*Discoveries, Jazz

Records we’ve “discovered” with exceptional sound.

The Stones Jazz with Joe Pass and Bruce Botnick

Yet Another Audiophile Quality Pressing “Discovered”

Brought to you by the folks at Better Records.  We know a good sounding record when we hear one.

That’s how we came to have a website full of them

xxx

And the music is interesting and fun from first song to last. With Joe Pass on guitar how could it not be – the guy’s a very talented player.

With two Triple Plus (A+++) shootout winning sides, this original stereo World Pacific copy simply could not be beat

  • Huge and rich, here is the kind of Tubey Magical presentation that lets this big group of musicians (four trombones!) come alive
  • The engineering by none other than Bruce Botnick is brilliant in all respects, as good as his work with The Doors
  • This is FUN West Coast Pop Jazz built around the superb arrangements of Bob Florence and the great songs of the Stones
  • We’re so sure you’ll like this music that if for any reason you are unhappy the domestic return shipping is on us!

Engineering by Bruce Botnick

Botnick is of course the man behind the superb recordings of The Doors, Love and others too numerous to mention.

More recordings by Bruce Botnick

He also recorded another of our favorite West Coast jazz ensemble records, Bud Shank And the Sax Section. That undiscovered gem — well known to us but heretofore undiscovered by the audiophile public as far as we can tell — has a lot in common with this album. Top players, smart arrangements, superb sound, the album is as fun as Fun West Coast Jazz gets.

This copy is 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. (more…)

Eric Dolphy – Copenhagen Concert

More Eric Dolphy

Reviews and Commentaries for Other Amazing Live Jazz Recordings

  • Dolphy’s superb 1961 live release returns to the site with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides
  • Rich, smooth, sweet, and wonderfully natural, this is the sound we love here at Better Records
  • I’ve known about Dolphy’s legendary Copenhagen Concert for close to thirty years. When an audiophile hears a bass clarinet reproduced the way it is on this record, he is very unlikely to forget it
  • Dolphy stretches out on the flute and the bass clarinet as well as his alto sax here
  • “Eric Dolphy’s tour of Europe is one of the best documented periods of his much-too-short career… a must for Dolphy collectors.”

Rarely have I heard a string bass sound better than it does here. This album is a Demo Disc for Bass like practically no other.

The flute is equally gorgeous. They could record a live jazz concert this well in 1961? Apparently.

The sound of the bass clarinet is so real it will take your breath away. No pop or rock record has this kind of fidelity, ever. The resolution is amazing, you can hear the keys clacking away as he plays. (more…)

Ray Charles – The Best of Ray Charles

  • An outstanding copy with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it from start to finish – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Like any compilation the sound varies from track to track, but most of the material here sounds WONDERFUL
  • This collection of instrumentals gives you a taste of Ray’s prowess at the piano, with surprisingly good sound to boot
  • All these recordings are from the late 50s, including a live performance from the Newport Jazz Festival

The sound is tonally correct, Tubey Magical and above all natural. The timbre of each and every instrument is right and it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it. So high-resolution too.

If you love ’50s and ’60s jazz you cannot go wrong here. Ray Charles was a genius (it’s his nickname for heaven’s sake!) and the original music on this record is just one more album’s worth of proof of that fact.

You may have noticed that Tom Dowd, the recording engineer for these tracks, receives a fair amount of criticism on our site. We’re not always fans of his work on rock albums, but on jazz music he usually managed to do a great job. The sound is open, sweet, transparent, rich — all the stuff we like here at Better Records.

Just drop the needle on the first track, Hard Times. The brass is breathy and full-bodied, the piano has real weight, and the vocals sound Right On The Money. The extended solos by David Newman on tenor sax are especially brilliant.

If you want a good Blues based Jazz record, performed by men who were at the height of their powers, you can’t go wrong with this one. All these recordings are from the late 50s, including a live performance from the Newport Jazz Festival. (more…)

Miles Davis – Workin’ And Steamin’

More Miles Davis

  • An outstanding Double Album with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on all four sides
  • The best sounding tracks here can hold their own with ANY Miles Davis vinyl we’ve ever heard, and that’s a whole lot of Mile Davis albums
  • 5 Stars: “This two-LP set combines a pair of classic albums by the Miles Davis Quintet of 1956, the group that also featured John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. …the music has plenty of variety and does not sound rushed. Davis’s beautiful muted statements made these two of his most popular albums.”

You might be surprised that a reissue can beat the originals, but one play of this pressing should be enough to remove all doubt.

To the Jazz Fans of the World, we here present one of the BEST sounding jazz recordings we have ever had the PRIVILEGE to place on a turntable. I cannot ever recall hearing a better sounding Rudy Van Gelder recording, and I have a theory as to why this tape is as good as it is: it’s MONO. It also sounds like it’s recorded completely LIVE in the studio, direct to one track you might say. As good a recording as Kind of Blue is, I think the best parts of this album are more immediate and more real than anything on KOB. (more…)

Pepper, Klemmer, et al. / Ballads By Four – Our Shootout Winner from 2011

More Art Pepper

More John Klemmer

Another Record We’ve Discovered with (Potentially) Excellent Sound…

and a Record We Will Probably Never Shootout Again

Super Hot Stamper sound on BOTH sides of this wonderful Galaxy original pressing. There are four extended ballads, two on each side, and each of them is played with real passion and skill by this group of veteran horn men and their respective rhythm sections. The recording itself is one of the best I’ve heard on Galaxy, the other top Galaxy title being Art Pepper Today. Joe Henderson is the leader not mentioned in our listing title, so with his addition we have four of the best saxophone ballad players, backed by a top rhythm section, all performing material that has stood the test of time. This is the kind of record the world needs more of!  (more…)

Ben Webster – The Warm Moods

Hot Stamper Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

Reviews and Commentaries for the Recordings of Ben Webster

  • An excellent copy of this great jazz “plus strings” album starring our man Ben Webster – Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • The sound is rich, warm and full-bodied, with you-are-there immediacy and impressive dynamics – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • With a wonderful combination of material, performance, and sonics, this is a record you’ll want to play again and again
  • If your collection could use some romantic jazz ballads, look no further, this is the album for you

This is calm, relaxed jazz performed expertly by Webster backed by a small orchestra conducted by Johnny Richards.

The sound is TOP NOTCH. We’ve managed to acquire a number of these specific pressings over the years and this copy just could not be beat. It won our shootout hands down with its amazing transparency and remarkable separation between instruments. In addition, most copies we played weren’t nearly this rich or full-bodied.

Drop the needle on any of these great ballads and appreciate how relaxed, natural, balanced and warm the sound is. I imagine this is going to be a record you return to over and over. It’s hard for me to imagine this record ever getting old with such a wonderful combination of material, performance, and sonics. (more…)

Bob Brookmeyer – Bob Brookmeyer And Friends

Another Record We’ve Discovered with (Potentially) Excellent Sound

More Vintage Hot Stamper Pressings on Columbia

  • This original Black Print 360 pressing was one of the best we played in our recent shootout
  • Stan Getz is the real standout on this album, a very pleasant surprise since exceptionally good recordings of his music are so hard to find
  • Another example of the phenomenal sound quality found on so many recordings made at CBS’s 30th Street Studios in New York
  • Wikipedia notes: “Another way to view this all-star rhythm section would be as Miles Davis’ piano and bass player, Stan Getz’ vibraphonist, and John Coltrane’s drummer.”
  • “Stan Getz, known for his ‘lyrical’ style, is in top form throughout and brings out the best of his cohorts, including two young musicians, Gary Burton on vibes and Herbie Hancock on keyboards…” 

If you like the sound of relaxed, tube-mastered jazz — and what red blooded audiophile doesn’t — you can’t do much better than Bob Brookmeyer And Friends. The warmth and immediacy of the sound here are guaranteed to blow practically any jazz septet record you own right out of the water.

Getz and Burton have always been magical together. Their work on Getz Au Go Go is legendary. Every time I play that record I am astonished at how good it is, one of those very special jazz recordings that are easy to get lost in. (more…)

Stanley Turrentine / Jubilee Shouts – Reviewed in 2005

More Stanley Turrentine

More Albums on Blue Note

Two Minty looking Blue Note LPs of two previously unreleased sessions featuring the great tenor saxophonist with Tommy Turrentine, Kenny Burrell, Horace Parlan, Sonny Clark and others.

If you want to hear Turrentine at his best, skip right to track two, the beautiful ballad Then I’ll Be Tired Of You, featuring his brother Tommy on trumpet. The music is powerful and the sound is excellent.

This is an older jazz review.

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a fine art.

We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the sonic grades and vinyl playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.

As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.

The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.

Not just a good sounding record. A record that was played in a shootout and did well.

The result of our labor is the scores of jazz titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.

Further Reading

Herbie Mann – Latin Mann

This White Hot Stamper 2-pack has Demo Disc Live Latin Jazz sound and crazy fun music. Both sides are so clear, rich, natural and present you’ll have a very hard time finding fault with the sound. And the music is great too – this is a Big Band with a swarm of Latin percussionists added to kick up the heat.

This Columbia recording from 1965 has the sound we love here at Better Records, or at least two of the sides of two of these copies do. When you play the other sides you may be in for quite a shock, especially the bad side two included in this two pack. (more…)

The Chico Hamilton Quintet

  • This superb live recording finally makes its Hot Stamper debut, boasting a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two and an outstanding Double Plus (A++) side one
  • A killer mono pressing, with solid weight, lovely richness and warmth, real separation between the instruments and wonderful immediacy throughout
  • Recorded live at The Forum Theater in Los Angeles in 1956, this vintage pressing boasts exceptionally natural sound, as well as the energetic live interplay of these five musicians (including a cellist)

(more…)