This listing is mostly for informational purposes and an advertising presence on ebay.  While the book is available

for sale from me, if you order it on Amazon, you will get it quicker, and if you don't live in the USA, with much lower

shipping costs.  So please buy it there, though you are welcome to contact me through ebay if you have questions.  Thank you.

Mercury Living Presence LPs &CDs (book)

Free email Update available:  If you have bought this book on Amazon or eBay or elsewhere, you know it contains information about all Mercury Living Presence recordings.  But you can also get a major email Update covering recent complete MLP box sets of Rafael Kubelik, Paul Paray, and Gina Bachauer along with other discs including many performances newly released on CD that had not previously been available. Write to the author at the email address on the copyright page of the book.

This book is primarily concerned with the classical music catalog of Mercury Living Presence recordings recorded and published by the Mercury Record Corporation. Mercury Records made some of the finest and most natural sounding audio recordings ever made, mostly of excellent and committed performances of classical music.   But this is not a history of Mercury records or even of the Living Presence series of recordings.  My main focus was to create a list of all the Mercury Living Presence classical records. I am mostly interested in the stereo recordings, but there are also many earlier mono recordings of great interest, too, so I have included those also.  Specifically, what is included is information on the SR 90000 series of stereo recordings and the MG 50000 series of mono recordings, but there is also a listing of the Wing classical reissue series

Decades ago, when I began collecting Mercury records, and years later when I started collecting the CDs, I was looking for a complete list of all the Mercury Living Presence records and later the CDs.  Though I found some information that was helpful, to get what I wanted, I had to make the list myself.  I started with lists of records on the record sleeves of the albums, got some information from The Absolute Sound! magazine, and in the internet age, found useful information on several internet sites, but mostly to get the list I wanted, I had to dig up the information and build it myself.   Having completed the list, it occurred to me that other collectors might find it helpful, too.  So I put together a group of databases and spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Works database format files and issued the databases I had created on a CD-rom disc in early 2013.  By that time I had all the original series of CDs mastered by Wilma Cozart Fine, and many of the records that had been reissued on CD, and virtually all of the stereo records not issued on CD, plus most of the mono records in which I had a strong interest.   Now it is available as a book.  Among other things it includes the following lists:

Complete Mercury Living Presence CDs, including every CD, with its track information, identifying Composer, title, soloist, conductor, orchestra, CD #, LP where originally published, and recording date.

Complete Mercury Living Presence LPs including every LP with its track information identifying Composer, title, soloist, conductor, orchestra, LP #, CD on which it was reissued if any, and recording date.

Different versions of the files are arranged by:  Composer and Title, Recording Date, Record number,  and CD number.  There are also a listings of LPs and LP tracks that have not been reissued in the Mercury Living Presence CD series.  

Included are listings of all original Mercury Living Presence records in the SR 90000 and MG 50000  series, all CDs originally mastered by  Wilma Cozart Fine, all SACDs, and the more recent reissues and new issues in the 3 large 50+ CD box sets and the 10-CD box sets of Marcel Dupré and Janos Starker.  There are also a few chapters of background information, little known facts, and other topics of interest. Hopefully readers will find it interesting and useful.

Kim Weston has been a music lover from an early age, probably because he grew up in a household where there was always classical music on the radio, or coming from a record player.  Three of his early favorites, even before entering High School,  were Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto #4, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto #2, and Delibes' Ballet Coppelia.  He has been an audiophile since the 1970s, partly due to the influence of Harry Pearson and The Absolute Sound!   It was TAS! that led to his realization of just how good several old Mercury Living Presence records and RCA Living Stereo records already in his collection were; and how they stood out from most other classical records, in terms of sound quality.   Although he was too young to be buying Mercury and  RCA records during their golden age, he has been buying and enjoying them and other music regularly since the late 1960s, although his interests in music are not exclusively classical.  Kim earned a BA in Liberal Arts at Johns  Hopkins  University, and later, also at JHU, an MS in Education.   He taught Physics and Chemistry for most of his career, and in retirement, still tutors both subjects at a local community college.  He is also well known as a scholar of the work of Carl Barks and has written or contributed to a number of books and essays on the subject which are available on Amazon.  He has also written a number of well-regarded reviews on a variety of topics on Amazon.

The first four pictures are are the cover, contents page and two pages of listings from the book.  Pictures 5-7 are the CD-rom booklet cover, the CD-rom in a paper sleeve for shipping, and the tray liner if you wish to put it in your own CD-jewel box (available in a separate listing).  Picture 8 is the front cover of the somewhat similar CD-Rom of databases of RCA Victor Living Stereo LPs and CDs, available in another listing which may also be of interest to you if you are interested in Mercury Living Presence LPs and CDs.  Picture 9 & 10 are the front and back cover of the book version of  RCA Victor Living Stereo LPs and CDs, also available in another listing. Picture 11 is a review of the book published in the March, 2018 issue of the magazine, The Absolute Sound! and is copyrighted by the magazine.

SHIPPING:  Media Mail shipping is $3 in the USA.   With rising postal rates, free shipping is no longer feasible. However, if you would like to buy a copy of both this and RCA Victor Living Stereo LPs and CDs at the same time (or within about an hour of each other), I will invoice you for $38 for both books together, with free shipping in the USA.  Or you can look up the combined listing RCA Living Stereo LPs & CDs, Mercury Living Presence LPs and CDs, $38 together, and buy it there. International shipping to Europe and elsewhere would be ABOUT $30 or possibly more so I would strongly recommend that Europeans and others interested in the book purchase it on European Amazon sites to take advantage of free or local shipping (but then send me an email at the address on the copyright page, with youe book's printing date to let me know you have it and be put on a list for free email updates).  The book is also available on Amazon in the USA.   Payment by PayPal is expected within three days of purchase, but you should email me within 48 hours if you haven't paid within 48 hours.  Any questions?  Send me an email.  Also see my other auctions and my feedback.