Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now
UPDATE 2026
We wrote the commentary you see below about 15 years ago.
We liked the record back then just fine. However, we recently got another couple of copies in and they sounded OK, not great, but what really had aged badly was the music, which was corny and, worst of all, contra the album’s title, definitely did not swing. Don’t waste your money on this one the way we did.
There are many jazz pressings we’ve discovered with audiophile quality sound and enjoyable music, but we reluctantly had to admit that this title should no longer be considered one of them. Live and learn, right?
We hope we can be forgiven for our mistaken bias in favor of a Golden Age title with a cool vintage cover. (And it wouldn’t be the first time.)
Another source of mistaken thinking: The Swingin’ Nutcracker came out in 1960, a year known for a great many other exceptionally good sounding titles produced during the Golden Age of vacuum tube recording. After playing so many wonderful recordings on that label, from that era, we were primed to like it regardless of whatever shortcomings it might have had.
This is why we recommend audiophiles pull titles off their massive shelves and give them a spin from time to time. Some records have simply not stood the test of time as well as others. Some will be better than we remember, some worse.
A wall full of records, most of which have not been played in years, even decades, is not a record collection worthy of the name. It’s better understood as a pile of vinyl that has been doing nobody any good for a very long time and, according to Newton’s Laws of Motion, will continue doing nothing for nobody forever.
Eventually it will meet an ignominious end by being sold off at an estate sale, the wheat surrounded by the chaff, all mixed together in box after box. Its former owner will not be alive to mourn it. Why would he? He never took care of it when he had the chance. It’s certainly too late once he has passed on, a fate that awaits us all. (Memento mori as the stoics like to say.)
Our advice: Find the good records on your shelves by making a habit of playing records you haven’t played in a while. When you run across a record like The Swingin’ Nutcracker, one that you will clearly never play again if you were even able to get through it at all, try to find a good home for it. It doesn’t belong in yours.
Our old commentary:
Insanely good Living Stereo sound throughout with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades and playing reasonably quietly. Al Schmitt handled the engineering duties, brilliantly, with Shorty and dozens of his West Coast Pals contributing to the dates, the likes of Conte Candoli, Art Pepper, Bill Perkins, Bud Shank, Harold Land, Richie Kamuca and more.
“The most remarkable aspect about the score is how boldly it re-imagines the original. The Swingin’ Nutcracker is contemporary from an American perspective without patronizing the European original.” – Marc Meyers, Jazz Wax
The Players
Bass – Joe Mondragon
Drums – Frank Capp, Mel Lewis
Piano – Lou Levy, Pete Jolly
Saxophone – Art Pepper, Bill Holman, Bill Hood, Bill Perkins, Bud Shank, Chuck Gentry, Harold Land, Richie Kamuca
Trombone – Frank Rosolino, George Roberts, Harry Betts, Kenneth Shroyer
Trumpet – Conte Candoli, Jimmy Zito*, Johnny Audino, Ray Triscari
Side One
Like Nutty Overture (Finale)
A Nutty Marche (Marche)
Blue Reeds (Reed Flute Blues)
The Swingin’ Plum Fairy (Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy)
Snowball (Waltz Of The Snowflakes)
Side Two
Six Pak (Trépak)
Flowers Of The Cats (Waltz Of The Flowers)
Dance Expresso (Coffee)
Pass The Duke (Pas De Deux)
China Where? (Tea Dance)
Overture For Shorty (Overture In Miniature)
