Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now
When I play Columbia recordings from the 50s and 60s of Brubeck, Ellington, Miles Davis and other jazz giants, what I find most striking about them is how natural, warm and sweet they sound.
I was playing an old mono Ellington record a while back, and when the clarinet solo came in, it almost took my breath away. The sound of the instrument was that real. This from a mid-50s run-of-the-mill Columbia pressing.
Those guys — the engineers and the musicians — knew what they were doing.
Sometimes when I read about the extraordinary lengths modern engineers go to in order to use the highest quality audiophile equipment: custom microphones, tape recorders, wire, and the like, it makes me wonder how many of the best sounding records in the world managed to be recorded without the benefit of any of that stuff.
RCA didn’t need it for their Living Stereos. Decca didn’t need it.
Contemporary Records managed to record many of the best sounding jazz records without it.
How did all those great records get made with such bad equipment?
I guess we’ll never know.
Columbia may not have always recorded the best “serious” jazz, but they were very serious about the sound of their jazz. Outside of Contemporary, Columbia has better sounding jazz records than any other label of which I am aware.
Recordings made at their 30th Street Studio are pretty hard to beat. There is no Heavy Vinyl reissue on the planet that can compete with the sound of one of our Hot Stamper pressings of any of the albums recorded there you see available on our site, and they are guaranteed to knock your socks off or your money back.
And the Brubeck albums recorded by Fred Plaut are some of the most amazing sounding of all the Columbias, something few audiophiles would dispute. (Try to get the early pressings in stereo. Nothing can touch them. If you can’t afford our prices, we are more than happy to help you find your own. )
UPDATE 2025
We have two new lists for those who would like to know which Columbia label pressings win shootouts — one for 6-Eye Label winners and one for 360 Label winners.
Further Reading