More Dave Brubeck

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

• With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides, this was one of the better copies we played in our recent shootout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
• Clean, clear, spacious and present yet still super rich and full, this is Columbia All Tube Sound at its best
• So rich, clear and resolving this copy in some respects best even the legendary Time Out
• “With the popularization of bossa nova in the early ’60s, practically every recording artist had to have at least one bossa nova album. This effort by the Dave Brubeck Quartet is better than most due to the high quality of the compositions, of which the title cut is best-known.” – All Music

Believe me, we were as surprised to hear the stellar sound of this copy as you no doubt will be when you play it.

Who knew?

Not us and not anybody else it seems. We are not aware that any of the audiophile cognoscenti have ever taken this recording seriously, but that just goes to show how uninformed — or perhaps more likely underinformed — they have always been.

Gems such as this sit undiscovered even after thousands of pages of audiophile-oriented record reviews have been written. Then, along come a handful of guys in Thousand Oaks, California many years later, 52 to be exact, and reveal to the world a heretofore all but unknown yet nonetheless amazing Brubeck record.

And they actually back up everything they say with pressings that sound every bit as good as they say they will. Imagine that.

But wait just a minute. We sold an early pressing ourselves back in 2010 for $30 as a “nice sounding” record, nothing more, so who are we to talk?

Which simply goes to show that the decade we spent perfecting the Record Shootout has finally paid off for Bossa Nova U.S.A. Now we can clean them better, play them better, hear them better, and, with a big stack to work with, find one that sounds as good as this one does.

What outstanding 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 Bossa Nova USA

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The musicians 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

Bossa Nova U.S.A.
Vento Fresco (Cool Wind)
The Trolley Song
Theme For June
Coracao Sensival (Tender Heart)

Side Two

Irnao Amigo (Brother Friend)
There’ll Be No Tomorrow
Cantiga Nova Swing
Lamento
This Can’t Be Love

AMG  Review

With the popularization of bossa nova in the early ’60s, practically every recording artist had to have at least one bossa nova album. This effort by the Dave Brubeck Quartet is better than most due to the high quality of the compositions, of which the title cut is best-known. The date’s two standards (“This Can’t Be Love” and “Trolley Song”) also fare well on this upbeat session.

Background

Since 1955, Brubeck had composed and performed pieces originating from influences outside of the European musical tradition, in which this album, released during the bossa nova craze in the United States of the late 1950s and early 1960s, can be best categorized.

It is intended to be “impressionistic” of “the cool wave from Brazil.” It sits in stark contrast to the “time”-themed series of albums, in that each track is typified simply by a samba-based rhythm.

On release, Billboard called the album “first-class Brubeck.” While noting the number of bossa tracks, it particularly singled out a re-working of The Trolley Song as a standout track. The Age expected the record to be popular with the general public, but noted “purists will wince.” The album found more success with the public than the single, appearing for fifteen weeks on Billboard??’?s album charts, achieving position #14.

Wikipedia