Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums Available Now
UPDATE 2025
This review was written many years ago, circa 2010 I would guess, right about the time we first started doing shootouts for the album. (Here is what we have to say about I Left My Heart in San Francisco these days, suspiciously similar to what we had to say in 2010. As the song says, ‘”The fundamental things apply…”)
Everything that’s good about All Tube vocal recordings from the 50s and 60s is precisely what’s good about the sound of this record.
The huge studio the music was recorded in is captured faithfully on this pressing. The height, width and depth of the staging are extraordinary, a true Demo Disc in that regard.
We are not big soundstage guys here at Better Records, but we can’t deny the appeal of the space to be found on a record that sounds as good as this one does.
Transparency and Tubey Magic are key to the sound of the orchestra and you will find both in abundance on these two sides.
(Other records that are good for testing those two qualities can be found here and here.)
Albums such as this live and die by the quality of their vocal reproduction. On this record Mr. Tony Bennett himself will appear to be standing right in your listening room, along with the 38 other musicians from the session. (Actually, come to think of it, they’re probably sitting.)
On the best pressings, the space of your stereo room will seem to expand in all directions to accommodate them — an illusion of course, but nevertheless a remarkably convincing one.
Side One
Some quick notes:
- Highly resolving;
- tonally balanced;
- rich bottom end;
- breathy vocals;
- instruments are jumping out of the speakers;
- dynamic, with a touch of grain and spit on even the best copies.
- Killer. Can’t be beat.
Side Two
Might be slightly better, but let’s just leave the grade at Triple Plus.
The first track is not as well recorded as those that follow.
UPDATE 2024
Not sure if this is still true. Best to play the record for yourself and see.
The violin is sweeter on the second track here than on any other side we played. The whole production is so immediate, so right, and so real it may just take your breath away.
The third track is rich, solid and tonally correct, which pretty much sums up the sound we heard on the best copies of the album.
Reissues
We played a few decent sounding reissues from the 70s that may eventually make it to the site. Again and again my notes made it clear that those pressings could have used more tubes in the chain.
On this record, like so many others you may have read about on the site, the right amount of Tubey Magic — and by that we mean a very healthy amount — makes all the difference.
Now keep in mind that we are talking about 1962 tubes, not the stuff that engineers are using today to make “tube-mastered” records. Modern pressings barely hint at the Tubey Magical sound of a record like this, if our experience with hundreds of them is any guide.
Unlike far too many misguided audiophile reviewers (it was ever thus), we have a very hard time taking any of the new reissues seriously. We think the data — the unrelenting mediocrity to be heard on these modern pressings — are pretty clear in that regard.
If you’ve ever heard a pressing that sounds like this one, you know from experience there hasn’t been a record manufactured in the last forty years that has this sound. Right, wrong or otherwise, it is simply not part of the 21st century world we live in.
If you want to be transported back to San Francisco, or in this case New York’s famed Columbia Studios, circa 1962, you will need a vintage record like this to do it.
Click on this link to find more superb sounding records from the legendary CBS 30th street studios in New York.
Further Reading