Genre – Jazz – Latin / Bossa Nova

A.C. Jobim – Ramone and Ogerman Work Their Magic

More of the Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim

Although I have been a big fan of this album at least since the 90s, it took us years to get around to doing a shootout. We were pleasantly surprised at just how well recorded this album is.

Credit engineer Phil Ramone for correctly capturing the sound of every instrument here: the guitars, piano, flutes, strings, drums, percussion instruments — everything has the natural timbre of the real thing. I used to think this recording erred on the bright side, but not the Hot Stamper copies. They are tonally Right On The Money. (When the balance lacks lower midrange the sound gets lean, which causes the strings to seem brighter than they really are, a not uncommon problem with some of the pressings we played.)

Claus Ogerman

The string arrangements by the phenomenally talented producer/arranger Claus Ogerman surely contribute a great deal to the beauty of this music, and much of its “feel.”. This is the man who made Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim such an original and powerful departure in Sinatra’s body of work. He continued to work with Jobim on a number of follow-up albums, including A Certain Mr. Jobim (1967) and Wave (1967). From 1963-67 he arranged some 60-70 albums for Creed Taylor’s Verve and then went on to work with him extensively at CTI.

And what would “Breezin’” be without Ogerman’s lush strings? Not to be too uinkind, but probably just another George Benson album.

His Best Album

I’m a HUGE fan of Jobim’s music. In my opinion this is the best album he ever made. If you find yourself loving these syncopated beats, you owe it to yourself to check out Sergio Mendes’ music. He did wonderful arrangements of many of Jobim’s songs, and the sound (at least on the Hot Stamper pressings) is out of this world! Astrud Gilberto does wonderful versions too, but her records are very difficult to find in audiophile condition. Believe me, we’ve tried.

Many Distinct Pressings

We’ve played a ton of different versions, including imports, originals, reissues (all stereo), and one lone mono, which was so ridiculously bad sounding we tossed it right out of the competition and into the trade pile.

For those of you playing along at home, we are not going to be much help to you in finding your own Hot Stampers. Every version had strengths and weaknesses and all are represented in the listings we will be putting up on the site.

(more…)

A.C. Jobim – The Composer of ’Desafinado’ Plays

More Antonio Carlos Jobim

More Bossa Nova

  • You’ll find stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound throughout this original Verve Stereo pressing – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Both of these sides are clean, clear and dynamic yet still full of rich, warm 1963 Tubey Magical Analog sound
  • We love the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim here at Better Records and we think this album is his best – no serious Jazz Collection should be without it
  • Marks and 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: “A dozen songs, each one destined to become a standard — an astounding batting average.”

We’re big fans of Jobim here at Better Records, and this pressing was close to the best from our recent shootout. We had a wonderful time listening to a big pile of pressings — the sound (and music) were out of this world. We were shocked at just how well recorded this album is.

(more…)

Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66 – Stillness (with Correct Polarity)

More Sergio Mendes

More Bossa Nova

  • An excellent A&M pressing of this incredibly well-recorded and criminally-overlooked LP with Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them throughout
  • Both sides of this copy are in correct polarity, so no need to worry about switching the polarity, as we must do with many of the copies – just drop the needle and enjoy!
  • The soundfield has a three-dimensional quality that will absolutely blow you away (assuming you have big speakers and like to turn them up good and loud)
  • Wonderfully present and breathy vocals from the lovely ladies in Sergio’s band – they provide most of the audiophile  appeal (and all of the sex appeal), and we know of nothing else like them on record
  • A permanent member of our Top 100 and Demo Disc par excellence
  • 4 stars: “Stillness is a concept album — the title tune opens and closes it in moody stillness — and a transition piece all at once…. Overlooked in its day, Stillness is the great sleeper album of Sergio Mendes’ first A&M period.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1970, which just happens to be a great year for Rock and Pop Music, maybe the greatest of them all

We figure we’re about due for a thank you note from Mr. Mendes, because we’ve turned a huge number of audiophiles into die-hard fans of this album. It’s easy to see why when you play a copy that sounds like this. All of the qualities we look for on this album are right here.

If you are looking for DEMO DISC QUALITY SOUND with music every bit as wonderful, look no further — this is the record for you.

If I had one song to play to show what my stereo can really do, “For What It’s Worth” on a Hot Stamper copy would probably be my choice. I can’t think of any material that sounds better. It’s amazingly spacious and open, yet punchy and full bodied the way only vintage analog recordings ever are. This one being from 1970 fits the bill nicely.

Side two of this album can be one of THE MOST MAGICAL sides of ANY record — when you’ve got a killer copy. I don’t know of any other record like it. It seems to be in a class of its own. It’s an excellent test disc as well. All tweaks and equipment changes and room treatments must pass the Stillness test.

To fail to make this record sound better is to fail completely. The production is so dense, and so difficult to reproduce properly, that only recently have I begun to hear just how good this record can sound. There is still plenty to discover locked in these grooves, and all of us here at Better Records enthusiastically accept the challenge to find all the sounds that Sergio created in the studio, locked away in the 50+ year old vinyl.

(more…)

Question – Do the “wrong stampers” sometimes win shootouts?

mendestill_depth_1102533608More of the Music of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66

Soren has some questions about shootouts and our White Hot Stamper pressing of Stillness. His questions are indented, our answers are not.

Tom,

Does it ever bug you to realize, maybe one or two years down the road and with (as Tom mentions) better playback/cleaning technology, that stampers which you dismissed in a shootout turn out to win the next one, meaning that you could have let many possible hot stampers go?

Soren,

We talk about that a bit here:

But being bugged by it does no good. It is a reality that must be accepted.

Because we know how easy it is to be wrong, or, more precisely, to not know everything we would like to know, we never stop doing research and development for the titles we sell.

We tell people all the time, go play your heavy vinyls and half-speeds that you haven’t played recently. If you’ve made improvements to your system, they will often start to show themselves to be not as good sounding as you remember, and that means you are making progress.

I was actually reaching out to you to inquire whether the super hot Sergio Mendes Stillness that I bought from you a couple of years ago is the version with the phase reversed on side 2?

I ask because I don’t recall a phase issue on this specific title was ever mentioned on your site back when I bought it (i would have remembered, I think) so maybe you only found out recently?

Side 1 on the record sounds better to me than side 2. The matrix on this side 2 ends in “M3”.

Both M2 and M3 are in correct polarity. M3 used to win shootouts by the way. For the longest time, at least ten years, I thought M3 was the ultimate side two.

Having done many, many shootouts since then, along with making many changes to everything involving the cleaning and playing of records, we believe Super Hot (2+) is about the highest grade any M stamper can earn.

The fact that you like an M2 pressing better than the Hot Stamper you bought from us is not a polarity issue. It is most probably a system-dependent issue.

Your stereo is different from ours. Our stereo probably would prefer the M3 we sent you, and your stereo likes the M2 you have. It’s really not much more complicated than that.

Finally concerning this magic Stillness white hot stamper (and don’t worry, I am not going to ask you which one it is because you wouldn’t tell me, and you shouldn’t, because it’s a trade secret that you worked hard for and besides I am probably better off with my own super hot copy where I don’t have to bother about that phase issue on side 2).

But out of curiosity: Has this “magic” stamper/pressing turned out to be great on other Sergio Mendes records also (and thereby defied your previous knowledge and caused you to evaluate your game on those titles also), or was it simply a magical one-off revelation with Stilness?

Part of the reason we were wrong about Stillness is that the best copies broke the rule we tend to use about stampers for A&M albums. In this case, the “wrong” stampers turned out to be the best! The stampers we tend to like for most A&M records, the “right stampers,” are not the ones that currently win shootouts.

But that’s what shootouts are for, so that we take our biases and previous judgments out of the search and just go with what actually does sound the best.

Haha!
How beautiful actually, that the “wrong” stampers turned out to be the best on this one title. Records are nice that way. You must always keep on your toes. Thank you for taking the time to answer my three questions.

Best regards,
Søren

Soren,

Staying on your toes is indeed the name of the game when it comes to records. With every change to your system, the record you used to like the best could turn out to be second-rate compared to the record you used to think was second-rate but is now first-rate.

This, of course, drives most audiophiles crazy, so they ignore or downplay the possibility.

Being in the shootout business means we have no way to avoid these realities, which is why it is so easy for us to accept them.

The amateurs and professionals alike who review records for audiophiles want there to be clear-cut answers for every album they write about. Uncertainty and trade-offs upset them no end.

We recognized twenty years ago that the empirical pursuit of record knowledge, practiced scientifically, must be fundamentally Incomplete, Imperfect, and Provisional, and that is never going to change no matter how upsetting anyone may find it.

Thanks very much for writing.

TP

Stillness checks off quite a few of our favorite boxes here at Better Records:

(more…)

Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto / Getz-Gilberto on Japanese Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

More Reviews and Commentaries for Japanese Pressings

Sonic Grade: C

This is a Minty looking Verve Japanese Import LP. It’s not competitive with the best domestic pressings, but you could definitely do worse. Trying to find domestic copies that aren’t trashed is getting harder every day, so if you’re a click and pop counter, this copy may be the ticket.

Stan Getz is a truly great tenor saxophonist, the cool school’s most popular player. This LP is all the evidence you need. Side 1 has those wonderfully relaxed Brazilian tempos and the smooth sax stylings of Stan Getz.

Side two for me is even more magical. Getz fires up and lets loose some of his most emotionally intense playing. These sad, poetic songs are about feeling more than anything else and Getz communicates that so completely you don’t have to speak Portugese to know what Jobim is saying. Call it cool jazz with feeling.

A Must Own Jazz Record

We consider this album a Masterpiece. It’s a recording that should be part of any serious Jazz Collecton.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Further Reading

Antonio Carlos Jobim – Wave

More Antonio Carlos Jobim

More Bossa Nova

  • Wave FINALLY returns to the site after about a ten year absence, here with excellent Double Plus (A++) sound throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are remarkably full-bodied, natural and present, with tight bass and lots of space around all of the players
  • We love the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim here at Better Records and we think this album is one of his best — no serious jazz collection should be without it
  • 5 stars: “When Creed Taylor left Verve/MGM for his own label under the auspices of A&M, he quickly signed Antonio Carlos Jobim and they picked up right where they left off with this stunningly seductive record, possibly Jobim’s best.”

This vintage A&M/CTI pressing 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.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

(more…)

Sergio Mendes + Psych + Your Mind Will Be Blown

mendestill_depth_1102533608More of the Music of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66

More Albums with Key Tracks for Critical Listening

This commentary was written sometime around 2010.

If you are looking for DEMO DISC QUALITY SOUND with music every bit as wonderful, look no further — this is the record for you.

If I had one song to play to show what my stereo can really do, For What It’s Worth on a Hot Stamper copy would probably be my choice. I can’t think of any material that sounds better. It’s amazingly spacious and open, yet punchy and full-bodied the way only vintage analog recordings ever are.

This one being from 1970 fits the bill nicely.

Side two of this album can be one of THE MOST MAGICAL sides of ANY record — when you’ve got a killer copy. I don’t know of any other record like it. It seems to be in a class of its own. It’s an excellent test disc as well. All tweaks and equipment changes and room treatments must pass the Stillness test.

To fail to make this record sound better is to fail completely. The production is so dense, and so difficult to reproduce properly, that only recently have I begun to hear just how good this record can sound. There is still plenty to discover locked in these grooves, and I enthusiastically accept the challenge to find all the sounds that Sergio created in the studio, locked away in the 40 year old vinyl.

(more…)

Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto / Getz-Gilberto

More Bossa Nova

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

  • A vintage Verve Stereo pressing of this Brazilian-flavored cool jazz classic with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a superb Double Plus (A++) side one
  • An impossibly difficult album to find in audiophile playing condition – we sunk a lot of time and dough into finding this copy, and it ain’t all that quiet, but it’s about as quiet as we can find them on vintage vinyl
  • If you want to hear this music right, the only way we know to do that is to get hold of as many copies as you can, clean them and play them and hope for the best, our business model in a nutshell
  • These sides have wonderful transparency and lovely presence – Astrud’s vocals sound breathy and Getz’s sax is full bodied, with fast transients
  • 5 stars: “This music has nearly universal appeal; it’s one of those rare jazz records about which the purist elite and the buying public are in total agreement. Beyond essential.”
  • You may be surprised to learn that the right reissues of this album consistently win the shootouts, something we’ve know for many years
  • Not that it does us much good, as they are so hard to find that our last shootout was, I kid you not, 2012
  • If I were to compile a list of The Best Non-Classical Albums from 1964, this album would obviously have to be on it

We have been trying to find great sound (on reasonable surfaces) for this album for years — I kid you not — which is why this is one of only a very small handful of Hot Stamper versions to hit the site in, oh, about ten years.

We have fired up this shootout multiple times since 2012 and been left empty-handed each and every time until the last go-around. We have sunk an insane amount of dough into trying to get a few killer copies because we love the music so much, but we just haven’t had much to show for it. If you love this Brazilian-flavored cool jazz as much as we do, you might want to snap this one up because who knows when or if we’ll find another one.

(more…)

Stan Getz – Live and Learn

More of the Music of Stan Getz

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

A classic case of We Was Wrong.

Many years ago we had written these silly lines in a review:

Of course, you would never know this is a good recording by playing the average domestic copy. This Japanese LP is one of the few pressings that can show you that this wonderful smoky night club jazz LP really can have Demo Disc sound.

Ridiculous, right? Well, at the time we believed it. Now our understanding is quite a bit more sophisticated, in the sense that the Japanese pressing is clearly better than many originals, but certainly not all of them.

More importantly, there are amazing sounding domestic reissues of the album that we’ve auditioned over the last ten years or so that really blew our minds and helped to set an even higher standard for the sound of Getz Au Go Go.

Our old story:

Way back in 2005 I discussed this very subject when listing a sealed copy:

There are pressing variations for this title on Japanese vinyl, and there’s no way to know what this one sounds like but all of them are better than any other pressing I know of. As I played the open copy we have listed on the site (1/12/05) I couldn’t help but marvel at the quality of the sound.

These days we would crack open a sealed one, clean it up and shoot it out with any others we could lay our hands on, because finding a copy with sound like this is a positive THRILL.

I’m no fan of Japanese pressings as readers of this Web site know very well, but the Japanese sure got this one right!

The domestic copies of this album are mediocre at best — there’s simply no real top end to be found on any Verve pressing I have ever heard.

The top end is precisely where the magic is! Astrud Gilberto’s breathy voice needs high frequencies to sound breathy.

Gary Burton’s vibes need high frequencies to emerge from the mix, otherwise you can hardly hear them.

And Stan Getz’s sax shouldn’t sound like it’s being played under a blanket.

The only version of this album that allows you to hear all the players right is a Japanese pressing, and then only when you get a good one.

That was our understanding in 2005, after being seriously into audio and records for 30 years, as a professional audiophile record dealer for 18 of them. Clearly we had a lot to learn, and we were on the road to learning it, having embarked on our first real Hot Stamper shootout just the year before. (We had been doing them less formally since the ’90s of course. It was only in 2004 that we were able to do them with the requisite scientific protocols in place.)

In 2005, we simply did not have the cleaning system or the playback system capable of showing us what was wrong with the sound of the Japanese pressing we were so impressed by at the time.

And we couldn’t clean and play the standard Verve pressings right either.

We were unable to move forward. The technologies we needed to get to the truth had not been invented yet.

The Revolutions in Audio of the last twenty years are are responsible for allowing us to get the domestic pressings — originals and reissues — to sound much better than the Japanese imports we mistakenly thought were superior.

When I got started in audio in the early- to mid- ’70s, the following important elements of the modern stereo system did not exist:

  • Stand-alone phono stages.
  • Modern cabling and power cords.
  • Vibration controlling platforms for turntables and equipment.
  • Synchronous Drive Systems for turntable motors.
  • Carbon fiber mats that sit on top of massive metal turntable platters.
  • Highly adjustable tonearms (for VTA, etc.) with extremely delicate adjustments and precision bearings.
  • And there wasn’t much in the way of innovative room treatments like the Hallographs we use.

And one of the most important revolutions is not a playback technology per se, but makes much better playback possible:

  • Modern record cleaning machines and fluids.

A lot of things had to change in order for us to reproduce records at the level that is required for us to do our record shootouts and be confident about our findings, and we pursued every one of them about as far as time and money allowed.

Practically every one of the 5000 listings on this blog is a testament to the changes brought about by those hard-won advancements.

For a further discussion of these issues, please click here.

Further Reading

Frank Sinatra – Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

More Frank Sinatra

More Antonio Carlos Jobim

  • Boasting superb sound from start to finish, this vintage stereo pressing of Sinatra and Jobim’s sublime collaboration will be very hard to beat
  • The presence and three-dimensional space of the recording have the power to transport the Chairman of the Board and his Brazilian buddy right into your listening room
  • This is a magical album from start to finish, one of a handful of a Must Own Sinatra releases, and my personal favorite of all his recordings
  • 4 1/2 stars: “After a few plays, the album begins to slowly work its way underneath a listener’s skin, and it emerges as one of his most rewarding albums of the ’60s.”
  • 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,” with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. This is a good example of a record audiophiles should make an effort to get to know better

This is, in our opinion, one of the two best sounding Sinatra album on Reprise (the other being September of My Years from 1965). The recording is so rich, sweet, and Tubey Magical, you would think it was prime Capitol period Sinatra — but it’s not, obviously; it just sounds that way.

If you like romantic music, you will be hard-pressed to find a better album than this one. The song “Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars” perfectly encapsulates the mood of this album. My favorite track here is “Dindi.” Sinatra is the king of lost loves, and the song “Dindi” offers him another opportunity for regret. Nobody does it better than Frank. It’s a cliche to say he wears his heart on his sleeve, but the man made a career out of it. If the cliche fits…

(more…)