More Jimmy Smith

More Wes Montgomery

• KILLER Triple Plus (A+++) grades or very close to it on both sides, this is a wonderful vintage stereo pressing of a classic jazz collaboration from 1966
• Big, rich and lively, thanks to Oliver Nelson’s arrangements (and RVG’s engineering), this big group of top players is having a blast and we think you will too
• 5 stars: “The romping, aggressive big band charts [represent] Oliver Nelson at his best… The results are incendiary — a near-ideal meeting of yin and yang… They are an amazing pair, complementing each other, driving each other, using their bop and blues taproots to fuse together a sound.”

The sound of this Verve stereo pressing is tonally correct and natural. The timbre of each and every instrument is right and it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it. So high-resolution too. If you love ’60s jazz you cannot go wrong here.

We’ve really been digging this Creed Taylor jazz stuff lately, first on Verve, then on CTI. On the better albums such as this one, the players tend to sound carefree and loose — you can tell they’re having a heck of a fun time with the material.

Don’t get me wrong — we still love the Blue Note and Contemporary label stuff for our more “hard core” jazz needs, but it’s a kick to hear top jazz musicians laying down these grooves and not taking themselves so seriously… especially when it sounds this good!

Give some credit to Oliver Nelson. His arrangements are nothing short of brilliant. He did the arrangements for another one of our favorite jazz albums, Bashin’, and for swingin’ big band backup, there is none better.

Tubey Magic Is Key

This vintage pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even 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 do the best Hot Stamper pressings of The Dynamic Duo give you?

• 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 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 The Dynamic Duo

• 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 guitar notes, not the smear and thickness so common to most 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.
• Then: presence and immediacy. The guitar isn’t back there somewhere, lost in the mix. It’s front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put it.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

A Big Group of Musicians Needs This Kind of Space

One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.

Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.

And most of the time those very special pressings are just plain more involving. When you hear a copy that does all that — a copy like this one — it’s an entirely different listening experience.

The Players and Personnel

Everybody who’s anybody is playing on this record, or helped to make it!

Alto Saxophone, Clarinet, Flute – Jerry Dodgion (tracks: A1, A2, B2) 
Arranged By – Oliver Nelson 
Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinet, Flute, – Danny Bank (tracks: A1, A2, B2) 
Bass – Richard Davis (tracks: A1, A2, B2) 
Bass Trombone – Tony Studd 
Drums – Grady Tate 
Engineer – Rudy Van Gelder 
Director Of Engineering – Val Valentin 
Flugelhorn – Clark Terry (tracks: A1, A2) 
Flute, Clarinet – Jerome Richardson (tracks: A1, A2, B2) 
Percussion – Ray Barretto (tracks: B1 to B3) 
Producer – Creed Taylor 
Saxophone, Clarinet – Phil Woods (tracks: A1, A2, B2) 
Tenor Saxophone, Flute, Clarinet – Bob Ashton (tracks: A1, A2, B2) 
Trombone – Jimmy Cleveland, Melba Liston, Quentin Jackson, Richard Hixon
Trumpet – Clark Terry, Ernie Royal, Jimmy Maxwell, Joe Newman

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Down By The Riverside
Night Train

Side Two

James and Wes
13
Baby, It’s Cold Outside

AMG 5 Star Rave Review

Creed Taylor matched two of his most famous artists, Wes Montgomery and Jimmy Smith, on this session (Montgomery’s last for Verve), and the results are incendiary — a near-ideal meeting of yin and yang. Smith comes at your throat with his big attacks and blues runs while Montgomery responds with rounder, smoother octaves and single notes that still convey much heat. They are an amazing pair, complementing each other, driving each other, using their bop and blues taproots to fuse together a sound.

The romping, aggressive big band charts — Oliver Nelson at his best — on “Down by the Riverside” and “Night Train,” and the pungently haunting chart for Gary McFarland’s “13” (Death March)” still leave plenty of room for the soloists to stretch out. “James and Wes” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” include drummer Grady Tate and conguero Ray Barretto, with Smith’s own feet working the organ pedals.