More Jazz Recordings of Interest

More Records That Sound Better Loud

• This original Stereo Command pressing was doing pretty much everything right, with both sides earning excellent Double Plus (A++) grades
• Take the best sound you ever heard from the best authentic Mercury classical record and translate it into pop arrangements for clarinets, flutes, saxes, oboes, bassoons, and what do you have? Sound that leaps out of the speakers with absolutely dead on tonality
• But what is most shocking of all is how vivid and accurate the timbre of every instrument is
• Kudos to the exceptional skills of both Robert Fine (recording engineer) and George Piros (mastering engineer), two of the All Time Greats
• If you appreciate exceptionally well recorded reed and percussion instruments, and what audiophile doesn’t?, this title from 1961 clearly belongs in your collection

This is one of the most phenomenal sounding records I have ever heard in my life. 

Yes, it’s multi-miked, and sometimes the engineers play with the channels a bit much (especially at the start of the first track).

That said, if you have the system for it, it’s very possible you have never heard most of these instruments sound this real, as if you were standing right in the studio with them. It’s that crazy good.

Which brings up a question: Who but Better Records is finding incredible Demonstration Quality recordings like these nowadays?

Harry Pearson used to. Jim Mitchell did back in the ’80s.

Are the Audiophile Reviewers of today picking up the baton that the giants of the past have dropped at their feet? I see little evidence of it. They seem more interested in discussing the newest Heavy Vinyl mediocrity to be released.

Is it really that much of a bother to look back to the Golden Age of analog recording and actually find a good sounding record to recommend? Apparently.

Not to worry. We are happy to fill the shoes of the greats who have passed, and here is a record that proves we have the chops to succeed in our endeavor, chops that no one else alive today seems to have.

This vintage Command 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 The Best Sides of Reeds and Percussion 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 1961
• 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.

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. The copies that tend to do the best in a shootout will have the least (or none), yet are full-bodied, tubey and rich.

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.

What We’re Listening For On Reeds and Percussion

• 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, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight, full-bodied 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.

A Must Own Jazz Record

We consider this album a Masterpiece. It’s a recording that should be part of any serious Jazz Collection.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

She’s Funny That Way
Serenata
I Guess I’ll Have To Change My Plan
Pavanne
As Time Goes By
I Want To Be Happy

Side Two

Bewitched
Badinage
S’posin’
Saxophobia
Thou Swell
Stompin’ At The Savoy

About the Album

Recorded in 1961, this session was intended to demonstrate, in sparkling hi-fi, the many varieties and tonal textures of the woodwind family: everything from piccolo to bass saxophone. To that end, guitarist Tony Mottola hired some of the top NY studio musicians of the day, crafted what I suppose today would be classified as “lounge-pop” arrangements that showed off the woodwinds’ range, and recorded it all on state-of-the-art equipment.

The tunes are mostly pop standards of a certain era (She’s Funny That Way, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, Thou Swell, Stompin at the Savoy) and the playing is impeccable: superb intonation and beautiful, lightly swinging ensemble work featuring Toots Mondello on lead alto (a star big-band alto player for fifty years), Al Klink (the “other” featured tenor player along with Tex Beneke on Glenn Miller’s famous recording of “In the Mood”), and lesser known NY studio stalwarts like Moe Wechsler, Don Lamond, Bob Haggart (of Bob Crosby’s “Big Noise from Winnetka” fame), Stan Webb, Phil Bodner, Romeo Penque, Wally Kane, and others.

In keeping with the “Hi-fi Demonstration Record” rubric of the collection, each tune starts out with a “balance check” (a two-bar intro played solely on one channel, then the same 2-bar intro played solely on the other, then the ensemble coming in across the entire stereo pan).

-From Amazon User Review by “dugsdale”