More Tony Bennett
More Vintage Hot Stamper Pressings on Columbia
- This superb LIVE double album debuts with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side three, with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound on the others
- Our exceptional 360 stereo pressing here will bring this definitive Tony Bennett concert performance right into your very own listening room
- Plenty of analog richness, space, smoothness and Tubey Magic, all absolutely essential if you want the ’60s to sound like the ’60s
- 4 1/2 stars: “Recorded one week before the release of the I Left My Heart in San Francisco album that would catapult Tony Bennett’s career into the stratosphere, this album effectively sums up his accomplishments so far… it gives a broad sense of Bennett’s work, and it does so in the format with which he’s most comfortable — live in concert.”
These vintage 360 Stereo pressings have the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely begin to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.
Having done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.).
Hot Stamper sound is rarely about the details of a given recording. In the case of this album, more than anything else a Hot Stamper must succeed at recreating a solid, palpable, real Tony Bennett singing live in your listening room. The better copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.
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 less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we’ve played over the years can serve as a guide.
What the best sides of Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall 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 1962
- 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 space of Carnegie Hall
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’re Listening For on Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- 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 common to most LPs.
- Tight, note-like bass with clear fingering — which ties in with good transient information, as well as 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 players.
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, way behind the speakers. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would have put them.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Lullaby Of Broadway
Just In Time
All The Things You Are
Stranger In Paradise
Love Is Here To Stay
Climb Ev’ry Mountain
Ol’ Man River
Side Two
It Amazes Me
Firefly
In San Francisco
How About You
April In Paris
Solitude
I’m Just A Lucky So And So
Side Three
Always
Anything Goes
Blue Velvet
Rags To Riches
Because Of You
What Good Does It Do
Lost In The Stars
One For My Baby
Side Four
Lazy Afternoon
Sing You Sinners
Love Look Away
Sometimes I’m Happy
My Heart Tells Me
De Glory Road
AMG 4 1/2 Star Review
Recorded on June 9, 1962, one week before the release of the I Left My Heart in San Francisco album that would catapult Tony Bennett’s career into the stratosphere, this concert album effectively sums up his accomplishments so far.
Some of the hits — “Stranger in Paradise,” “Rags to Riches,” “Because of You” — are still on the set list (although drastically rearranged), but clearly he has found his true repertoire in reinventions of older material like “All the Things You Are” (the version here is exquisite) and good choices of new songs — he champions the team of Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, and introduces “San Francisco,” which some in the audience already know. (Released as a single in advance of the San Francisco album, it was in the charts already.)
And on the album’s original four LP sides, Bennett managed to find time for such experiments as an up-tempo “Ol’ Man River” featuring percussionist Candido, a throwback to his innovative Beat of My Heart album. More than his greatest-hits collections of the ’50s and early ’60s, it gives a broad sense of Bennett’s work, and it does so in the format with which he’s most comfortable — live in concert.