Month: July 2020

Muddy Waters – The Real Folk Blues

  • An outstanding copy of this compilation album with solid Double Plus (A++) sound from the first note to the last – mostly quiet vinyl too
  • Like its Audiophile Favorite brother, Folk Singer, also on Chess, The Real Folk Blues is another exceptional live-in-the-studio recording, with some of the best sound Chess ever managed
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Once Chess discovered a white folk-blues audience ripe and ready to hear the real thing, they released a series of albums under the Real Folk Blues banner. This is one of the best entries in the series…”

*NOTE: On side one, a mark makes 5 very light ticks at the end of track 2, Screaming And Crying.

This 1965 recording pressed on ’80s vinyl has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back. (more…)

Cannonball Adderley – Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!

  • With a Triple Plus (A+++) Shootout Winning side one and a superb Double Plus (A++) side two, this pressing one of Adderley’s most enjoyable albums will be very hard to beat
  • The sound here is bigger and livelier than practically any other we played – above all it’s balanced, avoiding the tonality issues we heard on so many other pressings
  • Joe Zawinul (Weather Report) wrote the title song, which became a big hit for Adderley (and later The Buckinghams), and he plays on the album
  • 5 Stars: “Adderley’s irrepressible exuberance was a major part of his popularity, and no document captures that quality as well — or with such tremendous musical rewards — as Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.”

Don’t worry about surface noise on this copy. With the audience making so much noise, you’ll never get a chance to hear it. If you do it will be barely audible under the music and crowd sounds.

I dropped the needle on a copy of this record a year or so ago and heard amazing you-are-there live jazz club sound, and, more importantly, a hot session from one of our favorite saxophone players of all time, the man who contributed mightily to the likes of Kind of Blue, Somethin’ Else, Know What I Mean? and many more. For an Alto player Cannonball is just about as good as it gets.

Fast forward one year and we now have in our possession enough copies to do a proper shootout – originals and reissues on a variety of labels.

These were of course two of the best sides we played. They’re big, rich and natural. The music does manage to sound like a live club, even though it’s live in the studio, playing to an audience. (The AMG review has more on that.)

For mainstream jazz it’s hard to think of any album on our site that would be more enjoyable. (more…)

Sarah Vaughan – The Lonely Hours

 

  • The Lonely Hours debuts with killer Hot Stamper sound – this copy took top honors with Triple Plus sonics on both sides
  • No other copy could touch this early Roulette pressing for size, space, clarity, dynamics and, most especially, vocal richness
  • With Benny Carter brilliantly handling the arrangements, we feel that this is a badly underrated album of Ms Vaughan’s from 1964, a glorious year for music
  • “Vaughan sounds excellent on “I’ll Never Be the Same,” “These Foolish Things,” and “If I Had You,” lightly caressing the notes.”

Wonderfully warm, big and clear, not to mention exceptionally dynamic, this copy shows the listener just how good the master tape must be.

Not only could no other copy touch it; as far as I can tell it’s the only copy with two sides good enough to put on the site!

Classic Records remastered this album back in the day, and I can see why: the average pressing on Roulette is borderline unlistenable. Of course we didn’t know that when we started this shootout. We had found a nice sounding copy and subsequently went on the hunt for more. Little did we know how wide the variation in sound quality we would find on the original Orange Label pressings. There was simply no denying that many of the copies we played were just too thin, shrill and pinched in the midrange to be of any interest to our Hot Stamper customers. (more…)

Live Rust – Our Shootout Winner from 2012

From our 2012 shootout.

This KILLER live set, the ultimate Neil Young concert collection, combines brilliant early material, such as “After the Gold Rush,” with his wonderful middle-era material, including the amazing “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” and “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” and “Tonight’s the Night.”

Side One

A+++, As Good As It Gets (AGAIG)! This side has Neil solo, accompanying himself on guitar and harmonica. So full-bodied and natural, with just the right amount of ambience and space, this one is hard to beat.

Side Two

A++. Big, rich and open with present vocals.

Side Three

A++ to A+++. Full and rich with the solid, weighty low end required for this music to ROCK! The vocals are clear and present with no hardness or edge. Check out the harmonies on Cortez the Killer — not many copies let you hear each individual voice this way.

Side Four

A+++, another stunner! Big, wide and amazingly three-dimensional, it’s hard to imagine live Crazy Horse sounding much better than this. The guitars jump right out of the speakers, there’s great weight to the low end, and the vocals are tonally Right On The Money (ROTM)!

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Colors of the Day – DCC Discussed

A classic case of live and learn, maybe. Previously we had written:

Superb sonics. Judy has never sounded better. Not a big seller for DCC but it should have been. Those sweet acoustic guitars are hard to beat. No modern recording has sounded like this for over twenty years, so if you’ve forgotten what a real acoustic guitar sounds like, buy this record and get reacquainted with that sound. Tons of breath of life, superb production and mastering so you can clearly hear her hitting those flat notes (!), and some of the best sounding echo ever recorded.

UPDATE 2007

Addendum to the above comments, posted 11/07

I wrote the above review many many years ago. As you may have read countless times on the site by now, it is my opinion that all such dated judgments are suspect. The major revolutions in vinyl playback that have occurred over the last dozen years have turned many of these old comments on their heads.

Hot Stamper pressings again and again have revealed magic in the mass-produced copies that is simply nowhere to be found in their audiophile counterparts.

Whether this is true for this particular title I can honestly say I don’t know.  We are going to play some copies of the album and will report our findings down the road, so Judy Collins fans, stay tuned.

On This Copy of Espana, Capriccio Espagnol Was Where the Action Was

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov Available Now

This London Whiteback (CS 6006) TAS List Super Disc really IS a Super Disc, with SUPERB SUPER Hot Stamper sound on both sides. It easily bested the Blueback we put up against it, and most of the pressings of Ansermet’s performance on London/Decca that we like (CS 6438).

What this album has going for it over the London/Decca with Ansermet is an out of this world Capriccio Espagnol, with the kind of orchestral color and excitement that rivals the composer’s Scheherazade and arguably exceeds it, compressing as it does its bright orchestration into fewer than 15 minutes of unalloyed brilliance.

I would argue that the sound here easily bests nine out of ten copies of LSC 2446, quite a feat when you consider what that record is selling for these days.

(Most audiophiles learn too late just how bad the average pressing of Reiner’s performance is. Take our advice, if you’re going to buy one without hearing it first, make sure you can return it. Chances are, if you’re a critical listener, you will want to. If you’re not a critical listener, feel free to buy the Classic Heavy Vinyl pressing. Although it sounds godawful to us, most audiophiles seem to like it just fine, a fact we regret to say does not reflect well on our fellow hobbyists. Or the venerable HP himself for that matter, as it made his TAS List.)

Who can resist these sublime orchestral works? To quote an infamous label, they are an audiophile’s dream come true. Click on the tabs above to read more about them.

We’ve long been of the opinion that only a small percentage of the copies of CS 6006 actually live up to the hype associated with its status on the Tas List. Our recent shootout provided more supporting evidence, as this copy was dramatically better than the other, more original, one we played.

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Only The Lonely – Frank’s Favorite

More of the Music of Frank Sinatra

More of the Arrangements of Nelson Riddle

It is TOUGH to find a good sounding Only The Lonely, but this pressing really delivers. Frank’s vocals sound present, breathy, and full — just the way they need to.

According to John Rockwell’s book, Sinatra: An American Classic, when asked at a party in the mid-1970s if he had a favorite album among his recordings, without hesitation, Sinatra chose Only the Lonely.

Sinatra was nominated for five Grammys at the inaugural Grammy Awards in 1959. Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely and Sinatra’s other album released in 1958, Come Fly with Me, were nominated for the Album of the Year, and Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely won the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover.

Wikipedia (more…)