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Reviews and Commentaries for Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie

This commentary is fairly old and some of it is a bit out of date. Check our newest listings for our current understanding of the album. We still love the mono but we prefer the stereo pressings now.

Folks, this record came as a SHOCK — the first and ONLY mono pressing we have ever played that not only was competitive with the best stereo copies, but actually bettered them in some ways. Some IMPORTANT ways I might add. We’ve only played a handful of mono pressings of Clap Hands over the years, and for good reason — they’re exceedingly mediocre. On almost every one Ella was distant, dull and lifeless. Feh! Who wants to play a record the sounds like that?

(Side two is pretty much what you would expect from a good mono, A to A+, better than average but hardly competitive with the best, or with this side one for that matter.)

What’s So Special About This Mono Side One Anyway?

Well I’m more than happy to tell you. It’s simply this: the mono lets you know that there was a bass player at the session in a way that the stereo copies — none of them — do not. The bass player is front and center (in mono where else would he be?) in the mix and he DRIVES the rhythmic elements of the songs so strongly that the songs actually seem to pick up pace compared to the way they sound on the stereo LPs. For the first time you really get the feeling that this is a tightly-knit, swinging jazz combo that Ella is fronting. Everybody is playing together, right there in the center, with the drums and the bass as a unit laying down a super-solid rhythm line behind Ella.

What was surprising, even shocking in a way, was how much better Ella got as a singer. She swings more. She’s more energetic. She’s picked up the tempo, how I don’t know, but that’s the feeling you get when you hear her in mono on this copy.

And every bit as surprising was the fact that the slow songs got better too! Round Midnight and Signing Off aren’t faster, but she seems to somehow be feeling the lyric more, finding more emotion in it. Again, I have no idea how. I just know I heard it and felt it. It’s real.

This copy has issues; there’s a bit of overcutting on the top that causes the cymbals to spit and distort in spots, perhaps because it’s cut louder and the cutting amps ran out of juice trying to put all that RIAA-boosted top end on the record. Even so, if the best stereo side one gets three pluses, this side one should too. Both have brilliant qualities; I would be very hard-pressed to choose one over the other; each is supreme in its own way. But right this minute I would go with the mono. If music is about emotion, this is the pressing that gets the music right.

And it’s cheap — with only one good side, and inner groove distortion on the last tracks, this is a copy that cannot stand alone as your only Clap Hands. In a way I suppose it has to be seen as supplementary, but it will serve a purpose that no other copy can — it will show you an Ella Fitzgerald the likes of which you have probably never heard. That makes this copy quite a bargain in my book.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Night In Tunisia
You’re My Thrill
My Reverie
Stella By Starlight
‘Round Midnite
Jersey Bounce
Signing Off

Side Two

Cry Me A River
This Year’s Kisses
Good Morning Heartache
(I Was) Born To Be Blue
Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie!
Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most
Music Goes ‘Round And ‘Round