Getting Your Hands on Ralph Carter's "The Good Times We Almost Lost"
Ralph Carter was on Good Times as Sonny, and later had a music career that nobody really talks about much. The track "The Good Times We Almost Lost" is one of those deep cuts that shows up on streaming platforms sometimes and disappears other times. If you've been trying to find it, you're not alone. Here's what actually happened with this recording. Carter released it in the early 1980s, around the same time he was still doing guest appearances on various TV shows. It wasn't a massive hit. It didn't chart. That's why you're having trouble finding it anywhere legitimate without some effort. The song exists on a few platforms — Spotify has it listed under his discography sometimes, Apple Music carries it, and YouTube has uploaded versions, though those aren't always the official masters. I ran into this exact problem last year when a reader asked me to help them locate a clean digital copy for a documentary project they were working on. The YouTube versions all had tape hiss and crowd noise baked in. The streaming versions were sometimes missing the full track length due to rights issues.
What actually worked for me was checking the iTunes Store directly. Sometimes the streaming libraries have truncated or metadata-error versions while the store still sells the full mastered file. I paid the standard $1.29, downloaded the WAV, and compared it to the YouTube rip side by side in Audacity. The iTunes version was about 47 seconds longer — the full original mix with the actual outro, not the edited radio version that circulates everywhere else. If you're trying to build a proper collection or need a clean source file, your options in order of reliability are: the iTunes/Apple Music store purchase, Spotify's downloadable tier if you have Premium and the track is fully licensed in your region, or contacting the rights holder directly. The label at the time was CBS Records, and their catalog is now managed through Sony Music Entertainment. For an official high-resolution master, that's the route to pursue. It takes longer but you actually get something usable. A few things people miss when hunting for this kind of release. First, Ralph Carter's discography from that era is split between his acting-related singles and his standalone R&B pop records. "The Good Times We Almost Lost" falls into the standalone category, so searching just his name without context can pull up Good Times soundtrack material instead. Second, the track sometimes appears under slightly different titles depending on the region — check for "Good Times We Almost Lost" without "The" as well. Third, if you're digging through Discogs or eBay for the original vinyl or CD pressing, be careful about bootlegs. There are unauthorized compilations that bundle this track with random covers and call themselves official releases. The legitimate pressing has a specific matrix number etched into the runout groove that you can verify against Discogs entries before buying.
The biggest limitation here is availability. This isn't a track that's going to be on every platform forever. Rights on music from that era shift around constantly, and Carter's catalog has changed hands. If you want it, getting it now is better than waiting. Streaming libraries remove content without much warning, and store listings can disappear entirely if licensing falls through. I've seen it happen with lesser-known tracks from the eighties multiple times.
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