Original Jazz/Blues Classics We Didn’t Care For

These are OJC/OBC titles we played and found wanting — musically, sonically or both.

Monk and Coltrane on OJC is Bright, Compressed and Midrangey

Not long ago we dropped the needle on a copy of the album you see pictured (OJC-039) and thought the sound was not good enough to please the serious audiophiles we cater to, especially at the prices we charge.

As far as we can tell, based on this single pressing, this is not an album that would end up being worth the cost associated with finding, cleaning and playing enough copies for a shootout.

We can’t say that there aren’t good sounding pressings of the album though. If we happen to hear a good sounding one down the road, we would certainly consider spending the money to do a real shootout in order to make the better copies available to our customers.

Gary Hobish mastered the record so I suppose he deserves the blame, but who knows how good the tapes were that he had to work with?

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Jimmy Witherspoon / Evenin’ Blues

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues, R&B, etc. Available Now

Not long ago we dropped the needle on a copy of the album you see pictured and thought the sound was good, but not really good enough to please the serious audiophiles we cater to, especially at the prices we charge.

As far as we can tell, based on this single pressing, Evenin’ Blues (OBC-511 ) is not an album that would end up being worth the cost associated with finding, cleaning and playing enough copies for a shootout.

We can’t say that there aren’t better sounding pressings of the album though. If we happen to hear a good one down the road, we would certainly consider spending the money to do a real shootout in order to make the better copies available to our customers.

Perhaps you have a pressing of the record you like. If so, please tell us more about it. You can email me at tom@better-records.com

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Smooth Sailing Didn’t Make the Cut

Hot Stamper Pressings of Top Quality Jazz Albums Available Now

Not long ago we dropped the needle on a copy of OJC 323 and thought the sound was not good enough to please the serious audiophiles we cater to, especially at the prices we charge.

As far as we can tell, based on this single pressing, Smooth Sailing from 1988 on OJC is not an album that would end up being worth the cost associated with finding, cleaning and playing enough copies for a shootout.

We can’t say that there aren’t good sounding pressings of the album though. If we happen to hear a good sounding one down the road, we would certainly consider spending the money to do a real shootout in order to make the best sounding copies available to our customers.

As I’m sure you know, 1961, the year in which Smooth Sailing was first released, happens to be a great year for top quality analog recordings, as can be seen from this illustrious group of albums.

Rudy Van Gelder is an extremely talented engineer, one of the greatest of all time. I suspect that the problems with the sound of this OJC pressing were caused by poor quality remastering, something that does not surprise us in the least.

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Saxophone Colossus on OJC

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone Available Now

The copies of the 80s OJC we’ve played over the years have been thin, hard, tizzy up top and devoid of Tubey Magic. 

I think I used to like it a long time ago, in the same way I used to like a lot of questionable pressings a long time ago, back when I had a darker and less revealing system. It’s limitations covered up for the weaknesses of this OJC and plenty of others.

By the way, our Shootout Winning Gold Label Mono pressing went for big bucks, 1000 of them in fact. A clean original goes for many times that, which is one reason you have never seen such a record on our site. How much would we have to charge for a Hot Stamper pressing of an album we paid many thousands of dollars for? Far more than our customers would be willing to pay us, that’s for sure.

How About the DCC?

If you don’t want to pay the big bucks we charge for good pressings of this music, try the DCC pressing from 1995.

The DCC Heavy Vinyl pressing is probably a nice record. I haven’t played one in many years, but I remember liking it back in the day. The 2011 OJC pressing is made from the same metalwork as the DCC vinyl. Maybe that one sounds good. I doubt we will ever find out as we have been done with these kinds of records for a very long time.

However, on a decidedly contrarian note, I would be surprised if the DCC Gold CD isn’t even better sounding than their vinyl pressing.

They usually are.

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“Soul” on OJC Is Yet Another Bad Gary Hobish Recut

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone Available Now

Not long ago we dropped the needle on a copy of the album you see pictured and thought the sound was not good enough to please the serious audiophiles we cater to, especially at the prices we charge.

As far as we can tell, based on just a couple of copies, “Soul” is not an album that would be worth the trouble and costs associated with finding, cleaning and playing enough copies for a shootout.

We can’t say that there aren’t good sounding pressings of the album though. If we happen to hear a good one down the road, we would certainly consider spending the money to do a real shootout in order to make the better copies available to our customers.

Perhaps you have a pressing of the record you like. If so, please tell us more about it. You can email me at tom@better-records.com

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Skip the OJC on You Get More Bounce with Curtis Counce OJC-159

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

This album is findable on the OJC pressing from the 80s, but we found the sound of the ones we played well off the mark.

They were brighter and thinner than even the worst of the real Contemporary pressings.  Above all they badly lacked Tubey Magic, a sound the best pressings are swimming in.

Consequently, none of them made the cut for our shootout.

Here are more than 400 other vintage albums that fell short, whether sonically or musically. Audiophiles should seriously consider avoiding them, and if any of you own copies of these titles, pull them off the shelf and see if the sound and/or music is as bad as we say.

Bright, thin and lacking in Tubey Magic is just not our sound.  It’s not the sound Roy DuNann was famous for, so why should we like it either?

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Bill Evans – Explorations

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bill Evans Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This is a very old review. The last time we sat down to play some OJC copies of this recording we were underwhelmed. There may be some great sounding pressings out there, but we did not have any on hand and don’t want to commit the resources that would be needed to find them.

Our old commentary follows.

Outstanding sound throughout with both sides rating a solid Double Plus (A++) or close to it

The sound here is, above all, natural – the tonality is correct, and the recording sounds right for Riverside circa 1961

4 1/2 stars: “Explorations proves that the artist was worth waiting for no matter what else was going on out there. Evans, with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro, was onto something as a trio, exploring the undersides of melodic and rhythmic constructions that had never been considered by most… an extraordinary example of the reach and breadth of this trio at its peak.”

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Audiophiles Should Skip Swingin’ the ’20s on OJC

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

This album is fairly common on the OJC pressing from 1988, but more recently we’ve found the sound of the OJC pressings we’ve played seriously wanting. They have the kind of bad reissue sound that plays right into the prejudices of record collectors and audiophiles alike, the kind for whom nothing but an original will do.

They were dramatically smaller, flatter, more recessed and more lifeless than even the worst of the ’70s LPs we played. (We tend to like those, by the way.)

The lesson? Not all reissues are created equal. Some OJC pressings are great — including even some of the new ones — some are awful, and the only way to judge them fairly is to judge them individually, which requires actually playing a large sample.

Since virtually no record collectors or audiophiles like doing that, they make faulty judgments – OJC’s are cheap reissues sourced from digital tapes, run for the hills! – based on their biases and reliance on inadequate sample sizes.

You can find those who subscribe to this approach on every audiophile forum there is. The methods they have adopted do not produce good results, but as long as they stick to them, they will never have to worry about discovering that inconvenient truth.

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Andre Previn – These Two OJC Pressings Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Recordings Available Now

The mastering choices of the cutting engineers for these two recordings did them no favors.

Like so many of the early OJC pressings we’ve played over the years, we found that both of these reissues tended to be somewhat thin tonally, with a brittle top end, which can clearly be heard in the tizzy quality of the cymbals.

This is not remotely the right sound for a vintage Contemporary recording.

When doing the shootouts for these albums, warmth turned out to be key to the sound of the best copies.

When the piano sounds warm and smooth, everything else in the recording seems to fall into place.

The OJC pressings of these two albums were brighter and thinner than even the worst of the real Contemporary pressings.

Above all they badly lacked Tubey Magic, a quality the best sounding pressings are swimming in. Consequently, none of them made the cut for our shootout.

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The Original Jazz Classics Series Got Off to a Bad Start with Concorde

Here Are Some Potentially Good Sounding OJC Pressings

OJC-002! Fantasy’s second release in the series, but not a very good one.

The copy (or copies; who can remember?) we’ve auditioned in the past did not impress us sonically, so don’t expect to see Hot Stampers of this title on OJC coming to the Better Records website any time soon.

The music might be wonderful — we unreservedly follow the maxim de gustibus non est disputandum — but the sound of this pressing is not likely to be of audiophile quality.

There may be great sounding pressings of the album – how could we possibly know there aren’t without playing every version ever pressed — but we’re pretty sure the OJC pictured here will always fall short of the mark.

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