- You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on this copy of Al Green’s superb 5 Star 1973 release, Call Me
- This vintage pressing has the MIDRANGE MAGIC that’s surely missing from whatever 180g reissue has been made from the 40+ year old tapes (or, to be clear, a modern digital master copied from those tapes)
- 5 stars: “Al Green reached his creative peak with the brilliant Call Me, the most inventive and assured album of his career. So silky and fluid as to sound almost effortless, Green’s vocals revel in the lush strings and evocative horns of Willie Mitchell’s superbly intimate production… A classic.”
Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in clean shape. Most of them will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG, and it will probably be VG+. If you are picky about your covers please let us know in advance so that we can be sure we have a nice cover for you.
This vintage Hi 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 the best sides of Call Me 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 1973
- 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’re Listening For on Call Me
- 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.
- 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.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Call Me (Come Back Home)
Have You Been Making Out O.K.
Stand Up
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
Your Love Is Like the Morning Sun
Side Two
Here I Am (Come and Take Me)
Funny How Time Slips Away
You Ought to Be With Me
Jesus Is Waiting
AMG 5 Star Rave Review
Al Green reached his creative peak with the brilliant Call Me, the most inventive and assured album of his career. So silky and fluid as to sound almost effortless, Green’s vocals revel in the lush strings and evocative horns of Willie Mitchell’s superbly intimate production, barely rising above an angelic whisper for the gossamer “Have You Been Making Out O.K..” With barely perceptible changes in mood, Call Me covers remarkable ground, spanning from “Stand Up” — a call to arms delivered with characteristic understatement — to renditions of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away,” both of them exemplary fusions of country and soul. Equally compelling are the album’s three Top Ten hits — “You Ought to Be With Me,” “Here I Am (Come and Take Me),” and the shimmering title cut. A classic.