Soul / RnB / Reggae, etc.

Stevie Wonder – Fulfillingness’ First Finale

More Stevie Wonder

More Soul, Blues and R&B

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  • An early Tamla pressing of Stevie Wonder’s 1974 soul masterpiece with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “tubey bass and vox”…”so full and rich and 3D”…”no smear or grain” (side one)…”huge and rich piano and vox”…”big and weighty and tubey”
  • Finding the right balance between Tubey Magical richness and transparency is the trick, and we think this copy strikes that balance practically as well as any pressing we’ve heard
  • “Boogie On Reggae Woman” and “You Haven’t Done Nothing” were the big hits but the other tracks on the album are where the real Stevie Wonder magic can be found
  • 4 1/2 stars [but we give it 5]: “The songs and arrangements are the warmest since Talking Book, and Stevie positively caresses his vocals on this set, encompassing the vagaries of love, from dreaming of it (‘Creepin”) to being bashful of it (‘Too Shy to Say’) to knowing when it’s over (‘It Ain’t No Use’).”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Fulfillingness’ First Finale is a good example of a record most audiophiles don’t know well but should.
  • If you’re a Stevie Wonder fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title from 1974 is clearly one of his best, his two best in our opinion, just a tad behind his masterpiece, Inner Visions

We’re big fans of Stevie here at Better Records, but it’s always a challenge to find good sound for his albums. Tons of great songs here, including the ones everybody knows, Boogie On Reggae Woman and You Haven’t Done Nothing. Both sound WONDERFUL on this pressing.

But…

For the first time in my life, over the course of the last ten years or so I’ve really gotten to know the album well, having found a CD at a local store to play in the car (and now I also have a cassette to play in my Walkman while working out).

I’ve listened to Fulfillingness’ First Finale scores of times. I now see that it is some of the best work Stevie Wonder ever did, right up there with Innervisions and ahead of any other Stevie Wonder album, including Talking Book and Songs in the Key of Life.

The best songs on the album to my mind are the quieter, more heartfelt and emotional ones, not the rockers or funky workouts. My personal favorites on side one are: Smile Please. Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away, Too Shy to Say and Creepin’, which, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, are all the songs that weren’t hits.

On side two the two slowest songs are the ones I now like best: It Ain’t No Use & They Won’t Go When I Go (famously and brilliantly covered by George Michael on Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 in 1990). (more…)

The Best of Earth Wind & Fire – A Real Treat for Us Audiophiles

More of the Music of Earth, Wind and Fire

More Recordings by George Massenburg

  • Both of these sides boast unrivaled sound and pop soul energy that is BIGGER and RICHER than anything you’ve ever heard
  • Tubey Magical, rich, smooth, sweet – everything that we listen for in a great record is on display for everyone to hear (everyone with audiophile equipment that is)
  • With a big speaker system turned up good and loud, the first track is simply mind-boggling
  • 5 stars: “The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1 still ranks as a strong encapsulation of EWF the funk innovators. The singles gathered here constitute some of the richest, most sophisticated music the funk movement ever produced…”
  • This is a personal favorite of yours truly, and a Must Own album from 1978, which, in hindsight, turned out to be a surprisingly good year for music

The first track on the album is “Got To Get You Into My Life” and it sounds incredible on this copy.

What a song. And it’s not on any other EWF album. Three points to make here:

  1. It’s from the real master tape;
  2. It happens to have Demo Disc quality sound, which means:
  3. You need this record in your collection.

Since this is a “best of,” every song is a hit and every one of them will have you singin’ yourself hoarse. If you like pop-soul music at all, you have to like these guys. And these songs. Every one is a gem of popcraft, with arrangements as tight as the sequined white suits the band members wore.

Finding The Good Ones

The Shootout Winning pressings sound amazing, with big-as-life Demo Disc quality sound. Lucky for us, EWF was always an audiophile-oriented band. They produced some of the best 70s multi-track recordings around.

With a big speaker system turned up good and loud the first track is simply mind-boggling. It’s some of the best sound we have heard around here in weeks, and we play a lot of good sounding records!

As you can imagine, most copies of this album leave a lot to be desired. Most were, to one degree or another, dull, smeary, opaque, gritty or shrill.

Our Hot Stampers, on the other hand, depending on how hot they are, will give you the sound you’re looking for. If you’re a fan of big horns, with jump-out-of-the-speakers sound, this is the album for you. Some of the best R&B-pop brass ever recorded can be found here — full-bodied, powerful, fast, dynamic and tonally correct.

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Stevie Wonder – Songs In The Key Of Life

More of the Music of Stevie Wonder

  • Tubey Magical Richness, with the immediacy and transparency too few copies offer – here you will find the qualities that are essential to getting the best sound from Stevie’s magnum opus
  • A true musical genius (according to Eddie Murphy) here joins forces with other legends including Herbie Hancock, George Benson, and Deniece Williams
  • 5 stars: “…Stevie Wonder’s longest, most ambitious collection of songs… that — just as the title promised — touched on nearly every issue under the sun, and did it all with ambitious (even for him), wide-ranging arrangements and some of the best performances of Wonder’s career.”
  • Songs In the Key of Life is a Grammy Winning Must Own album from 1976,

Double albums are usually very tedious work for us, but this one had us smiling and tapping our feet all the way through to the end of the last side. I’m sure you don’t need a rundown of why this is such a great album, but the 5 star AMG review is an excellent read for those who want to be reminded. (more…)

Sade – Stronger Than Pride

More Soul, Blues and R&B

  • An original Epic import pressing (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in nineteen months) with solid Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This is probably the quietest copy to come out of our shootout — plenty of these had issues, including most of the best sounding pressings
  • This copy had more of the in-the-room vocal presence, note-like bass, and powerful dynamics we were looking for than most of the other pressings we played, many of which had exactly the same stampers
  • Forget the veiled, closed-in domestic pressings and whatever crappy Heavy Vinyl poseur may be in print – this copy will bring a living, breathing, oh-so-sultry Sade Adu (age 29) right into your very own listening room
  • “Sade demonstrated some intensity and fire on her third release… she had more animation in her delivery on such songs as ‘Haunt Me,’ ‘Give It Up,’ and the hit ‘Paradise.'”

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Muddy Waters – Folk Singer

  • Folk Singer returns to the site after a nearly three year hiatus, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides
  • This is an exceptional live-in-the-studio recording, with some of the best sound Muddy Waters ever managed to get down on tape
  • This early reissue is guaranteed to trounce any heavy vinyl pressing you’ve heard of the album or we’ll give you your money back and then some!
  • We admit we did not have an original mono pressing from 1964 to play – we’ve never seen one in audiophile playing condition and don’t expect to anytime soon
  • An even earlier stereo pressing than the one that won the shootout was ridiculously bright and compressed – not sure how much creedence we should give that information, but our best later pressing was so good, it will be very hard to beat no matter what you throw at it
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Muddy’s ‘unplugged’ album was cut in September of 1963 and still sounds fresh and vital today. It was Muddy simply returning to his original style on a plain acoustic guitar in a well-tuned room with Willie Dixon on string bass, Clifton James on drums, and Buddy Guy on second acoustic guitar.”
  • Although the Chess originals, now that we know which stampers to pick up, will always win our shootouts, the Artisan-mastered reissues still sound quite good to us, just not as good

This 1963 recording has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings rarely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

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The Fifth Dimension – The Age of Aquarius

More of The Fifth Dimension

More Sixties Pop

  • A vintage pressing that was doing pretty much everything right, with both sides earning excellent Double Plus (A++) grades – EXCEPTIONALLY quiet vinyl too
  • Tubey Magical sweetness and richness is key, and here you will find plenty of both, with virtually no sacrifice in presence, clarity or resolution
  • You can thank legendary engineer and producer Bones Howe, the man behind the amazing recordings of The Association, The Turtles and even the likes of Tom Waits(!)
  • 4 stars: “The Age of Aquarius, the 5th Dimension’s fourth album, was the group’s commercial peak… The 5th Dimension were the successors to the L.A. vocal group mantle passed on by The Mamas and the Papas… their work had a sheen and a zest that sometimes contrasted with the original tone of the material.”

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Roberta Flack – Chapter Two

More Roberta Flack

  • This early Atlantic pressing of Flack’s sophomore release (the first copy to hit the site in seventeen months) boasts a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a superb Double Plus (A++) side one
  • You will hear dramatically more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than practically all others, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • 4 stars: “A great album and the release that made Roberta Flack a major soul and R&B artist in the early 70s. She had a soft, compelling, alluring voice, and was able to convincingly switch gears and also convey anger, regret, hurt, or despair. Those who thought Flack was a one-hit wonder, or didn’t think she could make the transition from doing mostly jazz to other styles, were convinced otherwise.”

This is the best sounding Roberta Flack solo album to ever hit the site! (I say “solo” because the best copies of Flack / Hathaway are also incredible.)

We fell hard for this album when we started comparing these a while back but it usually takes us years to get a shootout going. Most in the bins are way too noisy for us to sell and few of them sound anything like this! If you’re a Roberta Flack fan or just enjoy amazing sounding soul music, you won’t want to miss out on this one!

It’s a matter of opinion, of course, but for my money the opener “Reverend Lee” is the best song on here. Roberta absolutely knocks that one outta the park and on a copy like this one it is magical.

If you want to hear some amazing-sounding 70s soul, you just found the Golden Ticket. Take this one home and I think you’ll be very impressed with both the sound and the music.

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Donny Hathaway Lives On Through His Masterful Live Album from 1972

More of the Music of Donny Hathaway

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues and R&B Albums Available Now

This live recording has YOU ARE THERE sound. The soundstage is wide and deep. It’s so natural, rich and transparent, what is there to fault? 

Within moments of the needle hitting the groove your speakers disappear and the music just flows into the room.

On the best original domestic pressings you can immediately understand and appreciate the honest, emotive quality of his singing that made Donny Hathaway the tremendous performer he was known to be.

I’ve been playing this record regularly since I first heard it back in the mid-’90s and even after twenty years it has never failed to thrill. If I could take only one soul album to my desert island, it would be this one, no doubt about it.

Listening Test — Don’t Be Fooled

Pay close attention to the audience chatter and clapping. Most copies, being compressed and veiled, have no hope of reproducing the handclaps and audience shout-outs correctly. Only those copies with transparency and presence let you “see” the crowd clearly.

But don’t be fooled by thinner, leaner sounding copies. There is tons of low end and lower midrange in this recording — it’s one of its prime strengths, and it’s what it would have sounded like if you were there — so make sure you have plenty going on in the lower frequencies before you start evaluating the audience participation.

Many audiophile recordings and remasterings are leaner and cleaner, producing a phony kind of transparency and detail at the expense of the fullness and richness of the original recording.

This is almost never a good thing.

Listening Test — Conga Energy

The copies where the congas are up-front, punchy and full-bodied were the ones where the rhythmic energy really carried the day. You know it when you hear it, that’s for sure. Most copies failed in this regard to some degree. If you have more than one copy, see if you don’t hear quite a bit more energy on the copies with more prominent, solid-sounding congas.

Congas, like drums and pianos, are good for testing specific pressings as well as stereo equipment.

If these instruments get lost in the mix, or sound smeary or thin, it’s usually fairly easy to hear those problems if you are listening for them. Most of what you will read on this blog is dedicated to helping you do that kind of listening.

The richness of analog is where much of its appeal lies. Lean drums, congas and pianos are what you more often than not get with CDs.

These three instruments are also exceptionally good for helping you to choose what kind of speakers to buy. (We recommend big ones with dynamic drivers.)

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Donny Hathaway – Donny Hathaway Live

More Donny Hathaway

More Soul, Blues, and R&B

  • Amazing sound for this classic live album, with both sides earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Hathaway and his band are on fire here playing for an enthusiastic small club audience – this is the best album the man ever made and a true Must Own
  • It takes us years to run across enough clean copies of this album to do a shootout, so don’t expect to see another one in audiophile playing condition on the site for a while
  • The relatively high price reflects the amount of work it takes us to find clean copies with the right stampers, as well as the frustration we feel when the records that come our way are just too noisy and groove damaged to be enjoyable
  • For those on a budget, buy the plain old Atlantic CD – it’s excellent
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Donny Hathaway’s 1972 Live album is one of the most glorious of his career… Live solidified Hathaway’s importance at the forefront of soul music.”
  • If you’re a Donny Hathaway fan, this is a Must Own Classic from 1972 that belongs in your collection.

This is an absolutely outstanding recording. The better copies capture the feeling of a live club like few recordings you’ve ever heard. The enthusiasm of the crowd, the honest, emotive performances, the superb musicianship — it’s all there on a Shootout Winning Hot Stamper copy like this.

I’ve been playing this record regularly since I first heard it back in the mid-90s. It never gets old. If I could take only one soul album to my desert island, it would be this one, no doubt about it.

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Tina Turner – Break Every Rule

More Tina Turner

More Women Who Rock

  • Break Every Rule makes its Hot Stamper debut with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this original Capitol pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • These sides are bigger and richer and have more of the rock solid energy that’s missing from the average copy
  • Turn this one up good and loud (which you can do when the sound is right) and you’ll have a living, breathing Tina Turner singing her heart out right in front of you
  • “Throughout Break Every Rule, Turner sounds as if she had the time, guidance and confidence to really master these songs. The result is a potent display of passion and control, and that alone would make this record worth discovering.” – Rolling Stone

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