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• Bedtime Story debuts on the site with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout this original Epic pressing
• Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “sweet and open”…”vox so present and breathy and dynamic”…”huge, deep and rich bass”…”huge, punchy, and tubey”
• Both of these sides are full-bodied and lively, with exceptionally solid, present and breathy vocals, and plenty of vintage Tubey Magic
• Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
• “In many ways, Tammy Wynette deserves the title of ‘the First Lady of Country Music.’ During the late 60s and early 70s, she dominated the country charts, scoring 17 number one hits. Along with Loretta Lynn, she defined the role of female country vocalists in the 70s.” – AMG Biography

This vintage Epic pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Bedtime Story Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1972
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

Learning the Record

For our shootout for Bedtime Story, we had at our disposal a variety of pressings that had the potential for Hot Stamper sound. We cleaned them carefully, then unplugged everything in the house we could, warmed up the system, Talisman’d it, found the right VTA for our Triplanar arm (by ear of course) and proceeded to spend the next hour or so playing copy after copy on side one, after which we repeated the process for side two.

If you have five or more copies of a record and play them over and over against each other, the process itself teaches you what’s right and what’s wrong with the sound of the album. Once your ears are completely tuned to what the best pressings do well that the other pressings do not do as well, using a few carefully chosen passages of music, it quickly becomes obvious how well a given copy can reproduce those passages. You’ll hear what’s better and worse — right and wrong would be another way of putting it — about the sound.

This approach is simplicity itself. First, you go deep into the sound. There you find a critically important passage in the music, one which most copies struggle — or fail — to reproduce as well as the best. Now, with the hard-won knowledge of precisely what to listen for, you are perfectly positioned to critique any and all pressings that come your way.

It may be a lot of work but it sure ain’t rocket science, and we’ve never pretended otherwise. Just the opposite: from day one we’ve explained step by step precisely how to go about finding the Hot Stampers in your own collection. Not the good sounding pressings you happen to own — those may or may not have Hot Stampers — but the records you actually cleaned, shot out, and declared victorious.

What We’re Listening For On Bedtime Story

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Side One

Bedtime Story
That’s When I Feel It
Take Me Home And Love Me
If This Is Our Last Time
Tonight My Baby’s Coming Home

Side Two

Love’s The Answer
I’m Gonna Keep On Loving Him
Just As Soon As I Get Over Loving You
I Got Me A Man
Your Love’s Been A Long Time Coming
Reach Out Your Hand

About the Album

Bedtime Story is a studio album by American country artist, Tammy Wynette. It was released in March 1972 via Epic Records and contained 11 tracks. The disc featured both new recordings and cover tunes. Two singles were included: title track and “Reach Out Your Hand.” Both made top positions on the North American country charts in 1972. The album itself reached the top ten of the American country albums chart following its release.

Tammy Wynette was at her commercial peak by 1972. She had a string of number one and top ten singles such as “I Don’t Wanna Play House”, “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” and her signature “Stand by Your Man”. Her success continued through the seventies with a series of more chart-topping singles. Among her chart-topping releases was the song “Bedtime Story” (penned by Billy Sherrill and Glenn Sutton). The song served as the lead single and name for Wynette’s next studio project. Sessions for the project were recorded between October 1971 and January 1972 at Columbia Studio B (the “Quonset hut studio”), which was located in Nashville, Tennessee. The sessions were produced by Billy Sherrill.

Bedtime Story consisted of 11 tracks. Several of the tracks were new recordings. Two of these recordings were co-written by Wynette herself: “Reach Out Your Hand” and “Take Me Home and Love Me.” Other tracks such as “That’s When I Feel It,” “I Got Me a Man” and “Your Love’s Been a Long Time Coming” were all new recordings for the project. Additional material were cover tunes. The song, “If This Is Our Last Time,” was originally top 40 country single for Brenda Lee in 1970. “Just as Soon as I Get Over Loving You” was a low-charting single for Jean Shepard in 1971. “Tonight My Baby’s Coming Home” was a top ten single for Barbara Mandrell in 1971. “Love’s the Answer” was a top ten single for Tanya Tucker in 1972.

Bedtime Story was released on March 27, 1972 on Epic Records. It was the thirteenth studio album in Wynette’s career. It was originally distributed as a vinyl LP and a cassette. When reviewing the compilation My Man/Bedtime Story (which compiled tracks from this album and her My Man LP), Stephen Cook of AllMusic praised the songs “I’m Gonna Keep on Loving Him” and “Tonight My Baby’s Coming Home.” Cook called them “top notch tracks.” The album reached the number seven position on the American Billboard Top Country Albums chart in May 1972. It also reached number 133 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in 1972. Two singles were spawned from the disc. The first was the title track, which was first released by Epic in November 1971. By March 4, 1972, the song reached the number one spot on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. It also climbed to number 72 on the Billboard Hot 100. The second single issued was “Reach Out Your Hand,” which was issued as the next single in April 1972. The track went to number two on the Billboard country chart by July 1972. Both singles also topped Canada’s RPM Country Tracks chart in 1972.

-Wikipedia