You laugh now, but at least you could turn the dialogue up over the music by adjusting the balance. I’d almost take this over not being able to hear a damn thing anyone is saying in modern TV audio.

Yeah, some were pretty crazy.

Is mostly because stereo sound being widely available was novel and new. I have several albums that are literally just made to let people show off the stereo aspect of their new hi-fi.

And there are some old mixes that are fairly extreme by today's standards but sound like a very real soundstage - the drums are over there, the vocals over here, etc.

But then some took it too far with the control hard pans and then relying on the hard pan to fix bad levels (like that the drums are too loud)

But even today, it's not unusual to have some instruments entirely (or very nearly) in one side of the other. Just not the primary instruments carrying the harmony and melody.

Not a fan of the Japanese art of karaoke I see ;-)

I vaguely recall there being a stereo record needle explanation for this.

When done effectively, it does sound awesome that way. My buddy and I (both making music) talk quite a bit about strategic use of similar techniques but subtler when we mix music today.

It was 1) only a brief period where they were experimenting around with new stereo broadcast capabilities or 2) a schtick

Just that so much good music was made during this time that we imagine the period lasted longer than it did

I used to use a Meier Audio headphone amp which ‘fixed’ this with a switch toggle. Handy feature.

I've a few "learn the violin" CDs like that. Solo instrument on one channel, band/orchestra on the other. As you get better at playing it, change the balance.

Not so essential for classical music, since music notation pretty much marks exactly what you should play, but great for folk or jazz when there's a lot of "unwritten" style knowledge that you need to learn.