Top Arrangers – Claus Ogerman

Sammy Davis Jr. – The Nat King Cole Song Book

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  • A superb sounding original stereo copy with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or very close to it on both sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too!
  • Bigger and richer, with lovely Tubey Magic and breathy vocals, this Tri-Color Reprise pressing lets us hear Sammy at the peak of his powers performing some of Nat’s most memorable songs
  • 4 Stars: “Alongside Cole’s collaborator, Billy May, and notable jazz arranger Claus Ogerman, Davis and company turned in one of the finest and most underrated efforts.”

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Wes Montgomery – Willow Weep For Me

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More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

  • Wes Montgomery’s superb posthumous release finally makes its Hot Stamper debut, with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish
  • The stereo sound here is Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with three-dimensionality that will fill your listening room from wall to wall
  • Assembled using additional material from the live Smokin’ at the Half Note sessions, this collection served as the perfect memorial to Montgomery’s musical genius
  • Grammy Award Winner for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group
  • “… what you will hear, bathed in winds or not, is prime, mature Wes Montgomery stretching out in full, with unbelievable confidence in his ear and technique at all times…”

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Jimmy Smith – Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf

 

  • 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.

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