More June Christy
- You’ll find superb nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) Tubey Magical sound from 1958 on both sides of this Turquoise Capitol pressing – just shy of our Shootout Winner
- Balanced, musical, present and full-bodied throughout – this pressing puts a living, breathing, big-as-life June Christy performing at the peak of her vocal powers right in your listening room
- June Christy is one of our favorite Cool School vocalists – we just wish we could find more clean copies of her classic ’50s albums
- The vinyl is relatively quiet and no marks play – how rare is that? In our experience very rare
- All the top West Coast jazz guys are here: Shorty Rogers, Shelly Manne, Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, and swinging arrangements by Pete Rugolo
Both sides of this ’50s All Tube Recorded and Mastered record are just as rich and relaxed as you would expect.
The balance is correct, which means the top is there as well as the bottom, with good vocal presence throughout.
Forgotten Sound
Need a refresher course in Tubey Magic after playing too many modern recordings or remasterings? These June Christy records are overflowing with it. Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here. If you’re a fan of vintage female vocals – the kind with no trace of digital reverb – you may get quite a kick out of this one. And unless I miss my guess you’ll be the first and only person on your block to own it! (That’s not a bad thing considering the average person’s taste in music and sound these days.)
What the best sides of This is June Christy 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 1958
- 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 This is June Christy
- 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
My Heart Belongs To Only You
Whee Baby
You Took Advantage Of Me
Get Happy
Look Out Up There
Great Scot
Side Two
Kicks
Why Do You Have To Go Home
Bei Mir Bist Du Schon
Until The Real Thing Comes Along
I’ll Remember April
I Never Wanna Look Into Those Eyes Again
AMG Biography
Though she was the epitome of the vocal cool movement of the 1950s, June Christy was a warm, chipper vocalist able to stretch out her impressive voice on bouncy swing tunes and set herself apart from other vocalists with her deceptively simple enunciation.
Christy’s debut LP for Capitol, 1954’s Something Cool, was recorded with Rugolo at the head of the orchestra. The album launched the vocal cool movement and hit the Top 20 album charts in America, as did a follow-up, The Misty Miss Christy. Her 1955 Duet LP paired her voice with Kenton’s piano, while most of her Capitol LPs featured her with various Kenton personnel and Rugolo (or Bob Cooper) at the head of the orchestra. She reprised her earlier big-band days with 1959’s June Christy Recalls Those Kenton Days, and recorded a raft of concept LPs before retiring in 1965.