Masterworks of Jazz

Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio / Midnight Sugar on Two 45 RPM Discs

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

More Commentaries and Reviews for Jazz Piano Recordings

Sonic Grade: B

We haven’t played a copy of this record in years, but back in the day we liked it, so let’s call it a “B” with the caveat that the older the review, the more likely we are to have changed our minds.

The following notes were added in 2023. The original review can be seen just below them.

We should point out that the original Japanese pressings are clearly better sounding than any of the Super-Cut Analogue Disks that were pressed at RTI, regardless of the cutting speed.

I remember auditioning the 33 RPM recut that had been done in 1995. I was a big fan of the album in those days, and I had at least one and maybe more than one authentic Japanese pressings of the album in my collection. I still own the Three Blind Mice CDs of a number of titles as well.

It was no contest, the early pressings were obviously better in every way. I was selling heavy vinyl back then, and that’s what I had to sell, so I raved about the sound of the RTI-pressed reissues and sold plenty of them. I never bothered to point out that they were not as good as the originals. They were good and that was pretty much all I was going to say about them.

The authentic Japanese pressings were expensive to buy and very hard to find. Although they were better sounding, anyone buying the new pressings was likely to be happy with them, and that was good enough for the business model of Better Records at the time.

What accounts for the fall-off in sound quality from the earlier pressings to the reissues, remastered in Japan and then pressed at RTI, is anyone’s guess.

Some of that reduction results from the substandard sound that virtually all RTI pressings tend to have, a subject we discussed in some detail in this commentary from years back.

As you may have read, we stopped selling new Heavy Vinyl titles in 2007, eliminating the temptation to say nice things about records that are in print and reasonably priced, but not really as good as they should be.

Our commentary for Blue gets at all these issues. The Rhino pressing is a good record, but not nearly as good as it should be, and hopelessly outclassed by the good original pressings, the ones cut by the formerly excellent engineer, Bernie Grundman.

We made the decision then and there to simply raise our standards, and that meant the end of us offering Heavy Vinyl pressings to our customers.

We like to sell records that are amazing sounding, not records that can easily be beaten by other pressings you may happen to have already, or probably could manage to acquire on your own.

Our White Hot Stamper section is the place to go if you are looking for records that are dramatically better sounding than any pressings you could hope to find on your own. They are guaranteed to blow your mind, or your money back.

Our Original Review from Circa 2004

This 45 RPM Three Blind Mice 180g Double LP has DEMO DISC SOUND! The 33 RPM versions were pretty darn amazing but these 45s take the sound of this recording to an entirely new level. 

There are a couple of quite obvious benefits to mastering this music at 45 RPM. One is that Yamamoto tends to use his right hand in a percussive manner, which creates tracking problems on most any set up. At 45 RPM the mastering engineer is able to cut those transients, full of difficult to deal with harmonics, much more cleanly and accurately. The result is a sense of “ease” that you don’t hear on the 33.

It’s a bit like having a slightly underpowered system which makes loud passages or transients seem to be right at the edge of distortion, and then switching to a more powerful amplifier and hearing those passages reproduced with the relaxed quality that more headroom gives you.

Also the sound opens up quite a bit on these 45s so that more of the room ambience is heard. The Japanese are famous for their close-miking, and sometimes the sense of real musicians in a real space is lacking. Here much of that quality is restored.

Yamamoto is one of the few Japanese jazz players who has any feel for the medium. If you like bluesy jazz piano with amazingly dynamic sound, you can’t go wrong here. 

(more…)

Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain

More Miles Davis

More Vintage Columbia Pressings with Hot Stampers

  • A Sketches of Spain like you’ve never heard, with excellent Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides of this 6-Eye Stereo pressing
  • Fairly quiet vinyl for an early label pressing, few are this clean, and none come any quieter if our experience with dozens of them over the years counts for anything
  • The better copies capture the realistic sound of Davis’s horn, the body, the breath and the bite (and the correct amount of squawk as well)
  • Balanced, clear and undistorted, this 30th Street recording shows just how good Columbia’s engineers (lead by the inestimable Fred Plaut) were back then
  • 5 stars: “Sketches of Spain is the most luxuriant and stridently romantic recording Davis ever made. To listen to it in the 21st century is still a spine-tingling experience…”
  • This pressing is clearly a Demo Disc for Orchestral Size and Space

On the best pressings of this masterpiece, the sound is truly magical. (AMG has that dead right in their review.) It is lively but never strained. Davis’s horn has breath and bite, just like the real thing. What more can you ask for?

On the better pressings of this masterpiece, the sound is truly magical. (AMG has that dead right in their review.) It is lively but never strained. Davis’s horn has breath and bite, just like the real thing. What more can you ask for?

We Was Wrong in the Past About HP and Six Eye Labels

In previous commentary we had written:

Harry Pearson added this record to his TAS List of Super Discs many years ago, not exactly a tough call it seems to us. Who can’t hear that this is an amazing sounding recording?

Of course, you can be quite sure that he would have been listening exclusively to the earliest pressings on the Six Eye label. Which simply means that he probably never heard a copy with the clarity, transparency, and freedom from distortion that these later label pressings offer.

The Six Eyes are full of Tubey Magic, don’t get me wrong; Davis’s trumpet can be and usually is wonderful sounding.

It’s everything else that tends to suffer, especially the strings, which are shrill and smeary on most copies, Six Eyes, 360s and Red Labels included.

Over the course of the last few years, we’ve come to appreciate just how good the right Six Eye stereo pressing can sound.

In other words, We Was Wrong.

A Big Group of Musicians Needs This Kind of Space

One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.

Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.

And most of the time those very special pressings are just plain more involving. When you hear a copy that does all that — a copy like this one — it’s an entirely different listening experience.

(more…)

Cannonball Adderley / Somethin’ Else

More Cannonball Adderley

More Miles Davis

  • A triumph for Rudy Van Gelder, a Top Blue Note title, and as much a showcase for Miles Davis as it is for Cannonball Adderley
  • The best sides of this album had as much energy, presence, dynamics and three-dimensional studio space as any jazz recording we have ever played
  • 5 stars: “Both horn players are at their peak of lyrical invention, crafting gorgeous, flowing blues lines.”
  • “…signs of Milesian influence are the calm, conversational delivery of the title track and the newfound lyricism in Adderley’s playing that followed from his nightly experience at the trumpeter’s side.”
  • Reviews and Commentaries for Somethin’ Else

The music here is simply amazing, but the good news for us audiophiles is that it’s also one of the BEST SOUNDING BLUE NOTE ALBUMS we know of, if not The Best. (more…)

Shelly Manne & His Friends – Bells Are Ringing

Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Contemporary Jazz

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this outstanding Black Label original on vinyl that’s about as quiet as they ever play
  • The piano sounds lifelike right from the start, a beautiful instrument in a natural space, tonally correct from top to bottom
  • This copy makes it clear that this is a Demo Disc Quality Recording for Contemporary, and that’s saying a lot
  • It’s also our favorite jazz piano performance by Andre Previn on record
  • Only a handful of copies of this title have made it on the site in the last few years – finding them in audiophile condition is getting harder (and more expensive) than ever these days
  • “Previn’s piano is the lead voice and his virtuosity, good taste, melodic improvising, and solid sense of swing are chiefly responsible for the music’s success.”

I have a very long history with this album, going back decades. My friend Robert Pincus first turned me on to the CD, which, happily for all concerned, was mastered beautifully. We used it to test and tweak all the stereos in my friends’ systems.

Playing the original stereo record, which I assumed must never have been reissued due to its rarity (I have since learned otherwise), all I could hear on my ’90s all tube system was blurred mids, lack of transient attack, sloppy bass, lack of space and transparency, and other shortcomings too numerous to mention that I simply attributed at the time to vintage jazz vinyl.

Well, things have certainly changed. I have virtually none of the equipment I had back then, and I hear none of the problems with this copy that I heard back then on pressing I owned. This is clearly a different LP (I sold off the old one years ago) but I have to think that much of the change in the sound was a change in cleaning, equipment, tweaks and room treatments, all the stuff we prattle on about endlessly on the site.

In other words, if you have a highly-resolving modern system and a good room, you should be knocked out by the sound of this record. I sure was.

(more…)

Duke Ellington / Masterpieces By Ellington Circa 1951

More of the Music of Duke Ellington

More Large Group Jazz Recordings

  • You’ll find superb Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this vintage 6-Eye mono pressing – remarkably quiet vinyl for such an early Columbia too
  • The 1951 mono sound is shockingly real, not for the era, but for any era – it’s remarkably big, rich and Tubey Magical
  • A mid-’50s pressing that is almost impossible to find in clean condition – this is one of the nicer copies we’ve seen lately
  • For his first LP, Ellington is freed from prior 3-minute constraints and the results are nothing short of breathtaking on a record this good
  • If you could have only one Ellington LP, Indigos or Masterpieces would have to be one of them
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…he and the band rose to the occasion with extended (11-minute-plus) “uncut concert arrangements” of “Mood Indigo,” “Sophisticated Lady,” and “Solitude,””

We haven’t done this title in close to two years, mostly because there are so few clean copies around to buy. This was, in fact, one of the only copies in our shootout without audible scratches or groove wear. Let us hope we have more to offer in the months ahead.

We’ve known about this wonderful album for decades, since first got hold of a red label copy from the ’70s. Although not in the league with the best 6-Eye pressings, even that late reissue had enough Columbia magic in its grooves to impress the hell out of me.

And the fact that a jazz album recorded in 1950 was still in print more than twenty years later is testament to the lasting power of Ellington’s music. As Kenny Burrell would say, “Ellington Is Forever.”

(more…)

Art Pepper+Eleven – Modern Jazz Classics

Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Contemporary Jazz

  • A superb vintage Contemporary stereo pressing of this exceptional Art Pepper release from 1960 with solid Double Plus (A++) sound – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • If you buy only one Large Group Hot Stamper jazz record from us, make it this one – the music is swingin’ fun and the sound is going to blow your mind
  • And that’s doubly true if you own any modern reissue (really, almost any reissue at all to be honest) – this is the kind of sound no later pressing from ANY era can compete with
  • Here is the Tubey Magic of the originals without the problems that too often cause the originals to be opaque and uninvolving
  • A personal favorite – 5 stars: “This is a true classic. Essential music for all serious jazz collections.”

(more…)

Benny Carter – Jazz Giant

More of the Music of Benny Carter

Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

  • Both sides of this superb Contemporary reissue earned excellent Double Plus (A++) sonic grades
  • If you still think that Analogue Productions is remastering records properly, you have definitely never heard a real Contemporary that sounds as good as this one does
  • The music of this Jazz Giant comes alive on this copy, with space, size, clarity and richness that few other pressings can match
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Benny Carter had already been a major jazz musician for nearly 30 years when he recorded this particularly strong septet session for Contemporary … This timeless music is beyond the simple categories of ‘swing’ or ‘bop’ and should just be called ‘classic.'”

If you like the sound of Contemporary Records, you won’t find a better example than this. Midrange magic doesn’t get anymore magical.

It’s been several years since our last shootout, but we hope the lucky buyer of this copy realizes it was more than worth it. To find a copy of Jazz Giant that sounds as good as this one is a very special event indeed.

(more…)

Oliver Nelson – The Blues and the Abstract Truth

More Oliver Nelson

  • Oliver Nelson’s masterpiece returns to the site with superb solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from first note to last
  • Clean, clear and present with a solid bass foundation, as well as the big stage this big group of musicians needs
  • If all you know is Van Gelder’s original cutting, you will surely have your eyes and ears opened by this wonderful Hot Stamper
  • Allmusic gives it 5 stars (of course) and calls this album “…his triumph as a musician for the aspects of not only defining the sound of an era… but on this recording, assembling one of the most potent modern jazz sextets ever.”

The sound is tonally correct, Tubey Magical and above all natural. The timbre of each and every instrument is right and it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it. So high-resolution too. If you love ’50s and ’60s jazz you cannot go wrong here.

For those record lovers who still cling to the idea that the originals are better, this record will hopefully set you straight.

Yes, we can all agree that Rudy Van Gelder recorded it, brilliantly as a matter of fact. Shouldn’t he be the most natural choice to transfer the tape to disc, knowing, as we must assume he does, exactly what to fix and what to leave alone in the mix?

Maybe he should be; it’s a point worth arguing.

But ideas such as this are only of value once they have been tested empirically and found to be true.

We tested this very proposition in our recent shootout, as well as in previous ones of course. It is our contention, based on the experience of hearing quite a number of copies over the years, that Rudy did not cut the original record as well as he should have. For those of you who would like to know who did, we proudly offer this copy to make the case.

Three words say it all: Hearing is believing.

(And if you own any modern Heavy Vinyl reissue we would love for you to be able to appreciate all the musical information that you’ve been missing when playing it. I remember the one from the ’90s on Impulse being nothing special, and the Speakers Corner pressing in the 2000s if memory serves was passable at best.)

(more…)

Laurindo Almeida – Virtuoso Guitar

More Laurindo Almeida

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

  • An excellent copy of this 45 RPM Direct to Disc recording featuring excellent sound on both sides – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Some of the tubiest, warmest acoustic guitar sound you could ask for from a “modern” record (particularly on side two) – this is the sound of analog done right
  • It has the kind of sound we prefer, with none of the razor sharpness that you get on some direct to disc recordings
  • One of the best Almeida albums we know of and probably the best Crystal Clear title (which we know isn’t saying much)
  • If you are looking for a shootout winning copy, let us know – with music and sound like this, we hope to be able to do this shootout again soon

(more…)

Grover Washington, Jr. – All The King’s Horses

More Grover Washington

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

  • An early Kudu pressing of Washington’s sophomore release with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from top to bottom
  • There’s so much life in these grooves – the sound jumps out of the speakers and right into your lap
  • Credit must go to Rudy Van Gelder for recording and mastering this album so well, and to Bob James for his brilliant big group arrangements
  • We cannot recommend this album highly enough – if you have the big speakers a big group of musicians need to perform live in your listening room, his record is going to be nothing less than a thrill
  • 4 stars: “. . . this set has assumed its proper place in Washington’s catalog: as one of his more ambitious and expertly performed sessions.”
  • If you’re a Grover Washington fan, this is a Must Own Classic from 1972 that belongs in your collection.

Both sides of this original Kudu pressing are OUT OF THIS WORLD. The sweetness and transparency of Grover Washington Jr.’s breathy sax went beyond any copy we’ve ever played. Who knew it could sound like this? We sure didn’t!

It’s spacious and full of life with virtually no distortion. Of special note, this copy has amazingly articulate bass which brings out the undeniable funkiness of the music in a way that no other copy did.

The early ’70s were a good time for Rudy Van Gelder. All the King’s Men from 1973 is an amazing Demo Disc for a large group. But it only sounds good on the copies that it sounds good on, on the pressings that were mastered, pressed and cleaned right, a fact that has eluded most jazz vinyl aficionados interested in good sound.

But not us. We’ve played the very special pressings that prove the album can sound amazing. (more…)