Jazz, Piano & Vibes

Thelonious Monk – It’s Monk’s Time

More of the Music of Thelonious Monk

  • An incredible 360 label pressing of It’s Monk’s Time, with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it throughout
  • The piano is clear with a solid bottom end — we’re crazy for that sound, and Columbia knew exactly how to give it to us on these vintage pressings
  • 5 stars: “contains some of the best — if not arguably the best — studio sides that the pianist cut during his final years as a recording musician…”

There are three main elements that comprise the sound of a top quality It’s Monk’s Time: piano, sax and drums. You need all three to be balanced and correct. The mix is perfection on the best copies, with the piano, sax and drums clearly audible and in musically correct proportion to each other.

As we played the sides we noted how each of them fared.

  • PIANO. Clear, present and lively. Very high-rez.
  • SAX. Smooth, rich and tubey, with no RVG squawk to be found.
  • DRUMS (and BASS). Big drums in a big room. Listen to how solid that kick is. The standup bass is tight and note-like.

On the top copies, this is a truly superb sounding Thelonious Monk album. We can thank the brilliant Columbia engineers for their service to one of the authentic geniuses of jazz.

And if you own the Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl reissue, please buy this copy and hear what you’ve been missing.

(more…)

Dave Brubeck – Time In

More Dave Brubeck

  • Boasting superb Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last, this early 360 Stereo pressing will be very hard to beat
  • Big, full and lively, with bottom end weight and plenty of space around all the members of Dave’s classic quartet, this pressing of Time In (the last of the albums recorded in Brubeck’s “Time” series) proves that the engineering skills of all concerned at Columbia in 1966 were as strong as ever
  • This copy allows you to hear the clean, clear, solid, lively, smear-free piano that makes Brubeck’s records from the era such a delight for the analog devotee
  • 4 stars: “Though it is seldom celebrated as such, this is one of Brubeck’s finest moments on Columbia.”

This vintage Columbia 360 stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign 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 audience at the live show, this is the record for you. It’s what Live Jazz Recordings are known for — this sound. (more…)

Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Further Out in Mono

More Dave Brubeck

Mono or Stereo? Both Can Be Good

  • With superb Double Plus (A++) sound throughout, this vintage 6-Eye Mono pressing will be very hard to beat – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s extremely unlikely that any mono pressing will win a shootout, but just to keep us on our toes, we like to put some monos of famous albums in our shootouts from time to time to see how they measure up
  • This 2+ early pressing was the best of the bunch, and it’s guaranteed to beat the pants off any modern Heavy Vinyl pressing ever made
  • These sides are Tubey Magical, rich, full-bodied and warm, yet clear, lively and dynamic
  • This copy demonstrates the big-as-life Fred Plaut Columbia Sound at its best – better even than Time Out(!)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The selections, which range in time signatures from 5/4 to 9/8, are handled with apparent ease (or at least not too much difficulty) by pianist Brubeck, altoist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright, and drummer Joe Morello on this near-classic.”
  • Mono or stereo? Both can be good

Time Further Out is consistently more varied and, dare we say, more musically interesting than Time Out.

If you want to hear big drums in a big room, these Brubeck recordings will show you that sound better than practically any record we know of. These vintage recordings are full-bodied, spacious, three-dimensional, rich, sweet and warm in the best tradition of an All Tube Analog recording.

(more…)

Hampton Hawes – All Night Session, Vol. 2

More Hampton Hawes

More Jazz Recordings on Contemporary

  • These sides are doing everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have jazz quartet energy to rival the best recordings you may have heard
  • Tubey Magic, richness, sweetness, dead-on timbres from top to bottom – this is a textbook example of Contemporary sound at its best, thanks to the engineering brilliance of Roy DuNann and producer Lester Koenig
  • The second of three albums of material recorded by Hawes, guitarist Jim Hall, bassist Red Mitchell, and drummer Eldridge “Bruz” Freeman on the night of November 12 and into the morning of November 13, 1956
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Although Hampton Hawes spontaneously created five original tunes at this extraordinarily inspired date, everything on Vol. 2 comes directly out of the standard bop musician’s working repertoire.”
  • “It’s hard to put into words how good it feels to play jazz when it’s really swinging…I’ve reached a point where the music fills you up so much emotionally that you feel like shouting hallelujah — like people do in church when they’re converted to God. That’s the way I was feeling the night we recorded All Night Session!” – Hampton Hawes
  • If you’re a fan of jazz piano trios playing live-in-the-studio, this Contemporary from 1958 surely deserves a place in your collection.

(more…)

Count Basie / Kansas City 3 – For The Second Time

More Count Basie

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • A KILLER piano trio recording with superb sound on both sides of this original Pablo LP
  • It’s bigger, richer, more Tubey Magical, and has more extension on both ends of the spectrum than most other copies we played
  • A different, more compact sound for Basie, joined here as he is by two of the most sympathetic sidemen in jazz: Ray Brown on bass and Louis Bellson on drums
  • “[T]he main joy of this set is hearing Basie stretch out on such numbers as ‘If I Could Be with You,’ ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’ and ‘The One I Love,’ tunes he did not play much with his orchestra in this later period.”
  • Steer clear of the OJC of this title – it’s thin and opaque, the opposite of the sound you want

It’s a joy to hear Basie perform as a frontman, stretching out on tunes that were no doubt dear to him. Veterans of hundreds of sessions, Ray Brown and Louis Bellson are just as interesting as Basie, high praise.

Recorded by the legendary engineer Ed Greene (Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd – Jazz Samba) — that accounts for the exceptional sound.

Naturally we pick up all the Pablo Basie titles we can get our hands on these days, having had very good luck with a great many of them. When we dropped the needle on a copy of this one a few years back we were amazed at the sound. My post-it, still on the record, reads “SUPERB DEMO DISC.” It certainly is.

This album was part of a series of smaller ensemble recordings under the heading of Kansas City that Pablo undertook with Basie later in his career. Basie had recorded a piano trio record with the same gents the year before For the First Time and must have enjoyed himself enough to give it another go.

The best copies are big and rich, and present you with a solid, weight, clear piano like few piano trio recordings you have ever heard.

(more…)

Hampton Hawes – Vol 2: The Trio

More Hampton Hawes

More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

This Triple Plus (+++) pressing from ’55/’56 mono tapes is EVERYTHING that’s good about mono. The size, the weight, the solidity, the clarity, the energy, the rhythmic drive – it’s all here and more.

This killer pressing has the best sound and the best music we have ever heard on any Hampton Hawes album.

There is nothing to fault in the sound of side one of this pressing, and side two was nearly as good – what a record!

Both sides are Tubey Magical, rich, open, spacious and tonally correct. We’ve never heard the record sound better, and that’s coming from someone who’s been playing the album since the ’80s.

These guys are playing live in the studio and you can really feel their presence on every track — assuming you have a copy that sounds like this one.

Based on what I’m hearing my feeling is that most of the natural, full-bodied, smooth, sweet sound of the album is on the master tape, and that all that was needed to transfer that vintage sound correctly onto vinyl disc was simply to thread up the tape on a high quality machine and hit play.

The fact that nobody seems to be able to make an especially good sounding record these days — certainly not as good sounding as this one — tells me that in fact I’m wrong to think that such an approach would work. Somebody should have been able to figure out how to do it by now. In our experience that is simply not the case today, and has not been for many years, if not decades.

(more…)

Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk – Miles & Monk at Newport

More Miles Davis

More Thelonious Monk

  • This original 360 Stereo pressing boasts seriously good Double Plus (A++) live jazz sound from first note to last
  • Remarkably spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a big step up over most other copies we played
  • The energy and presence are wonderful – Monk’s piano has real weight and the brass sounds just right
  • “On the first side of the LP [are] are a series of high tempo performances of bebop tunes and other staples of the Davis live repertoire from 1958. On the second side [are] a few numbers by Thelonious Monk’s combo, from a 1963 Newport appearance [that] featured the idiosyncratic appearance by clarinetist Pee Wee Russell.”
  • “[The Miles Davis Sextet’s] rapid version of ‘Ah Leu Cha’ is thunderous and ‘Straight No Chaser’ swings like mad.”

Of special note on the Monk side is the excellent work of Frankie Dunlap on drums, and of course Charlie Rouse is always interesting. Add to those top players someone you wouldn’t normally associate with Monk — Pee Wee Russell on clarinet, here proving that he’s every bit the bop jazz musician that these other guys are.

(more…)

Oscar Peterson, et al. – Oscar Peterson + Harry Edison + Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson

More of the Music of Oscar Petterson

  • With STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on the second side and solid Double Plus (A++) sound on the first, this original Pablo pressing has some of the BEST sound we have ever heard for this title – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Surprisingly spacious and three-dimensional for a recording from 1986
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The strictly instrumental set has many fine solos on appealing tunes such as ‘Stuffy,’ ‘Broadway’ and the lengthy blues ‘Slooow Drag.’ This boppish session gave Vinson a rare chance to really stretch out and he was up for the challenge.”

(more…)

Vince Guaraldi – Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus

Reviews and Commentaries for Vince Guaraldi

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

    • An outstanding copy of this classic audiophile favorite with Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last – fairly quiet for a vintage vinyl pressing on Fantasy Deep Groove vinyl too
    • You’d be hard-pressed to find a copy that’s this well balanced, yet big and lively, with such wonderful clarity in the mids and highs
    • Sublime, practically magical jazz trio sound (and music!) that belongs in every audiophile’s collection
    • If you made the mistake of buying any pressing made in the last forty years, on any label, here is your chance to finally hear this wonderful music sound the way it was meant to
    • And if this strikes you as too much money to spend on the album, don’t buy an LP, buy Hoffmann’s Gold CD, it’s wonderful
    • 5 stars: “Here is Vince Guaraldi’s breakthrough album — musically, commercially, in every which way… The whole album evokes the ambience of San Francisco’s jazz life in the 1960s as few others do.”
    • It’s hard to imagine that any list of the Best Jazz Albums of 1962 would not have this record on it

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

    1. It’s a Jazz Demo Disc (on the right stereo pressings)
    2. It’s the best sounding Vince Guaraldi album we know of
    3. It’s a jazz Masterpiece, and, lastly,
    4. It’s a personal favorite of yours truly

Great energy for this jazz classic. This quality cannot be emphasized enough — it’s critically important to the music.

The best copies really get the bottom right. They bring out the contribution of the bass player better, the bass being essential to the rhythm of the music. On these pressings, the bass is so tight and note-like, you can see right into the soundstage and practically watch Monte Budwig play.

This is precisely where the 45 RPM pressing goes off the rails. The bloated, much-too-heavy and poorly-defined bass of the Heavy Vinyl remaster makes a mess of the Brazillian and African rhythms inherent in the music. If you own that $50 waste of money, believe me, you will not be tapping your foot to “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” or “Manha de Carnival.”

If you happen to have a friend with that title in his collection, ask to take a peek at it. I’ll bet it’s pristine. Bad records don’t get played much. Some audiophiles have complained that we spend too much time bashing Heavy Vinyl, but if ever a record deserved it, it’s that one. It’s a failure as a remastering and an insult to the analog buying audiophile public at large. Searching the web, I am glad to see that no one seems to have anything nice to say about it, as of this writing. No one should, but that has not deterred the reviewers and forum posters in the past.

The piano is solid, mostly clear and not hard. Not many copies present the piano this way — correctly in other words. The amazing snare of Colin Bailey in the right channel is LIVELY and fun like you’ve never heard before.

There is no sacrifice in fullness, richness or Tubey Magic in the presentation, and that is the right sound for this music.

(more…)

John Lewis – The Wonderful World Of Jazz

More John Lewis

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • This Atlantic reissue was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Bigger, richer, more Tubey Magical, with more extension on both ends of the spectrum and more depth, width and height than most other copies we played
  • An outstanding (and very hard-to-find) Jazz LP – a Better Records Top Recommendation from decades ago, and we are pleased to report that the music and the sound still hold up
  • 4 1/2 stars: “This is one of pianist John Lewis’ most rewarding albums outside of his work with the Modern Jazz Quartet. Three numbers (including a remake of ‘Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West’) showcase his piano in a quartet with guitarist Jim Hall, bassist George Duvivier, and drummer Connie Kay.”

(more…)