More Tony Bennett

More Vintage Columbia Pressings

• This early Columbia 360 label pressing gives Tony the sound he deserves, earning outstanding grades on both of these stereo sides
• Transparency and Tubey Magic are key to the sound of the orchestra and you will find both in abundance here
• Made up mostly of ballads, this is an album for quiet moods – the title track is especially good in that respect, with Bennett’s voice carrying the song, the arrangement understated and well in the background
• “..[T]he match of singer and arranger made for a consistent and effective album.”
• If you’re a fan of Tony’s, this 1964 release belongs in your collection

Everything that’s good about Vocal Recordings from the ’50s and ’60s is precisely what’s good about the sound of this record.

Albums such as this live and die by the quality of their vocal reproduction. On this record Mr. Tony Bennett himself will appear to be standing right in your listening room.

Like so many others you may have read about on the site, the right amount of Tubey Magic — and by that we mean a very healthy amount — makes all the difference.

Having done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.). The music is not so much about the details in the recording, but rather in trying to recreate a solid, palpable, real Tony Bennett singing live in your listening room. The best copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of older recordings (this one is now 57 years old), 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 less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we’ve played can serve as a guide.

What The Best Sides Of Who Can I Turn To 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 1964
• 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 Who Can I Turn To

• 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

Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)
Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams (And Dream Your Troubles Away)
There’s A Lull In My Life
Autumn Leaves
I Walk A Little Faster
The Brightest Smile In Town

Side Two

I’ve Never Seen
Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
Listen, Little Girl
Got The Gate On The Golden Gate
Waltz For Debby
The Best Thing To Be Is A Person

AMG  Review

Tony Bennett returned to the Top 40 in late 1964 with his version of the Leslie Bricusse-Anthony Newley anthem “Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me),” from Newley’s Broadway show The Roar Of The Greasepaint, The Smell Of The Crowd. That song, like the rest of this album, was arranged and conducted by George Siravo, who made detailed ballad arrangements, using individual instruments and groups to echo and counterpoint the Bennett vocals. Still searching for new material, and finding it in works by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, as well as Mel Torme (whose “Got The Gate On The Golden Gate” recalled Bennett’s musical connection to San Francisco), Bennett didn’t discover anything to match the title track, and he re-recorded “Autumn Leaves” in a more uptempo framework. But the match of singer and arranger made for a consistent and effective album.