If you want to know why Gene Ammons is considered one of the greats, skip the jam that starts out side one and go right to the ballad Alone Again (Naturally). Nobody played with more emotion than Gene Ammons.
This is an Older Jazz Review.
Prestige
Miles Davis – The Beginning (aka: The Musings of Miles)
More of the Music of Miles Davis
- Here is a killer early pressing of Miles’ 1955 Prestige album with superb Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides and vinyl that is going to be very hard to find any quieter
- Unusually rich, full-bodied, lively and present, sound that brings out the best in Miles’ music
- Recorded in All Tube Mono, this is the real sound of these four jazz giants playing live-in-the-home-studio of none other than a Mr Rudy Van Gelder
- “Miles Davis was in the process of forming his first classic quintet when he recorded this date… The trumpeter is featured with pianist Red Garland, bassist Oscar Pettiford, and drummer Philly Joe Jones, playing four standards plus a blues (“Green Haze”) and “I Didn’t,” his answer to Monk’s “Well, You Needn’t.””
Stan Getz / Jazz Classics – Reviewed in 2011
The album contains tracks culled from two different sessions featuring a very young Stan Getz. The sound on the tracks taken from a 1953 session with the Jimmy Raney quintet (tracks one and two on both sides) is amazing.
Energetic, tonally balanced, clean and clear — a great sounding Stan Getz recording.
Unfortunately, the tracks from the 1949 session with Terry Gibbs, while interesting historically, sound like old 78’s — not our cup of tea. (more…)
Illinois Jacquet – Bottoms Up
More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone
Reviews and Commentaries for Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone
- With outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last, this copy of Bottoms Up has much to recommend it
- The sax is especially well recorded with just the right amount of bite and only the squawk of the real thing
- Surprisingly transparent and dynamic, this recording highlights Jacquet’s soulful style
- 4 1/2 stars: “Even in 1968 when the jazz avant-garde was becoming quite influential, tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet played in his own timeless style, performing in an idiom little changed during the previous 20 years.”
For big, full-bodied, bluesy, soulful saxophone jazz it’s hard to imagine you can do much better than the legendary Illinois Jacquet. (more…)
Miles Davis (Cookin’ and Relaxin’) in 2019
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now
To the Jazz Fans of the World, we here present one of the best sounding jazz recordings we have ever had the privilege to place on a turntable. I cannot ever recall hearing a better sounding Rudy Van Gelder recording, and I have a theory as to why this tape is as good as it is: it’s MONO.
WAY off the charts. Demo Disc Quality Sound of the Highest Order on the best tracks. The extension high and low sets these sides apart. The presence of the instruments and the space around them just cannot be beaten.
It also sounds like it’s recorded completely LIVE in the studio, direct to one track you might say. As good a recording as Kind of Blue is, I think the best parts of this album are more immediate and more real than anything on KOB.
Talk About Timbre
Man, when you play a Hot Stamper copy of an amazing recording such as this, the timbre of the instruments is so spot-on it makes all the hard work and money you’ve put into your stereo more than pay off. To paraphrase The Hollies, you get paid back with interest. If you hear anything funny in the mids and highs of this record, don’t blame the record.
This is the kind of record that shows up audiophile BS equipment for what it is: Audiophile BS. If you are checking for richness, Tubey magic and freedom from artificiality, I can’t think of a better test disc. It has loads of the first two and none of the last.
Coleman Hawkins – Night Hawk
- An outstanding copy with solid Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
- With a nearly perfect balance of analog richness and high-res clarity and space, this reissue showed us once again just how good an engineer Rudy Van Gelder was back in 1961
- “This [album] has many fine moments from these two highly competitive jazzmen, particularly the lengthy title cut and a heated tradeoff on “In a Mellow Tone,” on which Davis goes higher but Hawkins wins on ideas.”
For us audiophiles both the sound and the music here are wonderful. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good an 1961 All Tube Analog recording can be, this killer copy will do the trick. (more…)
Kenny Burrell – Out Of This World (aka Bluesy Burrell)
More Kenny Burrell
More Coleman Hawkins
- This outstanding copy of Out Of This World boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
- This superb RVG recording comes to life on this pressing – it’s full-bodied and above all, lively (Rudy’s trademark sound)
- This collaboration between Burrell and Coleman Hawkins highlights the blues roots of these two jazz greats, veterans who can swing with the best of them (which is why their discographies run for pages)
- “Bluesy Burrell combines the finest elements of blues and bebop jazz into a blend that demonstrates just how well the styles fit together and proves that blues need not be minimalist in nature, and jazz can be a bit less rigid, allowing breathing space amidst perfect chord work and superb rhythm.”
This vintage Prestige Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely begin to reproduce. Folks, that sound is pretty much gone and sure doesn’t seem to be 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 studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
Sonny Rollins – Rollins Plays For Bird
More Sonny Rollins
Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder
- Stunning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it throughout – this is the first copy to hit the site in many years and it is as good a pressing as we have ever heard
- These Blue Label Prestige stereo pressings from the ’60s put everything else we played to shame – this is the Real Sound of Sonny Rollins at his peak in 1957
- It’s beyond difficult to find good sound for the music of Charlie Parker, but this Sonny Rollins Hot Stamper LP gives you just that for some of Bird’s most famous tunes, backed with excellent performances from the likes of Kenny Dorham and Max Roach
This album is Rollins at his BEST. Allmusic gives it Four Stars and the Users rate it even higher, Four and a Half. The album released before this one was the legendary Saxophone Colossus, an album we would love to do more shootouts for, if we could only find them.
When the sound is as good as it is here, that’s the kind of jazz record that makes us sit up and pay attention. This quintet features trumpeter Kenny Dorham, pianist Wade Legge, bassist George Morrow and drummer Max Roach.