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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Elvis fans say it's not all right to cut up tape of Sun Sessions
Calling it damaged, firm will sell pieces on Web
By Robin Pogrebin
New York Times
A decision to cut up a 1954 Elvis Presley master tape and sell the pieces on the Internet has infuriated rock 'n' roll fans.
What is purported to be the first Presley recording of the song That's All Right and nine others from recording sessions he and his band did in 1954 and 1955 -- known as the Sun Sessions -- was snipped last week at a news conference at Nola Recording Studios in Manhattan.
Rather than preserve the whole reel, a company called Master Tape Collection announced it will cut the tape into 2-inch pieces, each of which will be mounted under Lucite as a plaque. These can be bought online, at www.elvismastertape.com, for $495 each.
A sample of the recording session played in last Tuesday's news conference featured That's All Right, including conversations involving Presley; his producer, Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun Records, who died last year; and guitarist Scotty Moore.
Michael Esposito, president of Master Tape Collection, based in Bloomfield, N.J., said the reel was discovered in 1992 and came to him through a broker and a collector. Esposito said he had played the recording once, preserving it digitally, but the tape had been damaged by water and was too fragile to be played again.
``What we decided to do is share the tape,'' he said. ``This will never be played again because it will never hold up. It's in such bad shape. It's very brittle.''
There are questions about the authenticity of the tape. RCA, Presley's recording label, said through a spokeswoman: ``We possess the original tape of the recording. Beyond that, we cannot comment.'' It's not clear whether more than one tape was made of the sessions.
Esposito said his recording was verified by Tony Bongiovi, an engineer and record producer, and Jim Czak, a sound engineer and record producer, who together helped produce an extensive ``forensic report.'' Both men spoke at the news conference in New York.
Dave Marsh, a veteran rock critic who wrote the book Elvis, questioned the expertise of these engineers as well as Esposito. There is no listing for Master Tape with the New Jersey telephone directory, and the only Web site is the one for the Presley sale. ``Is this a company that anybody's ever heard of before?'' Marsh said. ``Or was it something created to exploit this maneuver?''
Before deciding to make pieces available online, Esposito tried unsuccessfully to sell the tape in its entirety to RCA. ``Yes, the recordings were offered to us, but they weren't offering anything we didn't already possess,'' the RCA spokeswoman said.
Marsh called the decision to destroy the tape outrageous. ``If they were cutting up something that was purported to be the original copy of the Declaration of Independence or an original copy of Moby-Dick, we wouldn't even be asking, `What's the big deal?' '' Marsh said. ``They're destroying something forever that in the future could have real value.''
Whether the tape could be played again is immaterial, Marsh said. ``You'll find books that, if you tried to read them, would turn to dust,'' he said, mentioning, for example, the Gutenberg Bible.
Jim Henke, chief curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, was also appalled. ``If indeed it is the original master tape to That's All Right, I think it's a disaster,'' he said. ``To destroy something that's such an important historic artifact is destroying a key part of American culture.''
Elvis Presley Enterprises, the singer's estate, granted a license and agreed to allow Master Tape to certify the plaques. On its Web site, www.elvis.com, the estate explained why. ``The music embodied in the tape is completely and perfectly preserved forever in the vaults of BMG/RCA. Whether it's OK to cut up a deteriorated original tape that found its way into a private collection could be debated endlessly.
``We do not own the tape,'' the Web site statement said. ``It was not our decision to make. The project would have happened with or without us. Our licensing department's decision was whether to grant the requested licensing cooperation. Master Tape Collection presented convincing evidence of the tape's authenticity, and our licensing department thus felt comfortable working with them.''
In last week's news conference, the plaques' price was not mentioned. But Marsh said that what underlay the enterprise was greed. ``This is about one thing,'' Marsh said. ``This is about money.
``Either they're destroying history, or this is a fraud,'' Marsh said. ``They can't have it both ways. If it isn't valuable, why are they selling it? And if it is valuable, why are they destroying it?''
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CHAT
ROOM aka THE FUN HOUSE] [
RESTROOMS]
