LITTLE WALTER

I've written a number of stories on Walter and he's appeared on Visual Radio at least three times, we have about four hours of documentary footage on Walter in his studio and in the clubs spinning discs.


Credits on AMG

AMG has "Little Walter DeVanne" which is, of course, a mis-spelling. AMG takes the information directly from the LP or CD. We hope to correct the AMG site at some point in the future.

Here is their four page credit list for Walter DeVenne:
http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:jvfexqtaldhe%7ET4

First there was an article in Medialine, the former "Replication News".
Radio DJ Remasters Vintage Vee Jay, Sun Catalogs
that is followed by an article I wrote for THE MEDFORD TRANSCRIPT in September of 2006 which a radio chat board absconded with (the story follows the Medialine story).

Radioworld has picked up the story and we've revamped it with more biographical information. It is very thorough and will be published in August of 2007, so keep watching this site.

Radio DJ Remasters Vintage Vee Jay, Sun Catalogs
by Joe Viglione

When you walk into Walter DeVenne's office/recording studio, you have literally walked into a time machine. And "Little Walter's Time Machine" is the name of his show when he's on the road, or at WODS-FM in Boston, MA.

On his desk is an order to re-master the entire Vee Jay catalog for the Collectables label, as well as an urgent call to put together Sun Records: The Definitive Hits.

DeVenne doesn't just master these records.

"It's going to sound the way the record sounded. I want it to sound the way I heard it when I dropped the needle on it (the record), not the way it was in the studio. There were probably only 12 people in the studio!"

What DeVenne does is make the records "right," the way people heard them on the radio, or the way the original mastering engineer put the material out to the world.

"I was doing some Chuck Berry stuff for the radio, putting masters together for radio broadcast--not CD release," he notes. DeVenne's stereo mix of "Mony Mony" by Tommy James & The Shondells delights listeners of Oldies 103 in Boston. The rest of the world has to hear the mono version on Roulette. DeVenne, who incidentally has the entire Roulette catalog in his vaults, opines that Chuck Berry's original records "exploded off the turntable. The CDs didn't explode. It's the person doing the mastering that's the key to it. It's not going to sound the same (if the person mastering tries to go for a 'clean' re-master as opposed to making it sound like the record sounded)...I want to hear it (with) the impact that it had. Authenticity!"

Generally, DeVenne prefers stereo mixes when they're available, but still wants the record to sound as close as it originally sounded on the radio. The worst-case scenario, the mastering engineer points out, is RCA's reissue of the Sun Records masters by Elvis Presley: "Scratches in glorious stereo...that don't correspond" (from speaker to speaker because a stereo needle was used from the mono acetate source).

When I walked in, he was playing a hideous source tape from a client--a cassette made from a rare record. The song was "I Love You" by The Shadows. Walter heard a "tick" between second 2:17 and 2:18. He removed the tick and the hiss. He uses his pre-sets with different filters; he seeks the best source tapes. "They haven't invented anything to take distortion out. You can hide it a little, [but] when they say 'the distortion is gone' they've found a better source (tape)."

The Doo Wop Box

(Rhino) went gold selling 500,000 units to everyone's surprise. Everyone but Little Walter.

Of the Vee Jay project featuring early bluesmen, DeVenne comments, "I was in heaven doing the Jimmy Reed stuff. Peter Wolf (lead singer of the former J. Geils Band) was recently in the studio and said, 'I have these records at home and they just don't sound like that.'" Wolf was talking about the John Lee Hooker Boom Boom

album from 1959. It will be out in stereo for the first time on the Collectables label through a deal with Vee Jay and Rhino. "Gene Chandler was the last thing I did last week," says DeVenne, of remixing "Duke Of Earl" in stereo from a better source for the Vee Jay project. DeVenne's impressive credits include the German label Bear Family Records, for whom he has put together box sets of Little Richard, Fats Domino and The Platters.

The studio's wall is adorned by record covers. The vibe is further enhanced by the numerous stored CDs, DATs, and master tapes, housed securely in a facility a little north of Boston, and lovingly protected and put "right" by a legendary DJ of Boston radio. When you see "A&R/Mastering by Little Walter DeVenne," you'll know you've got the right thing.