Ongoing History Daily: Direct-to-disc recordings

I was at a record show recently and I picked up another direct-to-disc recording. These were a thing for a while in the 1970s when artists tried to capture maximum audio fidelity from a performance by skipping recording to tape altogether. Instead, they went old-school, back to the pre-1950 era when recordings were made direct to an acetate live in the studio.

No overdubs, no edits, no fixing in the mix. The goal was to avoid all the hiss and audio degradation that was picked up in recording to tape, going through the overdub and mixing process. The problem was that you had to be 100% accurate and perfect when you recorded any direct-to-disc tracks.

A surprising number of artists gave this a try, including Canada’s Rough Trade, FM, and a ton of jazz artists. Direct-to-disc LPs had their day but because they were notoriously difficult to make, they faded out in the 1980s.