a compilation.

Most of the YT clips available are of the low pitch version , just one with the other vocal.

[mykedotme]

There are three versions on YT of each version, as linked in my original post. But to clarify, I've gone ahead and done a left/right channel summary of the two versions. You can clearly hear they aren't the same singer or the same performance. Totally different styles.

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by mykedotme

[Kenb]

this brilliant piece by Gary E. will help you understand the 'vagaries' of these Tide recordings....

https://topshelfoldies.org/tide_edit_records.htm

[mykedotme]

Gary's piece is excellent - and I interviewed him about it a few months ago - but he doesn't address "Mystery of a Miracle." I guess I'll go back to him and see if he knows anything about this specifically. It seems weird enough that he would have mentioned it...

[mykedotme]

...ok, I asked Gary and he has no idea either.

The best I can guess is that Kevin Jenkins, who took over the Tide/Edit masters after Ruth Christie and Cathy Saunders passed away, dumped a bunch of unreleased material on the "Best of Tide Records" compilations he put up on Amazon Music and Deezer. Half of the tracks have no artist listed. Thanks to Gary's article, I was able to figure out a bunch of them, but this version of "Mystery of a Miracle" is clearly from the archive and not the version put out on the single. I think some folks ripped the "digital" version and put it on YouTube under Ruth's name, when it's clearly not the same version.

Basically, I don't think we'll ever know! Thanks to everyone here for trying, though.

Edited October 2, 2023 by mykedotme

[mykedotme]

OK! I return with solid information.

After some puzzling, Gary Myers and I figured out that the second version I linked above (in the Brico version and elsewhere) is actually sung by Tide artist Larry Bright, in a version never released prior to the digital Tide archive compilations. The voice matches closely enough with his other Tide sides, and there's also a reference to a "girl," which is a lyrical gender swap one would expect in 1965.

So essentially a bunch of those YT links identify the wrong artist because nobody would have known there was a Larry Bright version to begin with -- including Kevin Jenkins, the guy who took over Tide's catalog and dumped a bunch of random masters onto Deezer/Amazon Music with poor documentation.

[Weingarden]

Makes sense! Thanks!