More Tony Bennett
More Vintage Hot Stamper Pressings on Columbia
- Tony Bennett’s 1966 album of movie songs arrives on the site with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
- The sound on this superb pressing is full-bodied and lively, with the kind of Tubey Magic Columbia still knew how to get on analog tape
- Musical Director Johnny Mandel partnered with Neal Hefti and Quincy Jones, arranging and conducting their own compositions, including “Girl Talk,” from Harlow, and “Emily,” from The Americanization of Emily
- Some of the songs that Bennett could hardly have sung any better are “Days Of Wine And Roses,” “The Shadow Of Your Smile” and “The Second Time Around,” the last two previously recorded by Frank Sinatra, and we leave it to you to judge who comes off better
This vintage Columbia stereo pressing has 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 Mel Torme 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 The Movie Song Album from 1966 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 1966
- 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 the studio
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 above.
Copies with rich lower mids did the best in our shootout, assuming they weren’t veiled or smeary of course. So many things can go wrong on a record! We know, we’ve heard them all.
Top end extension is critical to the sound of the best copies. Lots of old records (and new ones) have no real top end; consequently the studio or stage will be missing much of its natural ambience and space, and instruments will lack their full complement of harmonic information.
Tube smear is common to pressings from every era and this is no exception. The copies that tend to do the best in a shootout will have the least (or none), yet are full-bodied, tubey and rich.
What We’re Listening For on The Movie Song Album
- 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 for the guitars, horns and drums, 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 musicians 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
Song From “The Oscar”
Girl Talk
The Gentle Rain
Emily
The Pawnbroker
Samba De Orffeu
Side Two
Tha Shadow Of Your Smile
Smile
The Second Time Around
Days Of Wine And Roses
Never Too Late
The Trolley Song
AMG Review
By the mid-1960s, retreating from the rock & roll onslaught, that old-time staple of the pre-rock days, the big romantic ballad, had been relegated to Hollywood, where it turned up in the opening and closing credits of movies.
Like other classic pop singers, Tony Bennett had sought it out there, and with this album, coincident with his first (and last) acting role in The Oscar, he devoted himself exclusively to movie themes, everything from “The Trolley Song” (Meet Me In St. Louis) to “Days Of Wine And Roses.” Some of the tunes were not first-rate, but in “The Shadow Of Your Smile” and “The Second Time Around” (previously recorded by Frank Sinatra), Bennett found material worthy of him, and even when he was faced with minor material, he sang movingly.