More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

• An original Prestige pressing that was doing just about everything right, earning solid grades from top to bottom
• You will be amazed at how big and rich and tubey the sound is
• The OJC pressing we used to recommend is a very good sounding record, but until we heard these early pressings, we had no idea the album was this well recorded
• We should know better by now – in our defense, let us just note how hard it is to find the originals of this album in anything even approaching audiophile playing condition
• Remarkably spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a solid step up over most other copies we played
• Both of these sides are remarkably clean, clear, open, and transparent, with jazz energy to spare – thanks, RVG
• 4 stars: “…this Prestige set features the excellent hard bop pianist Harold Mabern heading a quintet also including trumpeter Blue Mitchell, tenor saxophonist George Coleman, bassist Bill Lee and drummer Hugh Walker.”

This vintage Prestige 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 Rakin’ and Scrapin’ 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 1969
• 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.

What We’re Listening For On Rakin’ and Scrapin’

• 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.

Side One

Rakin’ And Scrapin’
Such Is Life

Side Two

AON
I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Valerie

AMG 4 Star Review

…this Prestige set features the excellent hard bop pianist Harold Mabern heading a quintet also including trumpeter Blue Mitchell, tenor saxophonist George Coleman, bassist Bill Lee and drummer Hugh Walker. Other than a brief throwaway version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (which finds Mabern switching to electric piano), the music is essentially boppish, with some ballads and blues included.