Jazz, Piano & Vibes

Thelonious Monk / Big Band and Quartet

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More Large Group Jazz Recordings of Interest

  • This amazingly well-recorded big band concert from 1963 returns to the site for only the second time in years, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this black print Stereo 360 pressing
  • Both of these sides are doing just about everything right, with sound that is remarkably rich, Tubey Magical, spacious and lively
  • Monk alternates between a 10 piece Big Band and his standard quartet, with magical results
  • 5 stars: “This is one of pianist-composer Thelonious Monk’s greatest recordings and represents a high point in his career.”

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Cecil Taylor Quartet – Looking Ahead!

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

  • Looking Ahead! is back on the site for only the second time in years, here with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound from start to finish – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • We play a lot of vintage Contemporary recordings, but this one surprised us right from the first track with sound that stands out — this on a label that produced many of our favorite standout recordings
  • Both of these sides are clean, clear, and transparent, with an abundance of energy and wonderful clarity in the mids and highs
  • This is not an easy record to come by, as evident by how long it took us to get our most recent shootout going, and they usually don’t sound anywhere near this good when you manage to track one down
  • 4 1/2 stars: “It’s an amazing document of a talent fairly straining at the reins, a meteor about to burst onto the jazz scene and render it forever changed.”

These Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings have top-quality sound that’s often surprisingly close to our White Hots, but they sell at substantial discounts to our Shootout Winners, making them a relative bargain in the world of Hot Stampers (“relative” meaning relative considering the prices we charge). We feel you get what you pay for here at Better Records, and if ever you don’t agree, please feel free to return the record for a full refund, no questions asked.

This vintage Contemporary 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.

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The Three / Self-Titled (45 RPM)

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • Amazing sound throughout this Japanese import pressing, with both sides earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • 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 the 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
  • Some of the other records we’ve discovered with top jazz piano sound can be found here
  • More amazing sounding piano recordings, of every kind of music, can be found here

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), our 33 RPM pressings are your best bet.

If you want absolutely amazing, mind-blowing, you-are-there sound, a Hot Stamper 45 is the only 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. Very one of those six tracks is brilliantly arranged and performed (if you have the right takes of course; more about that later).

This album checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

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Oscar Peterson – A Tribute To My Friends

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Another Top Pablo Recording

  • A superb copy with Double Plus (A++) sound throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Mastered by Joe Gastwirt at the JVC cutting center, this has the punchy, lively sound that some of the better Pablos are known for
  • The piano reproduction is especially clean, clear and lively, with solid weight down low, just the way we like it
  • 4 stars: “With the assistance of guitarist Joe Pass, bassist Niels Pedersen and drummer Martin Drew, Peterson sounds inspired on such themes as “Blueberry Hill,” “Stuffy,” “Cottontail” and even “A Tisket, a Tasket.”
  • More reviews and commentaries for recordings on Pablo
  • More reviews and commentaries for the music of Oscar Peterson

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Ramsey Lewis – For Some Titles We Go 17 Years Between Shootouts

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More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • Sun Goddess is back and sounds better than ever on this vintage Columbia pressing with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from start to finish – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • The sound is huge, spacious, lively, transparent and punchy – this is jazz fusion that really rocks
  • The last time we reviewed this album was all the way back in 2005!
  • “Sun Goddess is also something of a stealth Earth, Wind & Fire album, as it features most of the key players from that band, and bears echoes of EW&F’s jazzier, more atmospheric side”
  • 4 stars: “Pianist Ramsey Lewis first came to fame as the purveyor of swinging soul-jazz in the mid-’60s [but] Sun Goddess…is miles away from the finger-snapping supper club sounds of “The In Crowd.” Lewis had transformed himself into a jazz fusion funkateer, riffing on electric piano and synthesizer amid arrangements that meld jazz with funk, R&B, and yes, even touches of progressive rock.”

Ramsey Lewis meets Earth Wind and Fire.

This is a bright recording and it’s supposed to sound that way, just like EWF’s recordings. The music is full of energy and lots of fun. This isn’t real jazz; it’s pop jazz. It’s produced by Maurice White and it even has Phillip Bailey on vocals.

You can’t get much more Earth, Wind and Firey than that.

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Dave Brubeck – Time Out

More of the Music of Dave Brubeck

  • This Six-Eye Stereo pressing boasts out of this world Demo Disc sound
  • Time Out captures the ambience and huge space of Columbia’s studio like practically no other record has (with a little reverb thrown in for good measure)
  • A knockout pressing of Brubeck’s astonishingly well recorded Jazz Classic, this is a record that belongs in every audiophile’s collection
  • Early stereo LPs in clean condition like this one are getting awfully tough to find nowadays…
  • “Buoyed by a hit single in Desmond’s ubiquitous Take Five, Time Out became an unexpectedly huge success, and still ranks as one of the most popular jazz albums ever. That’s a testament to Brubeck and Desmond’s abilities as composers, because Time Out is full of challenges both subtle and overt — it’s just that they’re not jarring.”
  • If you’re a fan of Brubeck and company, this 1959 album belongs in your collection, along with quite a few others from the classic jazz era

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Andre Previn & His Pals – West Side Story

Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Contemporary Jazz

  • Previn’s stellar piano trio finally returns to the site with jazzy interpretations of the best songs from West Side Story, with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout
  • You win shootouts with this kind of All Tube Analog sound – warm, natural, lively and clear, with solid support down low, a nicely extended top and a huge three-dimensional soundfield
  • We had pressings on the black label, on the green label, and on the yellow label, and the person who ends up with this fantastic copy will know for sure which label sounds best, because he will be the owner of the best sounding copy
  • Andre Previn and his friends take eight classic tunes from West Side Story – it would be hard to imagine having better material to work with in a jazz setting
  • 4 stars: “The last of a series of showtune albums recorded by the trio finds the all-star group focusing on the music of West Side Story… As usual, the melodies are treated respectfully yet swingingly, and Andre Previn in particular excels in this setting. Recommended.”

One of Previn’s best piano trio records, this album was recorded in 1959 by Roy DuNann while at the height of his engineering powers.

The two Must Owns from his many sessions at Contemporary are this album and Bells Are Ringing. We are not aware of any of his jazz piano albums on other labels being much better than passable and most are not worth picking up at any price. Believe me, we’ve tried. The one exception I can think of is Four to Go on Columbia. It’s pretty good. Not in the same league as his Contemporary recordings by a long shot, but better than most of his output from the ’60s.

For both the albums mentioned above the Black Label originals in stereo are the best way to go, but finding them in clean audiophile playing condition is no walk in the park, which is the main reason it takes us about four years to do a shootout for either title.

The Piano Is Key

On the best copies of the album, the sound of the piano is solid, full-bodied, with both weight and warmth, just like the real thing. The copies of the album with a piano that sounded lean or hard always ended up having problems with the other instruments as well. (This should not be surprising; the piano was designed to be the single instrument most capable of reproducing the sound of an entire orchestra.)

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Horace Silver – Song For My Father

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More Blue Note Albums

  • This Van Gelder-mastered Blue Note reissue pressing (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in years) boasts solid grades from start to finish
  • Tubey Magic is the key to the sound of the better pressings, and we guarantee this one has the kind of Tubey Magic that no modern pressing of the last 40 years can offer the audiophile community
  • Energetic, clear and spacious, as well as relaxed and full-bodied (thanks, RVG!) – this pressing was a step up over most other copies we played
  • An incredibly tough album to find with the right sound and decent surfaces, but the music makes it worth all the time and trouble we spent finding this outstanding copy
  • 5 stars: “Horace Silver’s signature LP and the peak of a discography already studded with classics. Silver was always a master at balancing jumping rhythms with complex harmonies for a unique blend of earthiness and sophistication, and Song for My Father has perhaps the most sophisticated air of all his albums…”

The leading edge transients on the horns here are excellent, with the pinched quality you hear on some tracks kept to a minimum. The whole of the ensemble is transparently clear.

The drums on this record have a wonderful quality: they actually sound like hollowed out, three-dimensional objects that are being struck in order to make them resonate — which is kind of what they are — the opposite of the cardboard drums you hear on bad rock records. (We hear a lot of drums on old rock records that sound like somebody is slapping a corrugated shipping carton with a mallet. You lose a lot of points if you’re a record with that sound.)

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Herbie Hancock – Maiden Voyage

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • A Maiden Voyage like you’ve never heard, with solid Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this vintage Blue Note pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in many years)
  • Accept no substitutes! Nobody these days knows how to make a record sound as good as this one does
  • Both of these sides are remarkably clean, clear, open, and transparent, with jazz energy to spare – thanks, RVG!
  • You will hear cleaner, smoother, sweeter upper mids and a more extended top
  • 5 stars: “Maiden Voyage…finds Herbie Hancock at a creative peak. In fact, it’s arguably his finest record of the 60s, reaching a perfect balance between accessible, lyrical jazz and chance-taking hard bop.”

We recently finished a big Maiden Voyage shootout and too many copies we played left us cold and bored; this one kept us engaged throughout. It’s got some of the silkiest highs and the breathiest brass we’ve heard for this album. Most of the other copies we played this against didn’t come close to the richness, sweetness, and warmth we heard here.

One Of The Great Blue Notes

This is one of the greatest Blue Note jazz records of all time — 5 big stars in the All Music Guide, which should surprise no one. Freddie Hubbard on this album is nothing short of astonishing.

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Dave Brubeck – Anything Goes!

More Dave Brubeck

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this early Stereo 360 pressing
  • This is a must own for fans of the later Brubeck albums (the ones in standard time signatures) or simply for those who want to hear these marvelous Cole Porter songs played with style by musicians of consummate skill
  • “…the music often swings hard, pianist Brubeck and altoist Paul Desmond take several excellent solos and bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello really push the group.”

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