Labels We Love – Blue Note

Joe Henderson – Page One

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A distinguished member of the Better Records Jazz Hall of Fame.

EXCELLENT SOUND ON SIDE ONE of this Highly Recommended Blue Note classic! This ’70s pressing has sound that’s sure to beat the pants off most other copies out there. Just listen to the sound of the percussion; on the earlier pressings it tends to be smeary, but that’s certainly not the case here! The overall sound is open and transparent with incredible presence. Turn up the volume and you’ll have a smokin’ jazz quintet tearing it up right there in your living room! I don’t think Henderson made a better album than this one, and I doubt it’ll be easy tol find another copy that sounds this good! (more…)

The Ornette Coleman Trio – At The Golden Circle Vol. 1

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A distinguished member of the Better Records Jazz Hall of Fame.

This is a Blue Note LP with EXCELLENT sound! We didn’t have enough clean copies to do a shootout, but you can be sure that each side rates at least an A+ for sound.

Side one has tons of energy, gorgeous highs and a nice deep bottom end. Side two is rich and full-bodied with wonderfully textured brass. This is a superb copy with sound that does this complex music justice.

Whether you’ll like the music or not is another question — this is free form jazz; not everybody’s into it, that’s for sure. Ornette Coleman, though, is undeniably one of the masters of this genre. If you have a taste for adventurous, avant garde jazz, this is an excellent record for you both musically and sonically. (more…)

Dexter Gordon – One Flight Up

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You’ll find outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on both sides of this vintage Blue Note pressing
With its presence, clarity, space and timbral accuracy, this is guaranteed to be one of the best sounding jazz records you’ve heard in a very long time
One of our very favorite Blue Note recordings for both music and sound, a Dexter Gordon Classic of soulful hard bop
Turn it up good and loud and it’s as if you are right up front at one of the best ’60s jazz concerts imaginable

Both the sax and the trumpet sound unbelievably good — airy and breathy with lots of body and clearly audible leading edge transients.

It’s hard to find a Blue Note where the horns aren’t either too smooth or too edgy, but here they have just the right amount of bite. The overall sound is open, spacious, tonally correct from top to bottom and totally free from distortion. (more…)

Some Amazing Jazz Piano Recordings Currently on the Site

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silver

Triple Plus on side one, Double Plus on side two, this is the best copy of Silver’s 1957 classic we’ve ever heard

The last copy to hit the site went up in 2006 – clean Horace Silver records in stereo with the right stampers and good sound are hard to find!

Rich and solid, this is the kind of sound that makes us sit up and take notice – Thanks RVG!

“All of Silver’s Blue Note quintet recordings are consistently superb and swinging…”

I chanced upon a clean copy of this album in a store last year. When I got home with it I found I loved the music and loved the sound. I then went about buying them up as fast as I could, returning something on the order of half the copies I was sent: some for scratches, some for the wrong labels, some for being mono — you never know what you’re going to get when you order records online! (Except from us of course. Unless something goes terribly wrong you will always get a good sounding record from us.) (more…)

Somethin’ Else – Setting the Record for Straight Ahead Jazz

COMMENTS TAKEN FROM A RECENT HOT STAMPER SHOOTOUT

The music here is amazing — as I’m sure most of you know, this is as much a showcase for Miles Davis as it is for Cannonball himself — but the good news for audiophiles is that it’s also one of the BEST SOUNDING BLUE NOTE ALBUMS we know of! When you hear it on a copy like this, it’s just about As Good As It Gets.

Setting the Record for Straight Ahead Jazz

After doing this shootout in 2015 I would like to amend the above remarks for being much too conservative. The current consensus here at Better Records is that this album deserves to hold three — count ’em, three — somewhat related titles:

One, The Best Sounding Blue Note record we have ever played.

Two, The Best Sounding Jazz Record we have ever played.

Three, Rudy Van Gelder’s Best Engineering (based on the copies we played). (more…)