More of the Music of Joe Cocker
- You’ll find STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this copy of Joe Cocker’s patented Blue-Eyed Soul album (only the second to hit the site in years)
- Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “huge and weighty and rich”…”great bass and vox”…”sweet and tubey and open”…”great space and detail”
- “Pardon Me Sir,” “High Time We Went,” “Black-Eyed Blues,” “Midnight Rider,” “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” and “St. James Infirmary” – so many of his best songs
- “With ‘St. James’ Infirmary,’ Joe Cocker has moved into a whole different sphere of musical activity, far distant from the rip-roaring anarchism of the Mad Dogs … This album is, when all be said and done, riddled with meaningful soul.” — Rolling Stone
Great sound for this rockin’ soul album with two live tracks. Just listen to the drums on “Black-Eyed Blues” — the way the percussion and bass mingle sonically with Alan White’s skins takes this listener right into the room where the magic happened.
Classic Tracks
On side one, there are three out of five you know or should know: “Pardon Me Sir,” “High Time We Went” and “Black-Eyed Blues.”
On side two, there are three out of four you know or should know: “Midnight Rider,” “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” and “St. James Infirmary.”
This vintage A&M 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 Joe Cocker 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 1972
- 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.
What We’re Listening For On Joe Cocker
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- 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 punchy 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.