- Excellent Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides and one of the better copies from our most recent shootout
- If you dig Oliver’s Nelson’s swingin’ BIG BRASS as much as we do, you are in for a treat with this stereo pressing
- The best sides have the kind of analog richness, warmth, and smoothness that make listening to old records so involving
- Slaughter On Tenth Avenue is the monster track leading off here, and it swings the way Walk on the Wild Side does – like crazy, man!
This is some of the BEST SOUND we have ever heard for any RVG recording of Jimmy Smith with arrangements by Oliver Nelson (Claus Ogerman also took on some of the arranging duties; his work with Antonio Carlos Jobim is superb in all respects).
It’s super rich, full and Tubey Magical with real bottom end weight and a nicely extended top end. This is tube mastering at its finest. Not many vintage tube mastered records manage to balance all the sonic elements as correctly as this copy did.
In the past we’ve complained about “Rudy Van Gelder’s somewhat over the top echo-drenched brass,” but on a Super Hot copy such as this there is not much to complain about If you have a top quality front end (and the system that goes with it), this recording will be amazingly spacious, three-dimensional, transparent, dynamic, open and above all LIVELY.