More Art Pepper
More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings
- A vintage Contemporary recording pressed on OJC vinyl, here with very good Hot Stamper sound from first note to last
- True, this reissue earned a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+, but we still guarantee that it will beat the pants off any Heavy Vinyl reissue, because every one of those that we played was opaque, muddy and thick enough to have us crying “uncle” after five minutes
- Many consider this to be the best record Art Pepper ever made, along with Art Pepper + Eleven, and I agree completely
- If you are looking for a shootout winning copy, let us know – with music and sound like this, we hope to be able to do this shootout again soon
- 5 stars: “… this recording convinced [Pepper] that emotion was the paramount impulse of jazz performance… a diamond of recorded jazz history.”
- This is a Must Own jazz album from 1957 that belongs in every jazz-loving audiophile’s collection
This pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even begin to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. On the best copies, you can hear into a recording, actually “see” the performers, and feel as if you are sitting in the studio with the band. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for.
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 Meets The Rhythm Section 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 1957
- 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.
Standard Operating Procedures
What are sonic qualities by which a record — any record — should be judged? Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, spaciousness, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, three-dimensionality, and on and on down the list.
When we can get a number of these qualities to come together on the side we’re playing, we provisionally give it a ballpark Hot Stamper grade, a grade that is often revised during the shootout as we hear what the other copies are doing, both good and bad.
Once we’ve been through all the side ones, we play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side. Other copies from earlier in the shootout will frequently have their grades raised or lowered based on how they sounded compared to the eventual shootout winner. If we’re not sure about any pressing, perhaps because we played it early on in the shootout before we had learned what to listen for, we take the time to play it again.
Repeat the process for side two and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides of each pressing match up.
It may not be rocket science, but it’s a science of a kind, one with strict protocols that we’ve developed over the course of many years to insure that the results we arrive at are as accurate as we can make them.
The result of all our work speaks for itself, on this very record in fact. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on our Hot Stamper pressing — or your money back.
A Must Own Jazz Record
We consider this Art Pepper 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.
Side One
You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To
Red Pepper Blues
Imagination
Waltz Me Blues
Straight Life
Side Two
Jazz Me Blues
Tin Tin Deo
Star Eyes
Birk’s Works
AMG 5 Star Rave Review
Widely accepted as a singular landmark in a career built of singular landmarks, Pepper said he felt as though this recording convinced him that emotion was the paramount impulse of jazz performance…
The knowledge that they play all the songs for the first and only time together, in the order you hear them on the record, suggests a kind of jazz narrative genius on behalf of the man behind the plan, Contemporary president Les Koenig.
A diamond of recorded jazz history.