Soul, Blue Eyed

Blue Eyed Soul

Elvis Presley – From Memphis To Vegas / From Vegas To Memphis

More Elvis Presley

  • The Hot Stamper debut of this 2-LP release, here with roughly Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on all FOUR sides of these vintage pressings
  • Side one and side four were sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • Composed of two full albums: Elvis In Person At The International Hotel Las Vegas, Nevada and Elvis Back In Memphis
  • Rock and roll energy to spare (particularly on sides one, three and four), the kind you will be hard-pressed to find on any modern Heavy Vinyl reissue these days
  • Brimming with Elvis classics: “Blue Suede Shoes,” “All Shook Up,” “Hound Dog,” “I Can’t Help Falling In Love,” “Suspicious Minds” – so many of The King’s best songs are here
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Easily the King’s best live album, In Person at the International Hotel featured a slew of hits, . . . Regardless of what they’re playing, the band really rock throughout.”
  • “History has placed [the] ten tracks [of Elvis Back In Memphis] as mere outtakes to the great ‘From Elvis In Memphis’…but a closer inspection not only reveals ten great tracks but one of the most cohesive records Elvis ever delivered.”

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Glenn Frey – Soul Searchin’

More Eagles

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this copy (only the second to hit the site in years) is practically as good as we have ever heard
  • We were shocked to find out that this album actually sounds very analog – rich, smooth, sweet and natural
  • Elliot Scheiner (Royal Scam, Aja, Nightfly) produced and also did some engineering – he is to be commended for his excellent work here
  • “Though I left Detroit and went to California to cut my teeth on country-rock, I’ve remained obsessed with the music of my adolescence, the great soul hits of the 60s and early 70s.”

The best copies are both rich and open, with the sound we tend to associate with the better 70s recordings and rarely hear on records from the 80s. But here’s a record from 1988 that sounds the way we like our records to sound — like analog. We don’t really know if it is or not, or mostly is or mostly isn’t, but we’ve never really cared about those sorts of things as long as the record sounds good.

It’s our one and only criterion. Any other criterion is a sign that you’re not really listening, you’re reading.

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Hall and Oates – H2O

More Hall and Oates

  • A vintage copy of this Hall and Oates classic from 1982 with killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound from start to finish – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • It’s lively, open, present and natural – the soundfield is big and spacious and the bottom end is killer
  • Much more consistent than most of their releases, this one boasts three monster hits including “Maneater,” “Family Man” and my all time favorite by the band, “One on One”
  • 4 stars: “Private Eyes solidified Hall & Oates’ status as one of the most popular acts in America in the early 80s, and…… with 1982’s H2O, they capitalized on its success, delivering an album that turned out to bigger than its predecessor, as it climbed higher on the charts and launched three Top Ten singles…”

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Spandau Ballet – True

More Spandau Ballet

More Pure Pop Recordings

  • Boasting two surprisingly rich and natural – dare we say Analog? – sides, this early UK Chrysalis pressing had the sound we were looking for on the band’s third studio album
  • Forget the dubby domestic pressings and whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – if you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful Brit Pop album, an import pressing like this one is the only way to go
  • “… a set of tunes aimed squarely at the charts. The one that succeeded most spectacularly, of course, was the title cut, a glossily-updated Motown-style ballad that became one of the decade’s biggest hits – aided by a video that cast singer Tony Hadley as a young Frank Sinatra, crooning about the sound of his soul.”
  • This is clearly the band’s best sounding album. Roughly 150 other listings for the best sounding album by an artist or group can be found here on the blog
  • In our opinion, True is the only Spandau Ballet record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done

Forget the dubby domestic pressings. Like so many British bands on the Chrysalis label, when it came time to master the album for our domestic market, not theirs, the people in charge (whoever they may have been) took the easy way out and simply ordered up a dub of the tape to send across the pond.

Too many wonderful albums by highly accomplished bands had their records ruined by sub-generation masters. (Ruined for audiophiles. The general public couldn’t care less.)

But this is the real British-pressed vinyl from the real master tape, and that makes all the difference in the world. It 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.

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Simply Red – Picture Book

More Simply Red

More Debut Albums of Interest

  • This original import pressing of the band’s Masterpiece boasts superb Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • Big, spacious and clear, but also remarkably analog-sounding, with the kind of fullness and richness that’s so rare on records from this era – if you’re a fan of this music, this is the copy for you
  • Even more surprising is how dynamic the best pressings can be — the best are Demo Discs in that respect
  • “Holding Back the Years” was the big hit (#1), but what really sold me on the album was the band’s cover of The Talking Heads’ “Heaven” – not an obvious choice, and a truly inspired one
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The band finds a steady R&B groove reminiscent of ’60s Stax house band the MG’s, and, as with the MG’s, it’s all in the service of a big-voiced soul singer, in this case a British redhead.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band’s, this classic from 1985 belongs in your collection.

Finally, Analog Sound for this wonderful music. The average copy of this album may sound like you’re playing a CD, but not this one. Here is the warmth and richness and depth you didn’t know you could find on Simply Red’s Masterpiece (assuming you were even looking). That flat, opaque, dry CD sound that we all love to hate is nowhere to be found on this pressing.

The domestic pressings can be good, but they sure don’t sound like this killer import.

A recording from 1985 is unlikely to have the Tubey Magic and warmth of an old Columbia. Let’s be serious, the 1980s –- unlike the three decades that preceded them — were not known for the naturalness of their recordings. A few would make our Top 100 list (Let’s Dance springs to mind) but the pool of available candidates is shallow, not wide and deep like that of the decades before, in which so many records sound so good we could not begin to squeeze them into a list limited to merely one hundred. Two hundred would easily make the cut, maybe more.

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The Young Rascals – Self-Titled

More of The Young Rascals 

More Rock and Pop

  • The Young Rascals’ self-titled debut LP hits the site with excellent grades from start to finish
  • We chanced upon an amazing sounding stereo original about ten years ago, and only ten years later (!) we finally had enough clean copies to do a proper shootout
  • We often say that the average copy of Album X is no great shakes — here’s a title where almost no copies sound good and the average pressing is awful
  • Big, rich, energetic, with tons of analog Tubey Magic, this blue and green Atlantic stereo pressing has exactly the right sound for this music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The Young Rascals is that rare example of a genuinely great album that got heard and played, and sold and sold. [It] couples a raw garage band sound with compelling white soul more successfully than just about any record since the Beatles’ Please Please Me.”

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Van Morrison – Astral Weeks

  • Outstanding sound throughout this vintage Green Label pressing, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades – quiet vinyl too for any record pressed in this era
  • This record lives or dies by the quality of its Tubey Magical Midrange, a sound modern records seem to be virtually incapable of reproducing
  • It takes us years to find enough clean copies to do a shootout – these originals are not sitting in the bins at your local store anymore, they’re displayed behind the counter for a hundred bucks or more a pop (and more than two hundred on ebay)
  • 5 stars: “Astral Weeks is a justified entry in pop music’s pantheon. It is unlike any record before or since; it mixes together the very best of postwar popular music in an emotional outpouring cast in delicate, subtle musical structures.”

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in exceptionally clean shape. Most of the will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG

I don’t think there’s too much I can tell you about Astral Weeks that’s going to convince you to buy it or not. It’s obviously one of the man’s (many) masterpieces, his most unique and original contribution to the music of his time, and one of the most beloved albums in his canon.

This 60s LP has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

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Joe Cocker – Joe Cocker!

More Joe Cocker

  • Consistently stronger material than his debut – did Cocker ever release an album with more good songs than this one?
  • Take a gander at this track listing: “Dear Landlord,” “Bird on the Wire,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” “Something,” “Delta Lady,” “Darling Be Home Soon” – and there’s plenty more where those came from
  • Records like these are getting awfully hard to find these days in audiophile playing condition, which explains why you so rarely see them on the site
  • 4 stars: “Cocker mixed elements of late-’60s English blues revival recordings (John Mayall, et al.) with the more contemporary sounds of soul and pop; a sound fused in no small part by producer and arranger Leon Russell, whose gumbo mix figures prominently on this eponymous release and the infamous Mad Dogs & Englishmen live set.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1969, one that should have a place in any audiophile collection’s pop and rock section

This is a surprisingly good recording. Cocker and his band — with more than a little help from Leon Russell — run through a collection of songs from the likes of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and the Beatles, and when you hear it on a White Hot Stamper copy it’s hard to deny the appeal of this timeless music.

This album is a ton of fun, with Cocker and his band putting their spin on some of the best songs of the era. You need energy, space and full, rich, Tubey Magical sound if this music is going to sound right, and on those counts these copies deliver. (more…)

Boz Scaggs – Self-Titled

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Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Boz Scaggs

  • Boasting two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, this vintage copy was giving us the sound we were looking for on Scaggs’s self-titled LP
  • Clean and clear and open are nice qualities to have, but rich and full are harder to come by on this record – but here they are!
  • ANALOG at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…the record is pitch-perfect, from the Jimmie Rodgers cover ‘Waiting for a Train’ and the folky ‘Look What I Got!’ to the extended 12-minute blues workout ‘Loan Me a Dime,’ which functions as much as a showcase for a blazing Duane Allman as it does for Boz.”

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Elvis Presley / From Elvis in Memphis

More Elvis Presley

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Elvis Presley

  • Solid Double Plus (A++) sound brings Presley’s 1969 release to life on this vintage RCA pressing
  • Both sides here are superb – big, full-bodied and Tubey Magical yet exceptionally clear, spacious and open
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you own whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market, made from who-knows-what tapes
  • 5 stars: “…one of the greatest white soul albums (and one of the greatest soul albums) ever cut, with brief but considerable forays into country, pop, and blues as well. Presley sounds rejuvenated artistically throughout the dozen cuts off the original album, and he’s supported by the best playing and backup singing of his entire recording history.”

Of the handful of Elvis albums to ever make it to the site, this is clearly the critics’ favorite, and one listen will tell you why. This is the album that single-handedly revived Elvis’ fortunes, setting the stage for his record-breaking series of shows in Las Vegas doing pretty much the type of music he had recorded for it.

The next year he would go on tour for the first time since 1957 (!)

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