LEROY HUTSON: ALL BECAUSE OF THIS DAMN EDIT

For a while, I had been trying to land a cheap 7″ copy of Leroy Hutson’s “All Because Of You,” one of his best proto-disco tracks from the 1970s. The song has everything you’d want: opening drum break, rich and powerful production, Hutson’s vocals, etc. and it’s always nice to have a compact version on 7″. But when I finally got a copy and was listening to it, something jumped out at me, seemingly literally:

Leroy Hutson: All Because of You (7″ version)
From 7″ (Curtom, 1975)

Listen at around 1:50 or so. Sounds like a skip right?

Annoyed, I went back and retracked that portion and the stylus doesn’t jump or move (what you’d expect with a scratch) and that made me wonder wtf was going on so I flipped to the B-side, an instrumental version of the same song, and the same “jump” was there too. And then it dawned on me: this is just a really lazy edit!

See, this is the original version of the song:

Leroy Hutson: All Because of You (LP version)
From Hutson (Curtom, 1975)

It’s six+ minutes, too long to put on a 7″ so Curtom evidently had an engineer create a 7″ edit of it but whoever that dude was either hella sloppy, lazy or both because he basically tries to run a splice between two parts of the song, one at 1:53, the other around 6:13, but doesn’t really bother to make sure the transition sounds good. Or is even on tempo. I ran this past a few peers and they all agreed: worst. edit. ever. Inexcusably weaksauce.

And here’s what really burns: I sat down with the original track and in about 5 minutes, created a much cleaner splice. Someone who had access to the master tapes, in a half-decent studio, could have done the exact same thing, namely quickly fading out/fading both parts at the splice point, thus creating a seamless transition that doesn’t sound like the needle popped off the vinyl. Curtom = fail (at least in this case)

Awesome song though, right? ¹

By the way, Hutson’s solo albums are, in my opinion, completely essential for any fans of ’70s soul. Same album also has this instrumental track I like a lot:

Leroy Hutson: Cool Out
From Hutson (Curtom, 1975) ²