Best on Vintage Mono Vinyl

These records typically sound better in mono.

June Christy – Gone For The Day

More June Christy

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings

  • Amazing sound on this original Capitol Turquoise Mono pressing, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from first note to last
  • Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead on correct tonality, and wonderfully breathy vocals, not to mention boatloads of Capitol Tubey Magic – everything that we listen for in a great record is here (particularly on side two)
  • Take this one home and play it against whatever audiophile pressings you own – it’s guaranteed to beat any and all versions you have in your collection, or your money back
  • “One of June Christy’s two 1957 Capitol LPs, Gone for the Day boasts Pete Rugolo arrangements and a 12-piece group of mostly West Coast all-stars…includ[ing] trumpeter Don Fagerquist, trombonist Frank Rosolino, altoist Bud Shank, and Bob Cooper on tenor.”
  • If you’re a fan of June’s, this Top Title from 1957 belongs in your collection
  • The complete list of titles from 1957 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

The shootout winner for this title may have been the best sounding June Christy record we’ve ever played.

Musically this album is right up there with the best female vocal records we know of, the creme de la creme, albums on the level of Julie Is Her Name, Clap Hands and Something Cool. It really doesn’t get much better than this.

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The Who – My Generation

More of The Who

More Debut Recordings of Interest

  • A My Generation like you’ve never heard, with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this vintage Mono import pressing
  • Both of these sides were bigger and richer, and with more rock energy, than most of what we played
  • If you want to hear this music EXPLODE out of the speakers and come to life the way The Who wanted you to, this record will do the trick
  • The right stampers make all the difference on this title – the average copy of this later pressing is hardly worth the vinyl it’s pressed on (we know, we’ve learned about them the hard way)
  • “An explosive debut, and the hardest mod pop recorded by anyone. [T]he Who never surpassed the pure energy level of this record”

We recently finished a shootout for this record and this copy was a solid step up over most of what we played. Some tracks do sound better than others, but that’s par for the course with this kind of material. On the best songs, it had all the top-end, bass and presence that was missing from other copies. I’ve rarely heard these songs sound better than they do here.

This vintage-but-far-from-original UK Mono pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of 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.

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Hampton Hawes – Vol 2: The Trio

More Hampton Hawes

More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

This Triple Plus (+++) pressing from ’55/’56 mono tapes is EVERYTHING that’s good about mono. The size, the weight, the solidity, the clarity, the energy, the rhythmic drive – it’s all here and more.

This killer pressing has the best sound and the best music we have ever heard on any Hampton Hawes album.

There is nothing to fault in the sound of side one of this pressing, and side two was nearly as good – what a record!

Both sides are Tubey Magical, rich, open, spacious and tonally correct. We’ve never heard the record sound better, and that’s coming from someone who’s been playing the album since the ’80s.

These guys are playing live in the studio and you can really feel their presence on every track — assuming you have a copy that sounds like this one.

Based on what I’m hearing my feeling is that most of the natural, full-bodied, smooth, sweet sound of the album is on the master tape, and that all that was needed to transfer that vintage sound correctly onto vinyl disc was simply to thread up the tape on a high quality machine and hit play.

The fact that nobody seems to be able to make an especially good sounding record these days — certainly not as good sounding as this one — tells me that in fact I’m wrong to think that such an approach would work. Somebody should have been able to figure out how to do it by now. In our experience that is simply not the case today, and has not been for many years, if not decades.

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Julie London – About The Blues

More Julie London

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings

  • Boasting two outstanding Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this original Liberty Turquoise label MONO pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Julie London’s wonderful 1957 release
  • Julie’s lilting vocals are clear, breathy, Tubey Magical, and sweet, like nothing you’ve ever heard (unless you have one of our other Hot Stamper Julie London records)
  • Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality – everything that we listen for in a great record is here
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 stars: “About the Blues … may just be her best orchestral session. Since downbeat torch songs were London’s specialty, the album features an excellent selection of nocturnal but classy blues songs that play to her subtle strengths…”

Liberty and Ted Keep

Why does this 1957 recording sound so good?

Well, Liberty was a label that tended to produce very good sounding records. We’ve played scores of them, and we’ve done many shootouts for the ones that had music that could justify our high prices the time and effort required to find the best sounding copies.

But the most obvious reason this record has such good sound is that Ted Keep recorded it.

You don’t have to, but if you want this kind of sound quality, it pays to go back to the All Tube Recording and Mastering Chains of the late ’50s and early ’60s. That is where you are most likely to find it.

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Max Roach – Conversations (aka Deeds, Not words)

More Jazz

  • Roach’s wonderful 1958 release makes its Hot Stamper debut here with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • You’d be hard-pressed to find a copy that’s this well balanced, yet big and lively, with such wonderful clarity in the mids and highs
  • Unusually quiet for a record of its vintage – it’s hard to picture us finding another copy with top quality sound and surfaces remotely this clean
  • 4 1/2 stars: “This Max Roach Riverside date is notable for featuring the great young trumpeter Booker Little and for utilizing Ray Draper’s tuba as a melody instrument… This is fine music from a group that was trying to stretch themselves beyond hard bop.”

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John Coltrane – Soultrane

More John Coltrane

  • This Prestige “stereo” pressing boasts killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound on both sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • It may say stereo on the cover, but this album is in pure, glorious MONO, with sound that is full-bodied, relaxed, Tubey Magical and tonally correct
  • Here is the palpable jazz energy, the life of the music, that’s sure to be missing from whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl pressing is being stamped out these days
  • There are very few early pressings around without marks or problems in the vinyl – this one has a number of marks that play, but finding copy that sounds this good with quiet surfaces is getting harder every day
  • It’s the nature of the beast and there is simply no way around it if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • “… a classic of the 20th century jazz canon and an essential point of reference in Coltrane’s own tumultuous career…. this is the album on which Coltrane first emerged as the primary innovator of the jazz world, wielding an astonishing technical virtuosity and a blinding vision of the possibilities of the tenor sax.”

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in clean shape. Most of them will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG, and it will probably be VG+. If you are picky about your covers please let us know in advance so that we can be sure we have a nice cover for you.

This is a mono recording that has supposedly been reprocessed into stereo. Rudy Van Gelder did the mastering, and my guess is he decided to leave the sound mono and simply not tell anyone. Who can blame him? He engineered it in mono, so why fix what ain’t broke because they printed the cover and the label with the word “stereo” on them in order to generate more sales?

We’re lucky he did. The OJC reissues of this title are awful, and whatever Heavy Vinyl they’re churning out these days is probably every bit as bad. Without these excellent ’60s and ’70s reissues, all that we would have available to do our shootouts with would be the originals. At one to three thousand dollars each for clean copies, few of which could ever be found anyway, that makes for a shootout whose costs could simply never be justified.

So our thanks go to Rudy for doing a good job!

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Marty Paich Big Band – What’s New

More Jazz Recordings of Interest

  • Discovery may not have produced or released a lot of top sounding titles, but this record by itself puts them well ahead of Classic Records, Mobile Fidelity and the dozens of other remastering houses who have turned out close to zero records of this sonic quality
  • If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1957 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy should be just the record for you – the music and sound are enchanting.
  • This copy is super-spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience – the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny
  • With engineering from the legendary Bones Howe at Radio Recorders, this record’s audiophile credentials are fully in order
  • If you’re a fan of brilliant West Coast Jazz charts, this All Tube Recording from 1957 belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1957 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

This is a wonderful example of the kind of record that makes record collecting FUN.

If you large group swinging West Coast Jazz is your thing – think Art Pepper Plus Eleven – you will really get a kick out of this one.

Albert Marx was the producer of the original sessions back in 1957. Fast-forward to the ’80s and Marx is now the owner of his very own jazz label, Discovery Records. Who would know the sound of the original tapes better than he? Working with Dave Ellsworth at KM, Marx has here produced one of the best jazz reissues we’ve heard in years.

The Original

We finally got hold of an original, and sure enough, it had some of the qualities we might have guessed it would have.

It was big and rich, as expected, but it was also crude and gritty, like a lot of old jazz and pop vocal records from the ’50s are.

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Jackie McLean – A Long Drink of the Blues

More Jackie McLean

  • You’ll find seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this vintage reissue – impossibly quiet vinyl too
  • Both sides have close to the best condition grade we give out, Mint Minus – there may not be another record on the site with vinyl that quiet!
  • Shockingly good All Tube Mono sound from 1957 courtesy of Rudy Van Gelder, and the high-rez, tonally correct and wide-bandwidth mastering brings out even more of the most subtle nuances of this superb sextet’s recordings
  • McLean’s sax is joined on the first side by Curtis Fuller on trombone and Webster Young on Trumpet
  • 4 stars: “Although not quite as intense as McLean’s later Blue Note dates, the ballad renditions show just how mature and original a soloist he was even at this early stage.”
  • If you’re a fan of Jackie’s, this is a Top Title from 1957 that belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1957 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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Hampton Hawes – Everybody Likes Hampton Hawes, Vol. 3: The Trio

More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

  • We have been big fans of Hampton Hawes for many years – it’s records like this that impressed the hell out of us back in the day and they only get better with age
  • This side one is rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and has jazz trio energy to rival the best recordings you may have heard, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • This is a textbook example of Contemporary sound at its best, thanks to the engineering brilliance of Roy DuNann and producer Lester Koenig
  • “The third of three Hampton Hawes trio dates with bassist Red Mitchell and drummer Chuck Thompson is on the same high level as his first two…. [Hawes] comes up with consistently creative ideas throughout this swinging bop date.”
  • If you’re a fan of jazz piano trios playing live-in-the-studio, this Contemporary from 1956 surely belongs in your collection

We don’t run into Hawes’ LPs the way we used to, so it was indeed a delight to find enough copies of this album to do a shootout recently.

Note how correct the sound of the instruments is on both sides. This is the unquestionably the hallmark of any Contemporary recording: correct instrumental timbres.

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June Christy – The Misty Miss Christy

More June Christy

  • An original Turquoise Label Capital Mono LP with INCREDIBLE Shoutout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • Both sides here are wonderfully rich and sweet – it’s hard to imagine June sounding much better than she does here
  • All the top West Coast jazz guys are here: Shelly Manne, Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, and the arrangements are by the wonderfully talented Pete Rugolo
  • 4 1/2 Stars: “… The Misty Miss Christy mostly stays on auto-stroll with a wealth of subtle and sophisticated orchestral charts. The jazz-pop environs come courtesy of longtime arranger Pete Rugolo and optimally frame the singer on highlights like “That’s All,” “I Didn’t Know About You,” and “Dearly Beloved.” Both an essential Christy title and one of the best vocal albums from the ’50s.”
  • If you’re a fan of Miss Christy’s, or vintage Pop and Jazz Vocals in general, this is a Top Title from 1956 that belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1956 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

Both sides of this ’50s All Tube Recorded and Mastered record are just as rich and relaxed as you would expect. The balance is correct, because the top is there as well as the bottom.

June is no longer a recording — she’s a living, breathing person. We call that “the breath of life,” and this record has it in spades. Her voice is so rich, sweet, and free of any artificiality, you immediately find yourself lost in the music, because there’s no “sound” to distract you.

Need a refresher course in Tubey Magic after playing too many modern recordings or remasterings? These June Christy records are overflowing with it. Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here.

If you’re a fan of vintage female vocals –- the kind with no trace of digital reverb — you may get quite a kick out of this one. And unless I miss my guess, you’ll be the first and only person on your block to own it! (That’s not a bad thing considering the average person’s taste in music and sound these days.)

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