Jazz Collection

Here are more than 100 well recorded jazz albums which should be part of any audiophile’s jazz collection.

Frank Zappa – Waka/Jawaka

More of the Music of Frank Zappa

  • This vintage copy was doing just about everything right, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both of these TAS-approved sides – fairly QUIET vinyl too
  • It took whomever is running the TAS Super Disc list about twenty years to catch up to us, but we’re glad they did – this is one of the most amazing sounding records we have the privilege to play, even if it does take us three years to get a shootout going
  • A Top 100 title, and deservedly so – the sound is big, rich, punchy, lively, clear and above all, analog (particularly on side one)
  • This copy will show you the size and power of a big band, Frank Zappa style (also particularly on side one) – there is (almost*) nothing like it
  • Rolling Stone raved that this Jazz Rock Fusion album contains “…some of the best material he’s done in years” and we could not agree more

(*Other than The Grand Wazoo, which can have sound every bit as good but is not the equal of Waka/Jawaka musically.)

What an incredible album. I know of no other like it. It’s not big band, it’s not rock, it’s not jazz, it’s a unique amalgamation of all three with an overlay of some of Zappa’s idiosyncratic compositional predilections (say that three times fast) thrown in for good measure.

In our opinion it’s nothing less than Zappa’s masterpiece, the summation of his talents, and a record that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection. (We say that about a lot of records audiophiles don’t know well, but we’ve been doing it for most of our 30+ years in this business and don’t see much reason to stop now.)

Most copies, especially the WB brown label reissues, are dull and smeary with little in the way of top end extension, failing pretty miserably at getting this music to come to life.

Not long ago we discovered the secret to separating the men from the boys on side one. On the lively, punchy, dynamic copies — which are of course the best ones — you can follow the drumming at the beginning of “Big Swifty” note for note: every beat, every kick of the kick drum, every fill, every roll — it’s all there to be heard and appreciated. If that track on this copy doesn’t make you a huge fan of Aynsley Dunbar, I can’t imagine what would. The guy had a gift.

(more…)

Weather Report – Sweetnighter

More Jazz Fusion

  • A Sweetnighter like you’ve never heard, with an INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “rich and 3D”…”tubey and whomping”…”big bass and energy”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”great space and detail”
  • The sound is huge, spacious, lively, transparent and punchy – this is jazz fusion that really rocks
  • “Boogie Woogie Waltz” was one of the most mindblowing tracks found on any album from 1973
  • 4 stars: ” It is the groove that rules this mesmerizing album, leading off with the irresistible 3/4 marathon deceptively tagged as the ‘Boogie Woogie Waltz’ and proceeding through a variety of Latin-grounded hip-shakers.”
  • If you’re a fan of the adventurous funky Jazz Fusion, this is a Must Own Title from 1973.
  • This is a well recorded jazz album that should be part of any audiophile’s jazz collection

This is our favorite Weather Report album here at Better Records.

Heavy Weather is arguably a more ambitious and more accomplished piece of work, but Sweetnighter is so original and rhythmically compelling that we find ourselves enjoying it more. I don’t know of any other album on the planet like it. We only know of two Must Own Weather Report albums, this one and Heavy Weather. They both belong in your collection if you’re a fan of jazz fusion.

The top end is fully extended here in a way that most copies barely hint at, and the overall sound is amazingly transparent and three-dimensional. The brass is full and rich, the percussion lively and present, and the bass is weighty and defined. All the stuff we look for on a Classic Weather Report album is here.

Note especially that the energy is excellent, and both sides are also very high-rez; the echo trails from all the studio reverb go on for days. (more…)

John Coltrane / Standard Coltrane

More of the Music of John Coltrane

  • You’ll find STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this Prestige recording pressed on fairly quiet OJC vinyl
  • For those of you who want the album with the original track listing exactly as it came out in 1962, with sound that could not be beat, this one’s for you
  • Let’s give Rudy Van Gelder a hand, the tonality on both of these sides is hard to fault
  • “…this set of four tunes catches the saxophonist in four distinct moods. ‘Invitation’ finds him trying some of the ideas that he used so effectively with Thelonious Monk in 1957. One of these was the building of contrasting harmonic lines around a single “home” note. It’s a fascinating musical game in the hands of a jazzman as imaginative Coltrane.” – Downbeat

(more…)

Sonny Rollins – Way Out West

More of the Music of Sonny Rollins

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them, this vintage Contemporary pressing is doing just about everything right
  • This copy has superb 1957 Contemporary stereo sound – big, open and natural throughout
  • One of our favorite Rollins albums – one listen to this copy and you will know exactly why we love the recordings of Roy DuNann
  • This is a Must Own jazz album from 1957 that belongs in every jazz-loving audiophile’s collection
  • 5 stars: “The timeless Way Out West established Sonny Rollins as jazz’s top tenor saxophonist…”
  • Contemporary is one of our favorite jazz labels — once you’ve heard a Hot Stamper pressing of one of their releases, you will surely become as enthusiastic as we are about their phenomenally good recordings from the 50s and 60s
  • Like a lot of the best jazz recordings we know of, these sessions were recorded live in the studio

It’s our favorite jazz label for sonics by a long shot. Roy DuNann always seems to get The Real Sound out of the sessions he recorded — amazingly realistic drums in a big room; full-bodied, breathy horns; Tubey Magical guitar tone; deep, note-like bass; weighty pianos; vocal immediacy, and on and on.

For us audiophiles both the sound and the music here are wonderful. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good a 1957 All Tube Analog recording can be, this copy will do the trick.

This pressing is super spacious, sweet, and positively dripping with ambience. Talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny. This is vintage analog at its best, so full-bodied and relaxed you’ll wonder how it ever came to be that anyone seriously contemplated trying to improve it.

This IS the sound of Tubey Magic. No recordings will ever be made like this again, and no CD will ever capture what is in the grooves of this record. There is of course a CD of this album, but those of us who possess a working turntable and a good collection of vintage vinyl could care less.

(more…)

Kenny Burrell – Midnight Blue (2024)

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

  • Midnight Blue is back on the site for the first time in years, here with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides of this vintage 60s pressing – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • One of our All Time Favorite Blue Note albums for music and sound – is there a better bluesy jazz guitar album?
  • 5 stars on AMG – if there were a Top 100 Jazz List on our site, Midnight Blue would be right up at the top of it
  • It’s taken us at least five years to get this shootout going, and none of the top copies we managed to get hold of did not have condition issues of some kind, so good luck finding one of these on your own, you are going to need it
  • Jazz Improv Magazine puts the album among its Top Five recommended recordings for Burrell, indicating that “[i]f you need to know ‘the Blue Note sound,’ here it is.”
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how excellent sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting swooshes and just be swept away by the music

Midnight Blue is our favorite Kenny Burrell album of all time, at least in part because it’s one of the All Time Best Sounding Blue Notes. 

If you already own a copy of Midnight Blue and you don’t consider it one of the best sounding jazz guitar records in your collection, then you surely don’t have a copy that sounds the way this one does! In other words, you don’t know what you’re missing. (And if you own the Classic Records release, or any other Heavy Vinyl pressing from the modern era, then you really don’t know what you are missing.)

Top 100 Jazz?

Don’t think this is just another 60s jazz guitar album. With Stanley Turrentine on sax and Ray Baretto on congas, this music will move you like practically no other. When Turrentine (a shockingly underrated player) rips into his first big solo, you’ll swear he’s right there in the room with you.

And if you do have one of our better Hot Stamper copies and it still isn’t the best sounding jazz guitar album in your collection, then you have one helluva jazz collection. Drop us a line and tell us what record you like the sound of better than Midnight Blue. We’re at a loss to think of what it could possibly be.

(more…)

Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain on 6-Eye in Stereo

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this 6-Eye Stereo pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Sketches of Spain you’ve heard
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich and tubey the sound is
  • Reasonably quiet vinyl for an early label pressing, few are this clean, and none come much quieter if our experience with dozens of them over the decades counts for anything
  • The better copies capture the realistic sound of Davis’s horn, the body, the breath and the bite (and the correct amount of squawk as well)
  • Balanced, clear and undistorted, this 30th Street recording shows just how good Columbia’s engineers (lead by the inestimable Fred Plaut) were back then
  • 5 stars: “Sketches of Spain is the most luxuriant and stridently romantic recording Davis ever made. To listen to it in the 21st century is still a spine-tingling experience…”
  • This pressing is clearly a Demo Disc for orchestral size and space

On the better pressings of this masterpiece, the sound is truly magical. (AMG has that dead right in their review.) It is lively but never strained. Davis’s horn has breath and bite, just like the real thing. What more can you ask for?

(more…)

The Three on Inner City – By Far the Best Way to Get All Six Tracks

More of the Music of The Three

  • A Demo Disc quality Inner City pressing of this wonderful recording with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • The transients are uncannily lifelike – listen for the powerful kinetic energy produced when Shelly whacks the hell out of his cymbals
  • My favorite Piano Trio Jazz Album of All Time; every one of those six tracks is brilliantly arranged and performed
  • 4 stars: “One of Joe Sample’s finest sessions as a leader” – with Shelly Manne and Ray Brown, we would say it’s clearly his finest session, as a leader or simply as the piano player in a killer trio

If you want to hear the full six tunes recorded by The Three at that famous Hollywood session (which ran all day and long into the night, 4 AM to be exact), these 33 RPM pressings are the best way to go. The music is so good that I personally would not want to live without the complete album. The Three is, in fact, my favorite Piano Trio Jazz Album of All Time; every one of those six tracks is brilliantly arranged and performed (if you have the right takes of course; more about that later).

More On The Subject Of Energy

This is a quality no one seems to be writing about, other than us of course, but what could possibly be more important? On this record, the more energetic copies took the players’ performances to a level beyond all expectations. It is positively shocking how lively and dynamic the best copies of this record are. I know of no other recording with this combination of sonic and musical energy. It is sui generis, in a league of its own.

Both sides are so transparent you can hear Shelly Manne vocalizing as he’s playing the drums. The drum solo on side two is killer here. So full of energy and so dynamic. Why aren’t more drum kits recorded this well? Check out the pictures inside the fold-open cover to see all the mics that were used on the drums. That’s where that wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling sound comes from.

The transients are uncannily lifelike, conveying the huge amounts of kinetic energy produced when Shelly whacks the hell out of his cymbals.

Ne Plus Ultra Piano Trio

This record is made from the “backup” tape for the session. East Wind released two versions of the famous direct to disc version at 33 RPM, and for those of you who bother to read the commentary, you know that take one of that pressing presents a completely different performance of the music than the one found on the Inner City on offer here.

There was a time when the best copies of a recording like this would go directly into my collection. If I wanted to impress someone, audiophile or otherwise, with the You-Are-There illusion that only Big Speakers in a dedicated room playing a live recording can create, this would be up near the top of the list. There is practically nothing like it on vinyl in my experience.

This is without a doubt my favorite piano trio record of all time. Joe Sample, Shelly Manne, and Ray Brown only made one album together, this one, recorded direct to disc right here in Los Angeles for Eastwind in the Seventies. Joe Sample for once in his life found himself in a real Class A trio, and happily for jazz fans around the world, he rose to the occasion. Actually, it was more like an epiphany, as this is the one piano trio album I put in a class by itself. All three of The Three are giving us the best they’ve got on that November day in 1975.

When it comes to small combo piano jazz, there is none better.

(more…)

Wynton Kelly Trio & Sextet – Kelly Blue

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • Wynton Kelly’s hard-to-find second album, here with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides of this vintage OJC pressing
  • A superb pressing, with lovely richness and warmth, good space, separation between the instruments, and real immediacy throughout
  • Kelly brings in jazz greats Nat Adderley, Bobby Jaspar, and Benny Golson, as well as several of his bandmates from Miles Davis’s sextet, including Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb
  • There are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs) on “Old Clothes,” but once you hear just how incredible sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Kelly was renowned as an accompanist, but as he shows on a set including three of his originals and four familiar standards… A fine example of his talents.”
  • “Wynton Kelly demonstrates once again why he has been a major influence in the history of jazz piano.”

Jack Higgins was the engineer for these sessions. He recorded Chet Baker’s brilliant Chet album the same year, as well as many other albums for Riverside in New York in the 50s and 60s.

(more…)

Benny Carter – Jazz Giant

More of the Music of Benny Carter

  • Both sides of this superb Contemporary reissue earned excellent sonic grades
  • If you still think that Analogue Productions is remastering records properly, you have definitely never heard a real Contemporary that sounds as good as this one does
  • The music of this Jazz Giant comes alive on this copy, with space, size, clarity and richness that few other pressings can match
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Benny Carter had already been a major jazz musician for nearly 30 years when he recorded this particularly strong septet session for Contemporary … This timeless music is beyond the simple categories of ‘swing’ or ‘bop’ and should just be called ‘classic.'”

If you like the sound of Contemporary Records, you won’t find a better example than this. Midrange magic doesn’t get anymore magical.

It’s been several years since our last shootout, but we hope the lucky buyer of this copy realizes it was more than worth it. To find a copy of Jazz Giant that sounds as good as this one is a very special event indeed.

(more…)

Cannonball Adderley – What I Mean

More of the Music of Cannonball Adderley

  • Adderley’s superb double album reissue from 1979, which includes the complete 1961 album Know What I Mean?, here with seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides
  • Sides three and four (Know What I Mean?) were sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich and tubey the sound is
  • With outstanding presence, clarity, space and right-on-the-money timbral accuracy, these pressings are guaranteed to be one of the best sounding jazz records you’ve played in a long, long time
  • A hard record to find, and an even harder record to find with this kind of audiophile sound and playing surfaces
  • This is some of the best sound we have ever heard for this exceptional Golden Age 60s recording, and that is really saying something
  • 4 stars: “This two-LP set combines two fine sessions from 1961. The great altoist is heard with his quintet in 1961 (featuring cornetist Nat Adderley, Victor Feldman on vibes and piano and guest pianist Wynton Kelly) and in a quartet date with pianist Bill Evans.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1961 that belongs in any jazz-loving audiophile’s collection

Sides one and two of this double LP were originally issued as The Cannonball Adderley Quintet Plus, while sides three and four were originally released as Know What I Mean?

All four sides boast excellent mastering and very good sound. The cymbals have that just right “tap” followed by an open and sweet “shimmer.”

The piano and sax, the heart of the music of course, are rendered as accurately as can be expected.

As good as the OJC sounds, and it can sound very good indeed, this Milestone reissue from the decade before is even better. It has more of a “vintage analog pressing” sound, the kind you would expect to hear on a recording from 1962. (more…)