Most of the time, when you hear "Barbara Ann" on oldies stations, it fades out when the Beach Boys get to "Barbara Ann, Barbara Ann - Barbara Ann, Barbara Ann..." But a couple of days ago,one station was gutsy enough to play the whole version.
    They get to the end of the song, then they start singing the "rockin' & rollin', rockin & a-reelin'" ending repeatedly, and acting goofy in between the times that they do! I don't know if I'm putting the words down right when describing this, but it's very difficult for me to.
    Now for the question -
    Does the 45 of the song have the whole version, or does it fade out?

I had that 45 and I think it was the "short" version of the song.  But it also showed up on LPs, maybe one of them had the extended version.
From what I've read, the song was just an impromptu jam session and Dean Torrance of Jan and Dean sings the lead vocal.
By the way, I liked the flip side "Girl Don't Tell Me" better than Barbara Ann

From what I understand, via Amazon comments, the long version is available on the album "Beach Boys Party", which had "jam session" versions of a few Beach Boy tunes, but also some Beatle and Dylan songs as well! "Barbara Ann" was originally recorded on this album, and this is where the single version came from.

They were on a radio talk show a long time ago and what I can remember of it was that they said they were just sitting around doing some smoke waiting for in their hotel room for some reason and to break the boredom they started to goof around and just started singing, they're instruments where packed up so one of them shook a set of house keys on a ring in his hand as and one other slaping a side of the sofa and tapping on a coffee table for background music and was recorded by one of the roadies on a portable two reel recorder by a some luck that it wasn't packed way yet and after they heard what they sounded like on it they didn't want to release it at first because their "clean boy" image might get tartished and lose fans by it...you know the rest of the story.

Hot Wax   

     Most of the time, when you hear "Barbara Ann" on oldies stations, it fades out when the Beach Boys get to "Barbara Ann, Barbara Ann - Barbara Ann, Barbara Ann..." But a couple of days ago,one station was gutsy enough to play the whole version.
     They get to the end of the song, then they start singing the "rockin' & rollin', rockin & a-reelin'" ending repeatedly, and acting goofy in between the times that they do! I don't know if I'm putting the words down right when describing this, but it's very difficult for me to.
     Now for the question -
     Does the 45 of the song have the whole version, or does it fade out?


The 45 version is the first version you described, clocking in at a shade over 2 minutes...

The first copy I ever had was on a compilation called '20 Golden Greats', which was a huge seller in 1976...however, EMI in their infinite wisdom decided to use the 'full' version on it and for many years I always tended to think that this was the single version!

On the same album, they used the LP version of 'Fun Fun Fun', which led to more confusion...!

Album compiling has become a lot less 'slapdash' nowdays and I think that all recent BB compilations (and there's quite a few!) use the single versions...

why does it seem to me that the 45s always sounded better than the  exact same song on the album? --- the  very same cut version, very same track  timing length....  ist it  just me, the faster speed of 45s,  electrical signal compression?  [and of course records were usually not true stereo, used poor quality vinyl, were analog etc. but thats another issue}


Near-enough answered your own question, timelord...

When you consider the 'single' was one track covering one side of plastic, there was more space to cut a louder groove...

...as opposed to an album - okay, more space but several tracks squeezed on, so the signal to the groove was quieter...

As time went on, it got worse...I still have several compilations from the 70s where the record boasted of having 'one hour of music'...

...which it did - trouble was, the groove was so tightly packed that your volume level had to be notched up to the max to get a reasonable noise out of it!

The first copy I ever had was on a compilation called '20 Golden Greats', which was a huge seller in 1976...however, EMI in their infinite wisdom decided to use the 'full' version on it and for many years I always tended to think that this was the single version!

On the same album, they used the LP version of 'Fun Fun Fun', which led to more confusion...!

Dang, I wish I had your "bad luck" there!  :)


I still have several compilations from the 70s where the record boasted of having 'one hour of music'...

...which it did - trouble was, the groove was so tightly packed that your volume level had to be notched up to the max to get a reasonable noise out of it!

That was the problem with the K-Tel greatest-hits records, and also 45RPM "EP's" - 2 songs per side, so they recorded at a lower volume to fit it all in. The scratches are louder then the music in some cases! :D

one of our 2 local am pop-rocknroll radio sations issued a few albums of that type in the 60s.  they had the worst quality sound ive ever heard on a record.


Cheap 'n cheerful were the watchwords...

...mind you, only a handful were into 'hi-fi' at the time, so I suppose it never really mattered!

There was a story that the early K-Tel (and presumably Ronco) albums were pressed using recycled plastic...!