Keith Hirsch’s CD Resource

The subject of this entry is a very rare disc that took me years to acquire.  I had never seen a copy available for sale or even a picture of one before actually obtaining it.  It’s the original Japanese pressing of Janis Joplin Pearl for the U.S. market.  The disc was released on the Columbia [...]

In the early days of the CD, the Phonogram family of labels included Polydor, RSO, Vertigo, Mercury, Rocket, and Casablanca, to name a few.  Original discs on these labels were pressed in West Germany and were afforded unique, and often attractive, label designs.  Of particular interest to the collector was that each label went through [...]

An oddity from the early days of the Compact Disc is a collection U.S. issues on the A&M label that bear an unusual Compact Disc format logo.  The origin of this logo is unknown, but since it is only seen on A&M titles, it could have been proposed and then used by A&M before a [...]

An entry here on March 9, 2008 focused on the world’s first CD single, Dire Straits “Brothers in Arms”.  Not long after the release of that CD single, in 1986 to be specific, CD singles started appearing in the U.S.  One of the first CD singles issued in the U.S., and sometimes claimed to be [...]

The first CD pressing plant to open in the United States was CBS/Sony’s Digital Audio Disc Corporation, or DADC, in Terre Haute, Indiana.  To commemorate the opening of the DADC plant in September 1984, CBS/Sony pressed two promotional titles in very limited quantities.  The discs were then distributed to select members of the media and [...]

In 1985, Vertigo, a sub-label of Phonogram, issued the world’s first CD single in Europe to promote the landmark Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms and the resulting world concert tour.  The four-track single featured long and short versions of the album’s title track, a portion of “Why Worry” from Brothers in Arms, and “Going Home”, [...]

CBS/Sony opened the first commercial CD pressing plant in Japan in 1982.  In the early days of the CD, many record labels turned to CBS/Sony to press their discs.  As a way to track the many manufacturing projects in the plant, for both outside labels and their own, CBS/Sony developed a system of project identification [...]

I thought it was time to throw some holiday cheer into keithhirsch.com with a Christmas CD…or two!  Described here are two rare Elvis Presley Christmas discs.
In 1984, RCA issued the Elvis Presley Merry Christmas album on CD in the U.S. and Europe.  Although one might expect this album to be a staple in the Elvis [...]