Top Arrangers

Don’t Skip the OJC, Put It in a Shootout

Of the three early OJC pressings of West Coast Sound we played recently, only one met our standards. At 2+/1.5+, the sound was good, not great.

One copy earned grades of 1+/1+, which means the sound was passable. The last copy had an NFG side two, which means it was just awful.

(Many of the Heavy Vinyl disasters we’ve been cataloging lately have earned that notorious grade. The unacceptably lo- to mid-fi sound even the better ones offer doesn’t seem to bother the audiophiles who rave about them, however.)

So does side two of the OJC pressing have fairly good sound, merely passable sound, or is the sound hopelessly bad?

In the case of this Shelly Manne album, all three, and the only way we were able to discover that is by cleaning up three of them and playing them head to head with real Contemporary pressings in a blinded experiment.

Obviously we were hoping for better results from our OJCs — only one of the copies we played will turn out to be saleable.

Why did we bother? That old bugaboo the profit motive was all that was needed to make us give the OJC pressings a try. We thought we could make money on them but it turns out that the opposite will happen. Oh well, nothing ventured, noting gained.

More importantly, we are not the least bit shy about coming clean and sharing the results with our readers and customers, especially the part about three identical looking copies with the same stamper numbers all sounding very diffferent from each other.

An added bonus is that side two was worse than side one most of the time. That happens often enough, but nobody but us ever seems to want to talk about it.

If we had had ten OJC pressings to play, we probably would have be able to find at least one or two with a grade of 2+/2+, meaning that George Horn probably did a creditable job mastering the album back in 1984 when he cut it for Fantasy, to sell for the very affordable price of $5.98. It’s most likely the pressing plant that let listeners down.

Needs Tubes

The problem here is that this title needs tubes, or, at the very least, the sound of tubes, and George apparently did not have them, or enough of them, in his mastering chain.

Our specific notes can be seen on the left. We mention that the first track has the best sound (1956 dates), the rest falling short for being darker and more crude (“old school,” some dating from 1953).

The West Coast horn players are the reason to buy this title, with horns that are “sweet and tubey,” but of course to hear that kind of sound you will need a real Contemporary pressing, not an OJC — or anything made in the modern era for that matter.

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Miles Davis – Quiet Nights

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • This oh-so-spacious Miles Davis / Gil Evans classic boasts STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this original black print Stereo 360 pressing
  • Rich, warm, smooth and clear throughout, this 30th Street Studios recording is another engineering triumph from the legendary Fred Plaut
  • Produced by Teo Macero, the album is the fourth and final collaboration between Davis and Evans
  • This is a lot of money for a somewhat noisy copy with some audible marks, but the sound is so awesome and quiet pressings of the album so hard to come by that we hope someone will take a chance on it and get the thrill we did from hearing it sound right for once
  • In the Saturday Review, Quiet Nights received praise for Davis’s “wonderful

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Chet Baker – She Was Too Good To Me

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Trumpet

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides of this vintage CTI pressing
  • This is the kind of spacious, low-distortion, dynamic and energetic sound Rudy Van Gelder was getting in the early 70s (particularly on this side one) – if you think he was better in the 60s, you need to play some of these recordings from the 70s that show off just how good his work could be
  • “Baker began his comeback after five years of musical inactivity with this excellent CTI date. Highlights include ‘Autumn Leaves,’ ‘Tangerine,’ and ‘With a Song in My Heart.’ Altoist Paul Desmond is a major asset on two songs and the occasional strings give variety to this fine session.”

We guarantee you have never heard this album — or any later Chet Baker album — sound as good as this one does.

There’s so much life in these grooves. The sound jumps out of the speakers right into your lap. This kind of warm, rich, Tubey Magical analog sound is gone forever. You have to go back to 1974 to find it!

The early 70s were a good time for Van Gelder, the engineer for these sessions. Grover Washington Jr.’s All the King’s Horses from 1973 is an amazing Demo Disc for large group. We could easily name-check a dozen others on CTI recorded by RVG that we’ve done shootouts for.

But any album only sounds good on the copies that it sounds good on, on the pressings that were mastered, pressed and cleaned right, a fact that seems to have eluded most jazz vinyl aficionados interested in good sound but axiomatic (if not tautological) here at Better Records.

The extended song structures, ranging from four to seven minutes in length, leave plenty of room for the band to stretch out.

And of course Chet sings the title track beautifully.

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God Bless the Child Has Some of Don Sebesky’s Best Arrangements

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Kenny Burrell Available Now

This is one of our favorite orchestra-backed jazz records here at Better Records. A few others off the top of my head would be Wes Montgomery’s California Dreaming (1966, also Sebesky-arranged), Grover Washington’s All the King’s Horses (1973) and Deodato’s Prelude (also 1973, with brilliant arrangements by the man himself).

On a killer copy like this the sound is out of this world. Rich and full, open and transparent, this one defeated all comers in our shootout, taking the Top Prize for sound and earning all Three Pluses.

What’s especially notable is how well recorded the orchestra’s string sections are.

They have just the right amount of texture and immediacy without being forced or shrill. They’re also very well integrated into the mix. I wouldn’t have expected RVG to pull it off so well — I’ve heard other CTI records where the recording quality of the orchestration was abominable — but here it works as well as on any album I know.

[Or maybe I just had a bad pressing of a very good recording!]

Both sides impressed us with their deep, wide soundstaging and full extension on both the top and the bottom.

The bass is deep and defined; the tonality of the guitar and its overall harmonic richness are right on the money.

The piano has the weight and heft of the real thing.

This kind of warm, rich, Tubey Magical analog sound is gone forever. You might have to go all the way back to 1971 to find it!

Watch out for some of the later pressings, even the later ones still mastered by Rudy Van Gelder. A case in point:

VAN GELDER in the dead wax is no guarantee of high quality sound, on any record.

Side one of this original pressing with later stampers was bright and side two opaque. This pressing was not awful, or even mediocre — the reissues without VAN GELDER in the dead wax would most likely be much worse sounding, we stopped buying them years ago — but at 1.5+ we would say these grades point to the sound is good, not great.

The only way to guarantee higher quality sound is to put the album through a shootout with a good-sized pile of cleaned pressings and find the one that sounds the best using the rigorous testing methodologies we recommend. For this kind of work to be meaningful and reproducible, top quality playback is a must.

There is of course a way to avoid doing all that work and spending all the kind of money it takes to acquire piles of pressings — most of which you will eventually have no use for — and that’s to buy a Hot Stamper copy of the album from us.

The Music

The high point for side one is clearly the first track. It’s got a Midnight Blue relaxed groove going on, the kind that Kenny Burrell seems to be able to bring to any session he plays on. Or maybe it’s the rhythms Ray Barretto works out in the songs that make them so relaxed and swinging at the same time.

Side two is magical from start to finish. The two extended songs, both more than eight minutes in length, leave plenty of room for the band — and the orchestra! — to stretch out.

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Bob James – Three

More Jazz Recordings Engineered by Rudy Van Gelder

  • A vintage CTI pressing with very good Hot Stamper sound from first note to last
  • It’s richer, fuller and with more presence than the average copy, and that’s especially true for whatever godawful Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently being foisted on an unsuspecting record buying public
  • This is true of even our lowest-priced, lowest-graded copies – they are guaranteed to sound much better than any pressing you can find on the market today, as well as any pressing you may already own
  • “The five tracks here reflect [James’s] obsession with hard, danceable grooves that take as much from the soul-jazz book as they do his years with CTI. Using many of the same session players he bonded with at his former label…and a large host of stellar horn players, James offers five selections of simple but fun jazz-pop.”

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Ray Charles / The Genius After Hours

More of the Music of Ray Charles

charlgenius

  • The Genius After Hours debuts on the site with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) MONO sound from first note to last
  • Both of these sides are doing everything right – richer, fuller, better bass, more Tubey Magic, and the list goes on
  • We wasted a lot of time and money chasing after early pressings, but no matter what stampers they might have, none of them could compete with this late reissue, and it wasn’t even close
  • This collection of instrumentals gives you a taste of Ray’s prowess at the piano, with amazing sound to boot
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Taken from the same three sessions as The Great Ray Charles but not duplicating any of the performances, this set casts Charles as a jazz-oriented pianist in an instrumental setting. Fine music – definitely a change of pace for Ray Charles.”

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Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain on 6-Eye in Stereo

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this 6-Eye Stereo pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Sketches of Spain you’ve heard
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich and tubey the sound is
  • Reasonably quiet vinyl for an early label pressing, few are this clean, and none come much quieter if our experience with dozens of them over the decades 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 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?

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Quincy Jones – Walking In Space

More Jazz Fusion

  • Here is a vintage A&M pressing (and one of only a handful of copies to ever hit the site) with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The sonics on this side one are rich and Tubey Magical, yet transparent and spacious in the way that only vintage pressings ever are, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • The vocals (courtesy Hilda Harris, Maretha Stewart, Marilyn Jackson, and Valerie Simpson) are wonderfully sweet and breathy with remarkable in-your-listening-room presence (particularly on side one)
  • 5 stars: “The protean Quincy Jones returned to the recording studio as a leader after a long stretch in Hollywood with this triumphantly contemporary big band album. For jazz buffs, the long, dramatic title track from the then-raging musical Hair is the highlight… This is one of the great peaks of Creed Taylor’s A&M period, and it still sounds spectacular today.”

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Oliver Nelson – The Blues and the Abstract Truth

More of the Music of Oliver Nelson

  • Oliver Nelson’s Masterpiece (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in close to three years), here with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it from first note to last – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Clean, clear and present with a solid bass foundation, as well as the big stage this big group of musicians needs (particularly on side one)
  • If all you know is Van Gelder’s original cutting, you will surely have your eyes and ears opened by this wonderful reissue pressing (also particularly on side one)
  • The knockout pressings we discovered many years ago are ones with very particular markings that are very hard to find, which is explains why this musical Masterpiece comes to the site only once every three years
  • 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.)

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Rollins and Nelson Are Hard to Beat in 66

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sonny Rollins Available Now

A triumph for Rudy Van Gelder, a Top Impulse title, and as much a showcase for Oliver Nelson as it is for Sonny Rollins. 

This album is on the TAS Super Disc list, which is probably what first alerted me to it. I know I was listening to this album 25 years ago, just from the memory of hearing it in the condo I used to live in. It sounded great back then and it sounds even better now. You will have a hard time finding a better Sonny Rollins record, sonically or musically. 

Great players of course. Kenny Burrell is wonderful as always. Interestingly I never realized that Roger Kellaway is the pianist on these sessions. I saw him live years ago with Benny Carter (who was 90 at the time) and he put on one of the most amazing performances at the piano I have ever seen. For some reason he was never able to make it as a recording artist, but the guy is a genius at the keyboard.

Of course any orchestration by Oliver Nelson is going to be top flight and this is no exception. Two of his records are Must Owns in my book: Jimmy Smith’s Bashin’ and his own The Blues and the Abstract Truth. No jazz collection without them can be taken seriously.

For audiophiles who are looking for one of the best sounding jazz recordings ever made, this is it.

Heavy Vinyl

There was a 180 gram reissue on Impulse a number of years back. I seem to recall it was awful. Most of the Heavy Vinyl reissues that Blue Note and Impulse did under their own names were garbage. They were probably a step up from the CDs those labels were making at the time, but none of those pressings have the magic that’s found on originals like this one.

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