More Big Band Jazz
- Wonderfully big, rich and LIVELY, with boatloads of Tubey Magic and three-dimensional space
- This vintage stereo pressing boasts exceptionally natural piano sound and the live-in-the-studio energy of a swingin’ group of veteran horn players
- 4 stars: “Mance is joined by some of the cream of the West Coast studio and jazz players for a session that features Mance doing his blues thing on piano while the band swings at various tempi… resembling somewhat the style of the Count Basie Orchestra.”
- If you’re a fan of Big Band Jazz, this album from 1964 probably belongs in your collection.
This vintage Capitol pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely 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 Mance, 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 The Best Sides Of Get Ready, Set, Jump!!! 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 space of the studio
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.
Copies with rich lower mids and nice extension up top did the best in our shootout, assuming they weren’t veiled or smeary of course. So many things can go wrong on a record! We know, we’ve heard them all.
Top end extension is critical to the sound of the best copies. Lots of old records (and new ones) have no real top end; consequently, the studio or stage will be missing much of its natural air and space, and instruments will lack their full complement of harmonic information.
Tube smear is common to most vintage pressings and this is no exception. The copies that tend to do the best in a shootout will have the least (or none), yet are full-bodied, tubey and rich.
What We’re Listening For On Get Ready, Set, Jump!!!
- 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 piano, not the smear and thickness common to most LPs.
- Tight, note-like bass with clear fingering — which ties in with good transient information, as well as 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 players.
- Then: presence and immediacy. The musicians aren’t “back there” somewhere, way behind the speakers. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would have put them.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
The Players
- Junior Mance – piano
- John Audino, Pete Candoli, Don Fagerquist, Manny Klein, Al Porcino, Ray Triscari – trumpet
- Milt Bernhart, Vern Friley, Lew McCreary – trombone
- George Roberts, Ken Shroyer – bass trombone
- Joe Comfort – bass
- Shelly Manne – drums
Vinyl Condition
Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)
Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of later pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don’t have the vintage analog magic that is a key part of the appeal of these wonderful recordings.
If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that’s certainly your prerogative, but we can’t imagine losing what’s good about this music — the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight — just to hear it with less background noise.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Sweet Talkin’ Hannah
Jubilation
Moten Swing
But Beautiful
Broadway
Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya
Side Two
She’s A Little Doll
Running Upstairs
September Song
Gee Baby, Ain’t Good To You
“D” Waltz
Get Ready, Set, Jump
AMG 4 Star Review
For his first recording session for Capitol, jazz blues pianist Junior Mance abandoned his usual small-group format for a big-band recording. Mance is joined by some of the cream of the West Coast studio and jazz players for a session that features Mance doing his blues thing on piano while the band swings at various tempi ranging from high moderate paces to high-energy romping. There are no reeds, so the sound is brighter and edgier than usual, but never shrill, resembling somewhat the style of the Count Basie Orchestra.
…The synergy between piano player and band is apparent on all the tracks, and is especially telling on all-time big-band favorite “Moten Swing” and the up-tempo 12-bar theme on “Running Upstairs.” Mance is equally comfortable with ballads, as on “But Beautiful,” with the band’s brass led on this cut by the bass trombone of George Roberts, sounding as if a French horn or two were present, à la Claude Thornhill. The group swings particularly soulfully on “September Song” from Knickerbocker Holiday. The album’s coda, “Get Ready, Set, Jump!!!,” was the theme song of one of the early swing groups, the Savoy Sultans, and is written by that outfit’s leader, Al Cooper.