More Johnny Cash
- A KILLER sounding Triple Plus (A+++) side two backed with a superb Double Plus (A++) side one
- Both of these sides are rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical with a solid bottom end and a lovely musical quality that’s missing from most copies
- “Released in 1963, The Christmas Spirit was Johnny Cash’s first full-length holiday-themed album. Featured were four original songs by Cash, along with eight covers including takes of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” “Silent Night,” “Blue Christmas,” and others. This is a solidly enjoyable entry from Cash, and a must-have for die-hard aficionados of the country icon.”
This vintage Columbia 360 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 1963
- 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 The Christmas Spirit
- 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.
- 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.
Side One
The Christmas Spirit
I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
Blue Christmas
The Gifts They Gave
Here Was A Man
Christmas As I Knew It
Side Two
Silent Night
The Little Drummer Boy
Ringing The Bells For Jim
We Are The Shepherds
Who Kept The Sheep
The Ballad Of The Harp Weaver