Month: February 2022

A Decent Speakers Corner Mahler Reissue from 1996

Sonic Grade: B?

Probably one of the better Speakers Corner Decca reissues.

It was recorded in Kingsway Hall early in 1964, so it already had a lot going for it.

We haven’t played a copy of this reissue in years, but back in the day (1996 or thereabouts) we liked it, so let’s call it a “B” with the caveat that the older the review, the more likely we are to have changed our minds.

Obviously we can’t be sure we would still like it, and it’s very unlikely we would like it as much as we used to, but it’s probably a good reissue at the price, assuming the price is around $30.

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Dynamic Vocals? Thank John Haeny

More of the Music of Bonnie Raitt

I learned only recently that John Haeny is one of the two engineers on this album, which goes a long way toward explaining the excellent ’70s analog sound. He worked on The Pretender, Don’t Cry Now, and many of the early and quite wonderful sounding albums Judy Collins did for Elektra in the earlier part of the decade. This guy knows sound.

(A good copy of The Pretender is an amazing Demo Disc that will put 99% of all the rock records you’ve ever played to shame. But the truly Hot Stamper pressings are few and far between, so most audiophiles have no idea how well recorded that album is.)

Side One

About to Make Me Leave Home

This is where you will hear the best sound on the best copies. If it doesn’t sound BIG, you don’t have a Hot Stamper.

Runaway
Two Lives

This is my favorite song on the album. Many copies get congested when Bonnie and the chorus are singing loudly, but this one plays it fairly clean.

Louise

This is an easy one. The guitars are sweet and tubey magical.

Gamblin’ Man

Side Two

Sweet Forgiveness
My Opening Farewell

This track has the most dynamic vocals on the album, some of the most dynamic vocals on any pop record. She really gets LOUD on this one.

Three Time Loser
Takin’ My Time
Home

Possibly the most beautiful song on the album. As I am writing this, it becomes more and more clear to me that this is Bonnie’s strongest album. It has more good songs than any other that I can think of.

Dynamics

The vocal dynamics on this side are the best I have ever heard. We’re not used to hearing singers get loud on pop records. Normally the compressors prevent that from happening, and even most copies of this record do not have the dynamics that this one does. You will need a high quality front end to track this LP, that I can assure you.

And the last quarter inch or so of side one will invariably have some distortion on the vocal peaks, as well as track three on side two which also gets quite loud. These may not actually be groove damage; sometimes the cutting engineer is at fault and sometimes the cutting equipment may not be up to the job of putting so much energy into those slower spinning inner grooves. Practically every copy that was dynamic had breakup to some degree somewhere on the record. We much prefer lively records to compressed ones, and sometimes overcutting is the price you have to pay.

Bonnie’s Best (more…)

Gordon Jenkins Is One of Our Favorite Arrangers

Recordings with Arrangements by Gordon Jenkins

More of Our Favorite Arrangers

Gordon Jenkins is one of the All Time Great Arrangers.

He’s the man behind the scenes for Nilsson’s Must Own classic, A Little Touch Of Schmillson in The Night, a Desert Island Disc for yours truly.

His work for Nat King Cole is beyond fault.

Jenkins worked with Nat King Cole on four albums for Capitol: Love Is the Thing (1957), The Very Thought of You (1958), Every Time I Feel the Spirit (1959) and Where Did Everyone Go? (1963).

He did three albums with Sinatra for Capitol: A Jolly Christmas From Frank Sinatra (1957), Where Are You? (1957) and No One Cares (1959) and five more after Sinatra moved to Reprise: All Alone (1962), September of My Years (1965), Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back (1973), “Future” suite – Trilogy: Past Present Future (1980) and She Shot Me Down (1981).

A Couple of Key Tracks to Play on Pictures at an Exhibition

Living Stereo Titles Available Now

This is a very old listing so take it for what it’s worth.

This TAS List record with a Super Hot stamper side one has some of the best sound we have ever heard for the Shaded Dog Reiner/CSO Pictures, and side two, although it starts out a little weak, gets going soon enough and earns a Super Hot Stamper sonic grade as well.

Side one is open and natural in the best Living Stereo tradition, with rich lower strings that have virtually no Golden Age smear.

Turn it up and listen for the big cymbal crashes — that’s the sound we love. It’s so good it even allows me to enjoy Reiner’s performance, never one of my favorites.

Side One

A++, transparent and free from smear, not many copies are going to beat this one! A little more top would have been nice.

Listen to: Samuel Goldenburg und Schmuyle

Superb sound! The brass and strings on this part of the work are as good as it gets. No smearing of the brass — it’s clean and clear like it is in the concert hall. We’re so used to hearing it wrong that it takes a record like this to remind us how good a full brass choir can really sound. (more…)

Loggins and Messina – So Fine

More Loggins and Messina

More Country and Country Rock

This shootout winning White Hot Stamper side two will show you just how good this album can sound
Side two has space and energy like no other, with plenty of weight down low (an L&M trademark)
Side one is richly Tubey Magical, with the kind of breathy vocals that are critical to the better copies
The last of the good Loggins and Messina albums and well worth a listen

The reading here of A Lover’s Question is one of my favorite tracks on any L&M album. The music on side two might be somewhat better than side one, so start your listening on that side to get the most from this collection of favorite early rock and roll tracks.

Side Two

This copy is so big, clean, clear and rich it makes the mix work like magic. Here everything is laid out perfectly. No other copy could do what this copy was doing, which is basically showing you just how good the master tape must be.

Side One

Rich vocals, an extended top end, with good clarity and presence, this side was getting the heart of the music right.

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An Import in 2004 Killed the Speakers Corner Reissue of Ella and Basie

More of the Music of Count Basie

More of the Music of Ella Fitzgerald

And back in 2004 that actually surprised us!

This review was written in 2004. We had never heard a clean, domestic original copy up to that time, mostly because they were always in such poor condition. Eventually we did, figured out how to clean it, and never looked back.

You might consider this a Wake Up Call. By 2007 we were awake enough to stop buying Heavy Vinyl to sell. The better our system became, the less competitive those modern remasters sounded. It was yet another Milestone Event in the history of Better Records. Please to enjoy our commentary.

This early British import (similar to the one you see above) KILLS the Speakers Corner 180 gram reissue.

I still like their version, but this is what it should have sounded like: tonally much fuller and richer.

The 180 gram copy suffers from the standard reissue MO — brighter is not necessarily better, and definitely not when you have a big band and a vocalist, as is the case here.

I’ve never heard this album sound better and I doubt that it really can sound much better than this. This copy makes me want to turn it up as loud as the stereo will go and let those wonderful Quincy Jones arrangements come to life.

UPDATE 2025

To doubt that the record can sound much better than the import we played? That was a silly thing to say. Of course it can. That’s what shootouts are for. Here is what we had to say about our last White Hot Stamper pressing of the album.

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America – Hideaway

More America

Both of these sides are clean, clear and full-bodied with breathy, less gritty vocals and more transparency than every other copy we played
“Hideaway is the sixth original studio album by American folk rock trio America, released in 1976. The album was produced by legendary Beatles producer George Martin. The album was a hit in the US, peaking at number 11 on the Billboard album chart and being certified GOLD by the RIAA.” – Wikipedia

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The Bloated Cello Sound Some Audiophiles Find Appealing

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

On this pressing we were a bit surprised at how natural the cello sounded — more like the real instrument and less like the typical recording of it.

Normally when recording the cello, the microphones are placed fairly close to the instrument. This often results in what’s known as the “proximity effect,” which simply describes a boost in the lower frequencies relative to the more linear response of the microphone when placed at a distance.

The famous Starker cello recordings on Mercury — you know the ones, the originals and even the reissues sell for hundreds and hundreds of dollars — suffer from this effect, which audiophiles seem to prefer. (The Mercury heavy vinyl reissues, at least the ones I’ve played, were ridiculously fat and bloated in the bottom.)

Audiophiles did not seem to mind much, judging by the apparently strong sales and the rave reviews I read. Bass shy systems, and that means most of the systems owned by audiophiles, probably benefited from the bass boost.

Systems with lots of large woofers — at least in our case — would of course make the sound of these pressings positively unbearable. That indeed was our experience.

Getting back to the record at hand, it presents a more natural cello if only because the instrument has been miked from a greater distance.

Side two is a bit fuller sounding than side one, and one of them is going to sound more correct on your system than the other. I would not even want to say for sure which one actually is more correct, as the slight difference between them might be subtle enough to play into room and system non-linearities that plague all stereos and rooms.

Both sides here will sound the way these real instruments sound when played in the kinds of rooms that one might hear them in, practice rooms perhaps. That makes this recording unusual in the world of “audiophile recordings,” if I can call this one, and no less refreshing and enjoyable for it.

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Winelight – A Demo Disc for Bass (on the Right Copy)

Hot Stamper Pressings with Demo Disc Bass

Reviews and Commentaries for Bass Demo Discs

What’s unusual about this album — shocking really — is how MEATY the bottom end is. I don’t know of a pop jazz recording with beefier, more articulate or weightier bass. The only record I can think of in this genre of jazz with comparable bass is Mangione’s Children of Sanchez. We played some copies of that album recently and were just knocked out with how well recorded the bass is, just the way we were knocked out by the best copies of Grover Washington’s Winelight from a recent shootout. Both of these albums really set the standard for recording this kind of music.

This is a classic Grover Washington album with the hit Just The Two Of Us. I happen to like this record for what it is: good pop jazz. If that ain’t your thing this record is unlikely to change your mind, but if you’re a fan of the genre I imagine you’ll be delighted with the sound and music here.

And I can’t end without mentioning the amazing steel drums on Just the Two of Us, complete with the incredibly talented Ralph McDonald on percussion. When that song hit big, overnight Ralph McDonald’s session dates were booked up for years in advance, and on this copy you will hear exactly why. The energy of the song just explodes when he gets going on whatever the hell he is banging on.

Marty Paich Is One of Our Favorite Arrangers

MARTY PAICH is one of our favorite arrangers.

Some of the better albums showcasing Marty’s arrangements are Spirit’s first release (1967), Art Pepper Plus Eleven (1959), Ella Swings Lightly (1958) and Whisper Not (1966), and the amazing The Hi-Lo’s And All That Jazz (1958).

Copies or commentaries for all of them can be found on our site.

Marty Paich Arranged Art Pepper’s Modern Jazz Classics Album

Marty Paich did the arrangements for this group of top musicians. As far as big band goes it doesn’t get much better than this. If I had to pick one big band album to take to my desert island it might very well be this one. The arrangements are lively and everyone seems to be having a good time in the studio.

Marty was one of the most sought-after arrangers back in the day. In discogs there are currently 512 listings under his name for writing and arranging.

Art Pepper + Eleven – Modern Jazz Classics

Many consider this to be the best record Art Pepper ever made, along with Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section, and it’s hard to argue with either title as both are superb and deserve a place in any audiophile’s collection. I would add Art Pepper Today to that list.