Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now
UPDATE 2026
The original review for the knockout Four Plus copy we discovered during one of our earliest shootouts for Julie Is Her Name came out way back in 2010.
Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how we go about finding them. We no longer give out Four Pluses as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
Nowadays we most often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, seemingly out of nowhere, revealed to us sound of such high quality that it conpletely changed our appreciation of the recording itself.
We found ourselves asking “Who knew?” Perhaps a better question might have been “How high is up?”
Our Old Review
Beyond White Hot stamper sound on side one of this Turquoise Liberty Mono pressing – the sound is guaranteed to blow your mind. Julie is in the room with you – intimate, breathy and Tubey Magical like practically nothing you’ve ever heard. For late night listening this may be the best Sultry Female Vocal recording ever made.
Side One
This side had breathy resolution that was hard to believe, along with size and immediacy that no other side of any copy could touch. Phenomenal.
Side Two
Super Hot. A bit smooth and fat on the first track, but the second track is actually helped by that EQ, which makes this side work wonderfully well. Listen for the differences between the two sides. They should not be subtle in the least.
What to Listen For
On side one listen to how rich the bottom end is on Barney Kessel’s guitar. The Tubey Magic on this side is off the charts. Some copies can be dry, but that is clearly not a problem on this one. The naturalness of the presentation puts this album right at the top of best sounding female vocal albums of all time.
To take nothing away from her performance, which got better with every copy we played. Julie’s rendition of Cry Me a River may be definitive.
If only Ella Fitzgerald on Clap Hands got this kind of sound! As good as the best copies of that album are, this record takes the concept of intimate female vocals to an entirely new level.
Condition
Some of the copies we will be putting up may well have marks that play for a short while on a track or two (not this one of course), as finding copies that don’t have one flaw or another is difficult when the record is fully 60 years old, especially considering that the album was also extremely popular in its day. Few have survived in as nice a shape as this one. If some light crackle in the background is not going to cut it for you, it’s unlikely that we will be able to supply you with Hot Stamper sound for a copy of Julie Is Her Name.
And we would never point you to the awful Boxstar 45 RPM pressing cut by Bernie Grundman, supposedly on tube equipment. I regret to say we actually sold some, but in my defense I can honestly say we never had a single nice thing to say about it.
We found the Tubey Magic on his pressing to be non-existent, as non-existent as it is on practically every Classic Record release he cut. If you have his version you are in for quite a treat when you finally get this one home and on your table. There is a world of difference between the sound of the two versions and we would be very surprised if it takes you more than ten seconds to hear it.
Forgotten Sound
Need a refresher course in Tubey Magic after playing too many modern recordings or remasterings? These Liberty pressings are overflowing with it. Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here.
THIS is the sound of Tubey Magic. No recordings will ever be made that sound like this again, and no CD will ever capture what is in the grooves of this record. There actually IS a CD of this album, and youtube videos of it too, but those of us with a good turntable could care less.
Mono Versus Stereo
This is the kind of record that the mono cartridge owners of the world worship, with good reason: the sound is amazing. But you don’t need a mono cartridge to hear how good, in fact how much better, this copy sounds than the stereo pressing.
The recording is mono, which means that the stereo pressings are actually reprocessed into stereo. Not too surprisingly the sound is terrible.
Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win shootouts. In our experience, this record sounds best this way: