Debbie Daughtry – Prattling before the Pratfall

For Tom Turkey Day

Just in time for Thanksgiving! An all-new Songs From the Back of the Station Wagon with DJ Tom Hanks. Tomorrow at 1 PM ET on Boss Radio 66.

Towards the end of Tom Hanks’s “Here Comes Summer” show on Boss Radio 66, he played “Time Won’t Let Me” by the Outsiders, a #5 hit from 1966. The record sounded so different from my memory of it, I wondered if it had been remixed.

So let’s compare a mono reissue 45 of the single from the early 80’s, with the mono recording Tom played. See what you have time to do when you’re retired and recuperating from surgery?

Is this the third different, vintage turntable of mine, in regular use, that I’ve featured here in two days? Yes, it is.

This is my single.

This is what Tom Hanks played.

The mixes are very similar, and yet they sound very different. Although Tom apparently played a mono copy of the single, there’s no way a modern remix would be done in mono. At first I thought the effect must have been the result of a clean remastering, but then I remembered something and discounted that idea.

Some of the records heard on “Songs From the Back of the Station Wagon” are in stereo, but played in mono. All of them were given the mono treatment for Tom’s “AM Gold” show a month ago. Here is a Facebook exchange I had with Boss Radio 66’s Debbie Daughtry.

So the most likely explanation is, the two recordings of “Time Won’t Let Me” are indeed different mixes. My copy is an original mono mix, and Tom played the stereo mix of the song in mono.