Hot Stamper Percussion Recordings Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Percussion Recordings

• Both sides here earned solid Double Plus (A++) grades, making this one of the better copies from our recent shootout 
• The overall sound is big, rich and Tubey Magical with a lovely bottom end and tons of energy
• “Dick Schory’s second major outing for RCA is more self-assured, from the preposterous jacket art and liner notes to more upbeat tunes… Schory’s musical ideas are always fresher than those of Bobby Christian and Mike Simpson, who helped on the previous album. All but two tracks are good to great.” – All Music

This vintage RCA Living Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely 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 amazing 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 1960
• 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 Music To Break Any Mood

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

Caravan
Speak Low
South Rampart Street Parade
Walkin’ My Baby Back Home
Fascinating Rhythm
Safari Anyone?

Side Two

A Foggy Day 
Autumn In New York
Fly Now, Pay Later
I’ll Remember April
Tortilla
Stranger In Paradise

AMG  Review

Dick Schory’s second major outing for RCA is more self-assured, from the preposterous jacket art and liner notes to more upbeat tunes. One assumes Schory handled all or most of the arrangements; Schory’s musical ideas are always fresher than those of Bobby Christian and Mike Simpson, who helped on the previous album. All but two tracks are good to great. It may help that several are indestructible standards: “Caravan,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” and “Stranger in Paradise.” Other titles, also mostly standards, are typical of the Schory style: “Safari, Anyone,” “Tortilla,” and “Fly Now, Pay Later.”