Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now
We had 12 copies to play in our recent shootout, all OJCs from different eras — 1986, 2009 and 2020, so if you want to do your own shootout for this wonderful title, you definitely have your work cut out for you.
And may I point out that only one copy earned 3/3 grades, with the next best copy 2/3, and one at 2.5/2.5.
Our Shootout Winning pressing was tubier, more transparent, more dynamic, and had more of that “jumpin’ out of the speakers” quality.
4 1/2 stars: “Cool and understated might be better watchwords for what the ultra-melodic Dorham achieves on this undeniably well crafted set of standards and originals that is close to containing his best work overall during a far too brief career.”
The boxes you see below are copied from the stamper sheet we compiled for the second of the two shootouts we did in 2025.
These are the stampers with the potential to win shootouts. That’s why you can’t see them.
The next box down has the stampers for a copy that was Nearly White Hot (2.5+/2.5+).
Note that other copies with those same stampers did poorly, 1+/1.5+. Such records do not have even minimally Hot Stamper grades. We end up selling them on Discogs and such places.
The group at the bottom included a couple of copies that earned Super Hot grades (2+/2+), but only one of the other also-rans would qualify as a Hot Stamper, the 1.5+/1.5+ copy. There were two others didn’t cut it.
None of these were cheap to buy, and out of 12 pressings, five were a bust.
This is the second time we’ve done this shootout. The first involved 8 copies.
That’s a total of 20 records that we had to buy, clean and play.
After the first shootout we felt we still needed to do more research and development, which is why we got hold of another dozen pressings and went at it again, with somewhat different results. (Seems were right about needing more R&D.)
The pressings you see in the box at the bottom of the sheet are clearly not worth our trouble. They cost just as much as the others, but wth grades like the ones you see, we probably would not break even on them once our labor costs are factored in.
But we love the album and learned a lot, so, all things considered, it was worth it. Now we have a much better idea of what is going on with Quiet Kenny.
You can read here about the pressing The Electric Recording Company produced of the album, along with one that Analogue Productions put out. (The short version of our review: Neither one is worth your time, although one is ridiculously bad and the other, while not terrible, is a mid-fi mediocrity.)
Old and New Work Well Together
This reissue is spacious, open, transparent, rich and sweet. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording Technology, with the added benefit of mastering using the more modern cutting equipment that came along starting in the 80s. We are of course here referring to the good modern mastering of many years ago, not the generally opaque, veiled and lifeless mastering so common today.
The combination of old and new works wonders on this title as you will surely hear for yourself on these superb sides.
We were impressed with the fact that these pressings excel in so many areas of reproduction. What was odd about it — odd to most audiophiles but not necessarily to us — was just how rich and Tubey Magical the reissue can be on the right pressing.
This leads me to think that most of the natural, full-bodied, lively, clear, rich sound of the recording was still on the tape decades later, and that all that was needed to get that vintage sound on to a record was simply to thread up the tape on the right machine and hit play. The fact that practically nobody seems to be able to make a record nowadays that sounds remotely this good tells me that I’m wrong to think that such an approach tends to work, if our experience with hundreds of mediocre Heavy Vinyl reissues is relevant.
Players and Personnel
- Bass – Paul Chambers
- Drums – Arthur Taylor
- Piano – Tommy Flanagan
- Trumpet – Kenny Dorham
- Recording and Engineering – Rudy Van Gelder
Side One
- Lotus Blossom
- My Ideal
- Blue Friday
- Alone Together
Side Two
- Blue Spring Shuffle
- I Had The Craziest Dream
- Old Folks
- Mack The Knife
Further Reading