Mexico City.- About a year ago, while working on a sound archive digitization project and immersive audio mixing, Mexican sound engineer Edson R. Heredia found tapes from the album “Lo Past, Pasado” by José José with a song titled “Ya No I think of you” which I had never heard before.
“We put the tape on, we hit play,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “Our skin crawled.”
They couldn’t believe that in the middle of 2023, five years after José José passed away, they had the privilege of hearing something unprecedented from the Mexican star. Heredia summoned executives from Sony Music Mexico, who began to investigate if it really was a song by the maestro that had not been released to the public before.
The tapes had very precise data such as that they had been recorded on November 9, 1978 in England, under the musical direction is the producer and arranger Tom Parker and the original audio engineering by David Hunt. Parker was also in charge of the production of the album “The Past Past.”
“The special thing about these recordings is that it is recorded in the old way with all the musicians live,” said Heredia, who regretted that they did not have the data of the session musicians. “Even one of José José’s shots is done with the musicians.”
The instruments are the originals from the recording, they only had to re-record a little of the bass for quality reasons, but they followed the original line. Bassist Francisco Ruiz collaborated with the current recording for that instrument.
“We didn’t add anything about everything else, everything was how it sounded and how they recorded it at that time,” said Heredia.
The big question is why it did not come to light at the time. The main theory has to do with the format of the vinyls.
“The space on vinyl was very limited, which allowed you five songs per side, or six songs per side, we believe that decision was made to leave it out there and they were going to use it in some other project, but it was overlooked,” said.
There was even a previous opportunity in which the song could be rescued when they made a backup of José José’s tapes in the 1990s, but no one noticed the material.
“I was fortunate enough to find that needle in the haystack by accident,” Heredia said enthusiastically.
The next step was to have authorization from José José’s family to publish it and investigate all possible information for credits and legal matters. Latin Grammy award-winning engineer and producer Memo Gil did the final sound mix.
“It was a craftsmanship respecting the standards of the time, we wanted to adhere to everything analogous from that time,” said Heredia. “We can hear José José in his best time.”
“No More Thinking About You,” which was released last week as part of the Spotify Singles series, is a nostalgic track after a breakup. Soon, they will release the video for the song.
“Just yesterday the video was being recorded at Sony Music’s 5020 MX studios,” said Heredia. “It’s going to be a very emotional video because it’s like a day-to-day life of all the people singing a José José song.”
Heredia is in charge of the studio’s sound archive. Among the artists with whom he has collaborated, Carlos Rivera and La Sonora Santanera stand out, with which he won a Latin Grammy. He has been working at Sony Music Mexico for 13 years.
“I think that with this song, ‘The Sad One’ smiled again from heaven and his legacy continues,” he said. “The important thing here is that you make the song your own.”
José José died on September 28, 2019 in Florida, United States. He is one of the most popular singers in Mexico with songs like “El triste”, “Almohada” and “Volcán”. He received the Musical Excellence Award and Person of the Year from the Latin Recording Academy.
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