Blue Note – Reviews and Commentaries

For Top Quality Sound on Maiden Voyage, Skip the Black B

Blue Note Pressings with Hot Stampers Available Now

The three copies we had in our recent shootout for Maiden Voyage on the 70s Black B label did poorly.

Like a lot of the records we play when they weren’t mastered properly, they were small, smeary and weak. Considering how bad they sounded, it’s possible — accent on the word possible — that someone remastering the album for a modern audience could do a better job than Blue Note was doing in the late-70s.

This, of course, is not our standard, nor should it be anyone else’s.

Below you will find links to other records with the same problems as this Blue Note reissue.

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This Is Why We Love Rudy Van Gelder in the 60s

Hot Stamper Pressings of Rudy Van Gelder Recordings Available Now

The top copy from our most recent shootout went for $1500 and, in our opinion, was worth every penny of that amount, being one of the best sounding jazz records we have ever played

It probably took us ten years to get this shootout going, but the best copies we played were so impressive that they made all the time and money it took to pull it off worth the effort — what a record!

The notes on side one read: 

Track Two

  • Fingered plucky bass
  • Rich and spacious
  • Extending (high and low)
  • Horns are rich and breathy

Track One

  • Fat, rich bass and drums
  • So big and lively and no hardness

The notes on side two read: 

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Maybe We SHOULD Start Buying Blue Notes on the Early Labels

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

If there are record companies whose fans are extremely particular about the labels of the pressings they prefer, Blue Note has to be right at the top of that list.

The consensus among record collectors seems to be that the early label Blue Notes are practically guaranteed to have the best sound. In top condition they often sell for many thousands of dollars, far more than we have ever charged for any Hot Stamper Blue Note pressing

We are on record as not favoring early labels over later ones absent evidence to support such bias, but perhaps there actually are some records you should be buying based on their labels. This one, for example.

If all the stampers of a title are the same and they’re all cut by Rudy Van Gelder — early labels, middle labels and later labels alike — what do you use to guide you when trying to find the best sounding pressings?

This is precisely the conundrum that an audiophile would be faced with as he goes about trying to find the best sounding pressings of the Blue Note album whose stamper sheet you see below.

This stamper sheet reflects a fairly typical shootout for a Blue Note pressing. It’s hard to find six clean copies no matter what the title is. We probably returned or gave up on half the copies we bought, so we might have had to buy nine in order to shootout six.

(Note that there is nothing on any label after the White B from the 70s. We have never heard any title with an 80s label or later sound worth a damn so we stopped buying them a long time ago.)

Drawing Conclusions

Let’s look at some of the conclusions the typical record collector/audiophile might draw from the information above.

For example:

1.) I have a Blue Note with Van Gelder stamps and it’s decent sounding but I like [fill in the blank with some other pressing] better. Since all the pressings are cut by him, he must not have done a very good job. Thank goodness modern mastering engineer X came along to finally bring out the sound of the master tape that he was not able to do.

That’s an easy one to rebut. The later pressings cut by Rudy are consistently worse sounding than the earlier ones in the case of this title. If you don’t have a big batch to work through, however, you simply have now way of knowing that fact, and therefore whatever conclusions you choose to draw from a too-small pool of pressings are suspect at best.

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Robert Brook Shoots Out One Flight Up

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

We have never heard the Tone Poets pressing that Robert played against the Van Gelder cutting he discusses in the commentary below.

We have one in stock and are just waiting to do the shootout for the album so that we can compare it to the better pressings we know we will find.

UPDATE 2025

We have now played the Tone Poets pressing for ourselves, and if anything, Robert is being too kind!

You may have read that we were knocked out by a killer copy way back in 2007. We expect to be no less knocked out in 2023.

Robert concludes with his take on the strengths and weaknesses of the two pressings. Here is a excerpt:

Overall, the Tone Poet is closed, distant and frankly boring to listen to. Where is the energy of the music? Where is the presence of these musicians? Where is the studio space?

He goes on in much more detail, but this is exactly the kind of sound we hear on one Heavy Vinyl pressing after another. For some reason, none of these shortcomings appears to bother the fans of the label. I get why this guy is missing the boat: he actually thinks a system with five inch woofers can play jazz. What possible excuses could these other people have? [1]

The complete review can be found below. If you are considering following the crowd and buying some of this label’s albums, you might want to take it slow. (Those of you with five inch woofers can charge right ahead. The sonic problems with the Tone Poets releases Robert Brook describes would barely be audible on such a system, so get while the gettin’s good. Just make sure you are never tempted to upgrade to big speakers. You could find yourself in the unfortunate position of needing a new record collection to go along with them. Unlike Tone Poets releases, good records ain’t cheap.)

Dexter Gordon’s ONE FLIGHT UP: One of the Better TONE POETS?

[1] This is rhetorical question. These other folks have no excuses. They have exactly the sound quality they have earned by underutilizing the two most important audio resources they have at their disposal: time and money.

If they have failed to put in enough of either one or both, they have only themselves to blame for letting themselves be fooled by the chalatans currently marketing one meretricious [2] Heavy Vinyl pressing after another.

If they decide to remedy this sad state of affairs, we are more than happy to guide them in the new and exciting direction we’ve pioneered over the course of the last twenty years or so. The advice we give in this commentary would be a good place to start: first get good sound – then you can recognize and acquire good records

For another 60+ pieces of record collecting advice, more than enough to keep anyone busy for months, perhaps years, please click here.

[2] To save you the trouble of looking it up, Merrian-Webster defines meretricious as apparently attractive but having in reality no value or integrity. Used to suggest pretense, insincerity, and cheap or tawdry ornamentation.

For a deeply meretricious release of recent vintage (OBI strip!, custom booklet!, premium heavy vinyl!, fold-open cover!), see The Cars on Rhino. The only thing left out of the package was a good sounding LP.

Further Reading

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Somethin’ Else Sets the Record for Straight Ahead Jazz

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

In 2010 or thereabouts we had this to say about a copy of Somethin’ Else we had just played:

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 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).

Our shootout winners had more energy, presence, dynamics and three-dimensional studio space than any jazz recording we have ever heard. The sound was as BIG and BOLD as anything in our audio experience.

Add to that a perfectly balanced mix, with tonality that’s correct from top to bottom for every instrument in the soundfield and you may begin to see why we feel that the best copies of this album set a standard that no other jazz record we’re aware of can meet.

Have we played every Blue Note, every RVG recording, every jazz record? We would never say such a thing (nor should anyone else).

However, in our defense, who could possibly claim to have critically evaluated the sound of more jazz records than we have?

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Midnight Blue Is a Masterpiece

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Kenny Burrell

Midnight Blue is our favorite Kenny Burrell album of all time, at least in part because it’s one of the All Time Best Sounding Blue Notes. 

If you already own a copy of Midnight Blue and you don’t consider it one of the best sounding jazz guitar records in your collection, then you surely don’t have a copy that sounds the way our Hot Stamper pressings do. In other words, there is a very good chance you simply don’t know what you’re missing.

Don’t think this is just another 60s jazz guitar album. With Stanley Turrentine on sax and Ray Baretto on congas, this music will move you like practically no other. When Turrentine (a shockingly underrated player) rips into his first big solo, you’ll swear he’s right there in the room with you.

And if you do have one of our better Hot Stampers and it still isn’t the best sounding jazz guitar album in your collection, then you have one helluva jazz collection. Drop us a line and tell us what record you like the sound of better than Midnight Blue. We’re at a loss to think of what it might be.

Midnight Blue checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records.

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Letter of the Week – “The transparency on this copy is superb!”

Blue Note Pressings with Hot Stampers Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Blue Note Records

Hello Gentlemen,

I have to commend you once again. I have never heard Maiden Voyage like this before. The transparency on this copy is superb! I gave up listening to my reissue a while back. It had a heavy veil hanging over it that was obvious. Yet as the listener I yearned to hear past it because the music itself is so wonderful. Thanks for digging up this treasure. It will bring many hours of enjoyment now and in the future.

Records are a tangible investment for the listener. When you find a great copy you hang on to it because it engages you. It moves you in a real sense.

A collector who collects for value of first issue is a collector too. However they collect as one would coins, stamps or baseball cards. The value is attributed to what is perceived, not what is experienced. I do not slam anyone for this. If joy is found in this manner then, so be it.

I collect records to enjoy the music and if that means digging thru a number of pressings to find the best one or paying the bucks from someone like Better Records, so be it. If a reissue is better than an earlier pressing I will hold on to the re issue. This is a rarity but does happen. I can think of at least 20 LPs I have that I still favor the reissue over all others.

Both collectors are valid. They simply have different goals in mind.

Thanks,
Mark

Mark,

Thanks for your letter.

We know what you mean by records that have heavy veils hanging over their sound.

Here are some others we’ve found to be similarly veiled and here are some that are good for testing transparency.

Blue Note got into the Heavy Vinyl game back in the ’90s, in the days when we here at Better Records were still selling in-print Heavy Vinyl, but we thought very few of them were of much value to those looking for audiophile sound.

At the time I didn’t know it, but it turns out Maiden Voyage was mastered by that notorious hack, Ron McMaster, which explains our antipathy at the time to the Blue Note series he cut.

As I recall, the sound of his remastered pressings was clean and tonally correct, but his records were missing the analog qualities the better vintage pressings have in such abundance. In other words, his remastered records sounded like CDs.

Who can be bothered to play records that have so few of the qualities we audiophiles are looking for on vinyl?

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One Flight Up Is a Dubby Mess on Cisco Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Recordings Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

An audiophile hall of shame pressing from Cisco / Impex / Boxstar.

You will have a hard time finding any pressing that doesn’t sound better than this “dubby” Cisco LP.

The DMM reissues are worse — no Blue Note pressings could possibly be so ridiculously bad as they are — but I can’t think of any others offhand that would be.

The CDs, maybe, who really knows, but that’s a case of apples and oranges.

If smeared transients and zero ambience are your idea of good sound, this is the record for you! 

Letter of the Week – “After returning to the 45 RPM there was no enjoyment, so I dropped the needle on the stamper one more time, and then I heard it…”

More of the Music of Kenny Burrell

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Kenny Burrell

A good customer had this to say about a recent shootout:

By the way, side 2 of Midnight Blue bested every other copy I played including the 45 RPM Blue Note AP reissue. The 45 RPM is very good. You know that technically it is right, but at the same time it’s missing something.

When I listened to the [Hot] stamper copy you dug up for me I found it a little noisy at first and wasn’t sure if I could live with it. However after returning to the 45 RPM there was no enjoyment, so I dropped the needle on the stamper one more time, and then I heard it…

I know what you mean about these modern reissues “missing something.” No matter how well mastered they may be, they’re almost always missing whatever it is that makes the analog record such a special listening experience. I hear that “analog” sound practically nowhere else outside of the live event (and, of course, the vintage LP). 

Thanks for your letter. 
TP

Our Classic Records Review

Pretty flat and lifeless. You would never understand why audiophiles rave about this recording by listening to the Classic Records pressing.

We played it up against our best, and as expected it was nothing to write home about. Since Rudy has remastered and ruined practically all the Blue Note CDs by now, you will have your work cut out for you if you want to find a good sounding version of Midnight Blue. This sure ain’t one.

Of course we would be more than happy to get you an amazing sounding copy — it’s what we do — but the price will be five to ten times (or more) what the Classic costs. In our opinion it’s money well spent.

Since the Classic conveys very little of what the musicians were up to whilst recording the album, our advice is to cross it off your list of records of interest. It’s thirty bucks down the drain.

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Letter of the Week – “I am blown away on how good the Stanley Turrentine Blue Note is.”

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

I am blown away on how good the Stanley Turrentine Blue Note is. You saved me a lot of money wasting it on the reissues! I do have a number of the original music matters 45 releases and some are good, but now I see what you are talking about… better late then never!

Thanks!

Rob

Rob,

Stanley Turrentine is one of our favorite players. His work in 1963 with Kenny Burrell on Midnight Blue is extraordinary. It’s also one of the best sounding jazz records we have ever played.

I don’t know which records, if any, sound good on the Music Matters label, but the ones I have played left a lot to be desired, as you can read about below.

Best, TP