More of the Music of Mel Torme
- A KILLER copy with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on the first side and solid Double Plus (A++) sound on the second; exceptionally quiet vinyl too!
- Both sides here are incredibly rich and smooth with wonderfully breathy vocals and a solid bottom end
- “Mel Tormé with the Marty Paich Dek-tette is a vocal masterpiece, an extremely satisfying record achieved only by a fusion of an excellent voice, an excellent band, and excellent material.” – All Music, 5 Stars
This vintage Bethlehem pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What amazing sides such as these have to offer is not hard to hear:
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1956
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
What We Listen For on Mel Tormé with the Marty Paich Dek-tette
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
Side One
Lulu’s Back In Town
When The Sun Comes Out
I Love To Watch The Moonlight
Fascinating Rhythm
The Blues
The Carioca
Side Two
The Lady Is A Tramp
I Like To Recognise The Tune
Keepin’ Myself For You
Lullaby Of Birdland
When April Comes Again
Sing For Your Supper
AMG 5 Star Rave Review
The uptempo, swinging album that naturally followed It’s a Blue World (Tormé’s languorous debut for Bethlehem), Mel Tormé with the Marty Paich Dek-tette is a vocal masterpiece, an extremely satisfying record achieved only by a fusion of an excellent voice, an excellent band, and excellent material. Tormé had been inspired musically by the swinging West Coast cool group of Gerry Mulligan; accordingly, he made sure that his new musical arranger, Marty Paich, was of a similar mind.
The two came up with the “Dek-tette,” a group including no more than ten pieces and heavy on the stinging brass (including Pete Candoli and Don Fagerquist on trumpet, Bob Enevoldsen on trombone, and two French horns). The band is incredibly sympathetic and appears to hang on Tormé’s every word. The material, as well, is pure gold: Tormé is as buoyant and exuberant as he’s ever been, resulting in fantastic, definitive versions of inimitable standards like “Lullaby of Birdland,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” and “The Lady Is a Tramp.”