Vocals, Female – Commentaries

Julie London – These Early 60s Releases Didn’t Make the Grade

More of the Music of Julie London

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vocal Albums Available Now

The early sixties were not good for the sound of Julie London’s albums. As far as we can tell, her last good sounding album came out in 1961.

The album at the top is from 1963 and the one below it it is from 1964.

We have never played a copy of either album that was especially good sounding, certainly not good enough to charge the kind of money we charge.

We love Female Vocal recordings, but these two are just not good enough to make the grade.

There are many male and female vocal albums that actually did make the grade, most often by going through a shootout, and here are some of the categories we have separated them into:

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find these two in our Hall of Shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

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More June Christy Fifties Capitol Magic in Mono

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now

Side two of this White Hot Stamper June Christy record on the original Capitol Turquoise label is AMAZING, both musically and sonically. It has all the TUBEY MAGIC we know these old records are famous for, but this copy gives you something you may never have heard on a vintage pressing before: real frequency EXTENSION, both high and low. Who knew an old record could have extended highs like these and such deep bass?

I can honestly say I have never heard any June Christy record sound as good as this copy does.

(We had a fantastic Something Cool a while back but that was all pre-upgrades. The sound is far better now than it was then, making comparisons all but meaningless.)

Side Two

OFF THE CHARTS A Triple Plus Sound from start to finish. Rich and sweet and present like no copy we have ever heard. No copy out of the four originals we played earned more than a grade of A++, so this side two is a big step up over everything and the best sound we have ever heard for ANY June Christy record. 

Side One

Not as tubey magical as the best we heard but earning lots of points for being present and clear. It has some of the top end you will hear on side two, which is also rare in our experience. With more richness and fullness, the kind side two has in spades, this would have been a real contender for side one. No side one earned a higher grade than A++ so this copy was actually not that far off the best we played. It’s this side two that had us gobsmacked and forced us to set a higher standard for the other copies.

Musically

Musically this album is right up there with the best female vocal records we have ever played, the creme de la creme, albums on the level of Clap Hands and Something Cool and Billie’s Music for Torching. It really doesn’t get much better than this.

What to Listen For

There is what sounds to us like a contrabassoon on the second track on side one, When the Sun Comes Out. It’s so real sounding it will give you chills!

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Sassy on Speakers Corner Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing, recorded in 1956 and remastered, badly, in 1999.

The Speakers Corner version of this record is awful. It’s bright and GRAINY.

If you want a good Sarah Vaughan record, try the album just called Sarah Vaughan that Speakers Corner put out in 2004. 

Further Reading

Balancing the Vocal, Strings and Rhythm on Lady in Satin

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Billie Holiday Available Now

The better copies reproduce clearly the three most important elements in the recording — strings, rhythm, and vocal — and, more importantly, they are properly balanced with one another. 

The monos, as you might expect, balance the three elements well enough, but the problem with mono is that the vocals and instruments are jammed together in the center of the soundfield, layered atop one another.

Real clarity, the kind that live music has in abundance, is difficult if not impossible under those circumstances.

Only the stereo pressings provide the space that each of the players needs in order to be heard.

Naturally the vocals have to be the main focus on a Billie Holiday record. They should be rich and tubey, yet clear, breathy and transparent.

To qualify as a Hot Stamper, the pressings we offer must be highly resolving. You will hear everything, all of it surrounded by the natural space of the legendary Columbia 30th Street Studio in which the recording was made.  (more…)

My Romance – Forget the Vinyl, Just Buy the CD

More of the Music of Carly Simon

This album from 1990 contains lovely music, for the most part, but the CD-like sound is just not going to cut it. I had played the album ten or twenty years and liked it just fine, but the last time we dropped the needle on it we realized the sound was unacceptably processed, especially the vocal.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of heavily-processed recordings we like.

But for this album, covers of some of Sinatra’s most iconic songs, we felt the sound was completely wrong for the material.

Our advice: If you like the album, you might as well just buy the CD.

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Robert Brook Compares Three Very Different Pressings of Lady in Satin

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Billie Holiday

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below is a link to the review he has written for one of our favorite records, Lady in Satin.

In this review he compares our White Hot Stamper pressing to his two originals, a Six Eye Mono and a Six Eye Stereo. We knew where this review was headed; we’ve been down that road ourselves. For our most recent Hot Stamper reissue, we noted:

There may be amazingly good sounding original pressings, as amazingly good as this one, but we’ve never run into one and we have our doubts about the existence of such a magical LP – where could they all be hiding?

Add Robert’s two originals to the pile of pressings that sound good, but not as good as we might want them to.

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Your Number Please – Skip the Mono

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums

The mono we played (not pictured) in our shootout did not fare well head to head against the stereo pressings we had on hand.

Yes, it is rich and tubey, and Julie’s voice is solid and full-bodied, but the overall presentation is dark, opaque and small.

How do the mono record lovers of the world find this kind of sound to their liking?  We honestly don’t know.

On today’s modern stereos, the mono pressing leaves a lot to be desired, and for that reason we say skip the mono.

For records that we think sound best in mono, click here.

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Songs for Distingue Lovers on Classic Records

Sonic Grade: B?

Probably a fairly good jazz vocal album from Classic Records.

Back in the day we noted that: “This is one of the best Billie Holiday records around” and we stand by that statement, at least until another copy of the Classic comes our way and we have a chance to play it.

By the way, we have never had a Hot Stamper pressing of the album on the site. We simply cannot find enough clean copies with which to do a shootout!

Not sure we’ve ever found one that played quietly and sounded good.

For thirty bucks the price of this Heavy Vinyl pressing has to be seen as a bargain.

But…

Who the hell thought that the label below was better looking than the ones Verve used?

Classic Records was run by some of the most clueless audiophiles there ever were, and this label is a good example of a pitifully poor choice they made in the design of the labelling. (The Shaded Dog “shading” was all wrong but hey, it didn’t seem to bother too many people.)

A self-inflicted wound, and for no reason. Nobody could figure out how to make an authentic looking vintage Verve stereo label? I’m pretty sure it’s been done.

What was the point of this one? It’s ugly and modern. Who wants to collect classic albums with ugly modern labels?

The shiny jackets are bad enough. Now they have to ruin the labels too?

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Ray Charles & Betty Carter – DCC Clear Vinyl Pressing

More Soul, Blues and R&B Albums with Hot Stampers

This Dunhill Compact Classics LP pressed on CLEAR VINYL is one of DCCs earliest forays into analog production from way back in 1988.

Unfortunately it sounds like a bad CD.

Screechy, bright, shrill, thin and harsh, it’s hard to imagine worse sound for this music.

No warmth.

No sweetness.

No richness.

No Tubey Magic. In other words,

No trace of the original’s analog sound.

I have to wonder how records this awful get released.

You can be sure that Hoffman’s Gold CD murders it in every way.

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Ella Fitzgerald / Whisper Not and Comments on Her Pablo Period

Hot Stamper Pressings of Ella Fitzgerald’s Albums Available Now

Ella Fitzgerald Albums We’ve Reviewed

Our commentary from ten or fifteen years ago. Please to enjoy.

Whisper Not is one of the best Ella records we’ve played in a very long time. I’m telling you, this is Ella at her best! Having just played a lovely sounding copy of Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie, an album that tends to err on the bright side, I now realize that this album has the opposite problem — it’s a little bit smoother in places than it should be. Of course that’s a much more tolerable problem than the reverse.  

These are the comments for the last copy we had on the site.

For whatever reason, I’ve never stumbled upon a clean copy of this record. Consequently, I’d never heard it up until recently.

But my local record store had one sitting in the bin one day in lovely condition, which presented me with the perfect opportunity to find out whether this album presented the early “good” Ella or the later “bad” Ella.

Because some time in the ’60s she started making bad records. I know. I’ve played them. Misty Blue comes to mind but there are more than a dozen that we used to have on this blog in the Hall of Shame, and we will be putting them back up here at some point.

Everything she ever did for Pablo comes to mind. Some of you out there have told me that you actually like some of her Pablo material, but I cannot share your enthusiasm for those recordings. In my opinion she had completely lost it by the time she hooked up with her old buddy Norman Granz in the ’70s.

On the cover of this record she looks a little frumpy, and I was afraid this album was going to be frumpy too. I’m glad to say that the opposite is true. This album swings with the best she’s ever recorded. A lot of the credit much go to Marty Paich, one of my all-time favorite arrangers. Ever since I heard what he did for Art Pepper on his Modern Jazz Classics record for Contemporary I have been a big fan. This album just solidifies my love for the guy.

A couple of high points on this record: Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most, the song Ella sang on her masterpiece, Clap Hands, is here rearranged for the players at hand, and the interpretation is fresh and moving. The song I Said No is filled with silly double entendres and is a hoot.

But I have to say those are two high points picked almost at random. Every track on this album is wonderful. I think this is one of her three or four best recordings ever. (Another is the Johnny Mercer songbook album.)

Anyway, take it from an Ella fan, you can’t go wrong with this one.

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