Another fine mess: some Johnny Cash compilations

MusicBrainz Style
1

I’m mostly thinking aloud, but if anyone has an opinion feel free to jump in. I was gifted a heap of CDs that includes TWO copies of each these releases, which have the same track lists but are different in many ways:

Unfortunately, I only have discs, not cases. They’re all from TeeVee records, and as noted in the annotations two of them seem to go together (they’re both marked “tv special / twin pack”), although in my case it’s the 2000 release with that marking.

Ok, I was going on a lot but let me summarize the differences:

Sings His Best:

  • one has rectangular “TeeVee Records” logo, is printed in b&w plain text
  • the other has trapezoid logo and “TVCD-6006”, has a mostly yellow background (this is the “twin pack”)
  • this was released as early as 1982 as a standalone, but no indication on the discs of when they were released

20 All-Time Original Greatest Hits/A Living Legend:

  • greatest hits has blue background and color image, date of 2003 and mentions kingrecords.com, numbered as TV-0715-2
  • “A Living Legend” has same image in black & white, date of 2000 and “TVCD 6029” (this is the “twin pack”)
  • I can find this listed separately on amazon, etc, but it’s unclear whether it was actually released under the earlier “A Living Legend” title at some point. kingrecords.com is defunct and wayback machine hasn’t been much help
  • don’t know that it matters, but iTunes identifies this as “The Living Legend”, while MusicBee has the other title

After looking through everything I think what I’m going to do is this:

  • add the 1982 release of “Sings His Best” as a new release group
  • see what the earliest version I can find of the other one is and do the same
  • merge the two 2003 releases and release groups as Sings His Best / Greatest Hits, with “included in”
  • add a second release to that release group with the 2000 release that is marked as Twin Pack
  • at some point add images of the mediums I have for the two combo releases

Any objections, suggestions?

2

the TVCD-6006 and TVCD 6029 are the Cat. No and thay can change per disc iv seen it on the albums iv added on discogs they may have the same barcode and have a different Cat. No. for what iv seen on the web they are both by TeeVee Records and are separate realeces you should put in the date on yours not the one on the website . hope this helps

3

It’s clear that these have been released separately at some point, but it’s also clear that they have been released together at some point, including the 2003 releases currently in the database. That counts a separate release group by MusicBrainz standards, as far as I understand it. As soon as I have time I’ll follow through with re-configuring.

4

You can maybe also look at matrix information or mastering/mould SIDs and see if any of those are cross‐referable with e.g., Discogs, if you want to further identify the exact version of a release you have.

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5

Can you give me any more info on how to go about that?

6

In the inner ring of the CDs, there should be some fine letters and numbers engraved. The matrix code will usually be some long strings of letters and numbers while the mastering/mould SID code will be the shorter ones that start with IFPI. If I’m not mistaken, the mastering SID code will always start with the letter ‘L’ after IFPI but I could be wrong. These codes are usually hard to see clearly, so you need to find a good angle and a good lighting to see them.

EDIT: See this Discogs thread

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