Hot Stamper Pressings of Soundtrack Albums Available Now
None of the 360 Label pressings we played recently were competitive with the Six Eye originals. Some sides earned 2+, but no copy on 360 earned grades of 2+ on both sides.
Stick with the early, stereo pressings in order to have any shot at top quality sound.
As you can see from the notes below for this album, one side was passable, earning our 1.5+ grade. It’s a decent sounding record I suppose, but a long, long, long way from the best.
1.5+ is four grades down from the top copy. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good a recording this can be on the best vintage pressings. To see more records that earned the 1.5+ grade, please click here. For those who might be interested, there’s more on our grading scale here.
Here is what a top quality pressing should sound like:
You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this original Columbia 6-Eye Stereo pressing.
Spacious, rich and smooth – only vintage analog seems capable of reproducing all three of these qualities without sacrificing resolution, staging, imaging or presence.
Tonality is the hardest thing to get right on this album, and here it is right on the money, because if it were not, it would not have won the shootout.
For those of you who like to do your own shootouts, good luck, you will need a lot of originals to find one that sounds as good as this one does.
5 stars: “The soundtrack of the West Side Story film is deservedly one of the most popular soundtrack recordings of all time, and one of the relatively few to have attained long-term popularity beyond a specialized soundtrack/theatrical musical audience.”
This album is at least five times more common in mono than it is in stereo, and finding enough clean early stereo pressings takes us years nowadays.
Side One
Prologue
Jet Song
Something’s Coming
Dance at the Gym
Maria
America
Tonight
Side Two
Gee, Officer Krupke!
I Feel Pretty
One Hand, One Heart
Quintet
The Rumble
Cool
A Boy Like That / I Have a Love
Somewhere (Finale)
AMG 5 Star Rave Review
The soundtrack of the West Side Story film is deservedly one of the most popular soundtrack recordings of all time, and one of the relatively few to have attained long-term popularity beyond a specialized soundtrack/theatrical musical audience. (It is an entirely different recording, it should be emphasized, from the original Broadway cast recording, which was also a massive-selling album.)
Its widespread impact could be attributed to a few factors: the wide range of compositional and orchestral styles, from cool swing jazz and shades of Latin pop to classical; the universality of the storyline, pitting underdog lovers against the world; and an assortment of songs that goes well beyond the sentimental love odes that are the staples of musicals (though it has some of those, too), including some downright tough posturing and sardonic social commentary.
“Jet Song,” “America,” “Gee, Officer Krupke,” “Tonight,” “Cool,” “Maria,” “I Feel Pretty,” and “Something’s Coming” are all among the most famous and oft-sung soundtrack numbers ever.
Further Reading