Back in the late 1950’s, veteran alto sax player, bandleader and arranger Benny Carter, who died at 95 back in July of 2003, spent much of his time arranging for television shows, among them Lee Marvin’s Chicago-based cop show “M-Squad”. Why no label has reissued 1959’s The Music From M Squad (RCA Living Stereo LSP-2062) remains a mystery to me. It’s got great big band “crime” music, much of which was arranged by Carter and written by him, session conductor Stanley Wilson, Count Basie and “Johnny Williams” (thatJohn Williams). Recorded by the great Al Schmitt at RCA Victor Music Center of The World, LA, it also sounds pretty damn good!

Veteran blues guitarist Walter Trout is obviously well known within blues circles and among blues fans I asked, but the name doesn’t elicit much of a response outside the blues core.

This story, posted last fall, wondered about the fate of our Tracking Angle New Orleans correspondent Roger Hahn. Mid way through January, Hahn found us through a friend who\'d done an internet search on his name and came upon this piece, originally published in the Summer of 1998. Hahn will once again contribute, this time online at musicangle.com.

BP: I didn't pull out all the live recordings I've done. This is Homer and Jethro from 1962. Now at all the live recordings at RCA, Victor went to extreme lengths to modify the tape machines to increase the signal-to- noise ratio. And I copied some of those same principles in the studio back in Nashville. And primarily, it's putting in low noise resistors-everything is tube amplified, of course-in the front end and changing to a high-quality capacitor. So they usually were able to get the S/N ratio about 10dB better. You were telling me a while ago that you couldn't hear any hiss on my recordings. That's one of the reasons. And also you're not hearing third and fourth generations on my recordings. I didn't let them out the door that way.