The Beach Boys Little Deuce Coupe 200g Vinyl, Stereo Edition

"Little Deuce Coupe" expanded the band's subject matter to encompass 1963 America's burgeoning love affair with hot rods, surrounding previously released cuts such as the title track, "409", and others with strong new material (much of it cowritten by Wilson and a DJ, Roger Christian). A highpoint: the a cappella James Dean tribute "A Young Man Is Gone" (a reworking of Bobby Troup's beautiful "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring"), a prime example of Wilson's arranging genius and the band's vocal prowess. "Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring" had been a standard for the vocal group The Four Freshmen, whose lush and distinctive jazz-based vocal arrangements had a huge influence on Brian's musical development.
Apart from "Surfin' Safari", which was mono only, the Beach Boys did turn in stereo masters on all of their early albums up until 1965. The "Beach Boys Today!" was the first LP for which they only delivered a mono master.
The stereo editions of "Surfin' USA", "Surfer Girl", "Little Deuce Coupe", "Shut Down Vol. 2", "All Summer Long", "Beach Boys Christmas Album" and "Beach Boys Concert" were all mixed in stereo by their own preferred engineer, Chuck Britz, ostensibly under the group's supervision.
»Brian may or may not have been present for those mixing sessions — evidence suggests that he trusted Chuck's skills enough to let him prepare those mixes on his own — but the group held onto their multitrack tapes and delivered stereo masters to Capitol, rather than allowing Capitol to prepare their own stereo versions. Later, when Brian was only delivering mono masters, Capitol would prepare the Duophonic pseudo stereo editions for the stereo market,« says Alan Boyd, producer and Beach Boys' archivist.
The Beach Boys' practice of double-tracking their vocals really lends itself to stereo mixes. Split left and right, as they are on a lot of those early stereo versions, those doubled vocal parts can really envelop the listener, surrounding them with Wilsons, Loves and Jardines!
All of the newer stereo mixes on these remastered albums ("The Beach Boys Today!", "Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)", "The Beach Boys' Party", "Pet Sounds" and "Smiley Smile") were all done by Mark Linett on behalf of the Beach Boys.