This Contemporary LP has WONDERFUL SOUND AND MUSIC! It’s rich and full a very extended, very natural top end. The cymbals on this record sound AMAZING! Roy DuNann sure knew how to record this kind of jazz. Just listen to the leading edge transients of the trumpet or the punchiness of the drums. There’s no trace of phony EQ or bad mastering whatsoever. (more…)
Ramsey Lewis meets Earth Wind and Fire.
This Original CBS pressing has much better sound than the reissues I’ve heard. This is a bright recording and it’s supposed to sound that way, just like EWF’s recordings. The music is full of energy and lots of fun. This isn’t real jazz; it’s pop jazz. It’s produced by Maurice White and it even has Phillip Bailey on vocals.
You can’t get much more Earth, Wind and Firey than that! (more…)
On this album there’s almost none of that “introspective noodling jazz” that the Japanese are infamous for. I love Midnight Sugar as much as the next guy, but too much of that kind of music is wearying.
Yamamoto’s Trio wants to show that it can play good old fashioned straight ahead American piano jazz with the best of them. I hear echoes of Bill Evans in Yamamoto’s playing. Supposedly he was a big Errol Garner fan as well.
You will also be hard pressed to find better sound for a small ensemble like this. Since Rudy Van Gelder was not particularly adept at recording the piano, many of the great jazz pianists cannot be heard properly on their Prestige, Blue Note and other label recordings.
This album has SURPRISINGLY GOOD SOUND and even more SURPRISINGLY GOOD MUSIC! Who would have thought that these old goats still could still play jazz at this level? Especially Joe Morello on the drums — this guy drums up a storm, especially during his solos on the first track. He’s always been one of the strongest members of the foursome. But everybody here is good, and they do both their famous songs and some that they’re less well known for. (more…)
This is the way it must have sounded inside the RCA Studios in New York way back in 1964, not the club shown on the cover. The legendary RCA engineer Bob Simpson was behind the board.
If you have full-range speakers one of the qualities you may recognize in the sound of the piano is WARMTH. The piano is not hard, brittle or tinkly. It’s more like a real piano and less like a recorded one. This is what good “live” recordings tend to do well. There isn’t time to mess with the sound. Often the mix is live, so messing around after the fact is just not an option.
Bad mastering can ruin the sound, and often does, along with worn out stampers and bad vinyl and five gram needles that scrape off the high frequencies. But a few — far too few — copies survive all such hazards. They manage to capture these wonderful musical performances on their molecules of vinyl, showing us a sound we never expected.
Both Sides
Right away you hear a solid, full-bodied piano and snare drum, a sure sign of great sound to come. These sides were simply richer and fuller than the other copies we played. That rich tonality is key to getting the music to work, to allow all the instrumental elements to balance. The natural top doesn’t hurt either.
Great space and immediacy, powerful driving energy — these sides were up there with the best Peterson albums we played.
The sound was jumpin’ out of the speakers. There was not a trace of smear on the piano, which is unusual in our experience, although no one ever seems to talk about smeary pianos in the audiophile world (except for us of course).
Ray Brown’s bass is huge. With an extended top end the space of the studio and harmonics of the instruments are reproduced correctly.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Barney Kessel Available Now
This is an original Mono Contemporary Yellow Label DEMO LP. The record plays EX++ to Mint Minus Minus — if you can stand some surface noise this is a very good sounding LP. The sound is good; however, it’s almost impossible to find quiet pressings of these old Contemporary albums. This is about as quiet as they get!
“…the set features Kessel in boppish form with quintets in 1953 and 1956 featuring, either Bud Shank or Buddy Collette doubling on flute and alto. Kessel shows off the influence of Charlie Christian throughout the performances, with the highlights including “Easy Like,” “Lullaby of Birdland,” “North of the Border,” and the accurately titled “Salute to Charlie Christian.” (more…)
No copy we played against it nor any copy we can remember ever hearing sounded any better to us. Both musically and sonically, this is Blue Note at its best!
There’s LIFE and PRESENCE the likes of which you almost never hear on ANY jazz record. The sound is rich and full, from the extended top end all the way down to the deepest bass.
The trumpet on this album is NEAR PERFECTION! It sounds just right to us — tonally correct with lots of texture and wonderful leading edge transients. The drums, played superbly by Billy Higgins, sound amazing as well. Just listen to the ride cymbal to hear how extended the top end is. The bottom end is Right On The Money as well — deep, punchy, and well-defined. (more…)
Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now
UPDATE 2026
We used to have a lower opinion of Blue Note, but that changed over the next couple of decades as we found more and more amazing recordings on their label, most of them reissues of one kind or another.
Some text has been altered, mostly the overuse of capitalization.
This Blue Note LP is without a doubt one of the best sounding jazz records we’ve ever heard. We were auditioning a bunch of jazz records today (4/25/07), and when the needle hit the grooves on this one we were absolutely blown away.
I can’t think of one jazz record we’ve ever played here at Better Records with this kind of whomp. Everything here is so rich and full — nothing like a typical Blue Note album.
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. We’ve heard good copies of this album before, but this one is magical.
The presence and immediacy on this copy are stunning. Just listen to the snare drum at the beginning of Coppin’ The Haven — it sounds like someone is bangin’ that thing right in your living room.
We’ve never heard a Blue Note with this kind of clarity, this kind of transparency, and this much life. We rate it an A+++ on both sides — Master Tape Sound, As Good As It Gets.
This copy has the power of live music. When we turned it up loud, it was as if we were right up front at one of the best jazz concerts imaginable. The music is every bit as good — soulful hard bop played superbly and passionately.
Just listen to Donald Byrd blowing his lungs out on his own Tanya, or Gordon’s lyrical solo on Darn That Dream — these guys are pros at the top of their game.
Further Reading
Sit down with this record, draw the blinds, and you’ll hear why AMG gave it 5 Stars. Perhaps it’s the extended solos from John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Davis himself. Perhaps it’s the slippery, spiraling nature of these signature jazz fusion epic pieces. Perhaps it’s the grooves that Tony Williams and Dave Holland spin, slowly at first, building later in each of the LP’s mesmerizing tracks.
This is one of the most important jazz-fusion records of all time and it sounds AMAZING on this pressing. Hearing music this important on a killer pressing is a treat to say the least! You can turn this one up good and loud and really immerse yourself in the sound.
We could talk about this music all day, but if you’re in the market for a Super Hot Stamper pressing I’m guessing it’s safe to assume you already know how good this album is. It’s worth mentioning how much more we appreciate this music after hearing it on Hot Stamper copies. If you’re stuck with a weak pressing, you’re missing a lot of magic. When you get a copy with real transparency and clarity there are numerous small details and subtle textures revealed in the mix that basically don’t exist on the standard LP. A copy like this lets you hear it all.
Superb transparency, amazing presence and immediacy, complete freedom from any kind of phony, hyped-up sound — you’re not going to find one like this lying around in the bins, that’s for sure. This album never comes cheap, is very rarely clean, and you need a pretty good sized stack to have a realistic chance on finding one with sound like this. If you’re up for the challenge, more power to you, but it’s probably a lot easier to let us tackle the hard work of unearthing the truly magical copies that are still to be found like this one. (more…)
Atlantic LP with lovely sound! This is a famously rare and collectible jazz record by the amazing Brazilian guitarist Luiz Bonfa.
1958, the year this record was made, was a very good year for high quality recordings of all types of music.
Click here to see the records currently on the site that were recorded or released in 1958 and here to see the records from 1958 that we’ve reviewed, a substantially larger group as you can imagine, more than 100 in fact. (more…)