Top Artists – Antonio Carlos Jobim

Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim on Bad Rhino Heavy Vinyl

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Sonic Grade: C-

The Rhino 180 gram LP mastered by Kevin Gray is passable, but the real thing is the real thing and just can’t be beat by some wannabe reissue.

There is a richness, a sweetness and a relaxed naturalness on the best early pressings that are virtually never found on modern remasterings.

Rhino Records has really made a mockery of the analog medium. Rhino touts their releases as being pressed on “180 gram High Performance Vinyl.” However, if they are using performance to refer to sound quality, we have found the performance of their vinyl to be quite low, lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins.

Mastered by Kevin Gray, this record has what we would call ”modern” sound, which is to say it’s clean and tonally correct, but it’s missing the analog qualities the better originals have plenty of, most notably Tubey Magic. [1]

In other words, it sounds like a CD.

Who can be bothered to play a record that has so few of the qualities audiophiles are looking for on vinyl?

Back in 2007 we put the question this way: Why own a turntable if you’re going to play mediocrities like these?

[1] Some records are so completely lacking in Analog Warmth, Richness and Sweetness that they sound like CDs, and bad ones at that. They have so little Tubey Magic that you might as well peg the figure at ZERO.

This is decidedly not our sound. No Hot Stamper pressing could possibly lack Tubey Magic — it’s one of the things that sets our records apart from the modern mediocrity known as the Heavy Vinyl LP.

Direct to Discs on Crystal Clear – What Was I Thinking?

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These are just some of the recordings on Crystal Clear that we’ve auditioned over the years and found wanting.

Without going into specifics — who would bother to take the time? — we’ll just say these albums suffer from poor musical performances, poor sound, or both, and therefore do not deserve a place in your collection.  

The Big Picture from a Lifelong Audiophile

You may have seen this text in another listing, but it bears repeating. There is nothing new under the sun, and that is especially true when it comes to bad sounding audiophile records. The world is full of them.

Hey, the records being marketed to audiophiles these days may have second- and third-rate sound, but at least now they have good music

That’s progress, right?

These two titles are the kind of crap we newbie audiophiles used to put up with back in the ’70s before we had anything resembling a clue.

They clearly belong on our list of Bad Audiophile Records

You might be asking: What Kind of Audio Fool Was I? to buy dumbass records like these.

Yes, I was foolish enough to buy these records (and dozens more like them) and expect them to have good music, or at least good sound. Of course they had neither. Practically none of these kinds of records ever did. Sheffield and a few others made some good ones, but most Crystal Clears were crap.

As clueless as I was, even back in the day I could tell that I had just thrown my money away on these two lipsticked-pigs in a poke.

But I was an audiophile, and I wanted to believe. These special super-hi-fidelity records were being made for me, for special people like me, because I had expensive equipment and regular records would just never be good enough to play on my special equipment, right?

To say I was wrong to think about audio that way is obviously an understatement. Over the course of the last forty years, I (and to be fair, my friends and my staff) have been wrong about a great deal when it comes to records and audio.

You can read more about many of the things we got wrong under the heading: Live and Learn.

Thank goodness Audio Progress is real and anyone who goes about it the right way can achieve it.

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Stan Getz / Luiz Bonfa – Jazz Samba Encore!

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  • This superb collaboration debuts with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish and ’60s vinyl that’s about as quiet as any we can find
  • Smooth, full-bodied and Tubey Magical, the brilliant Ray Hall engineered this Demo Disc using an All Tube chain back in 1963, and it’s glorious to hear that sound reproduced on modern hi-rez equipment
  • 4 stars: ” Getz relies mostly upon native Brazilians for his backing. Thus, the soft-focused grooves are considerably more attuned to what was actually coming out of Brazil at the time… Two bona fide giants, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá (who gets co-billing), provide the guitars and all of the material, and Maria Toledo contributes an occasional throaty vocal.”

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Gilberto & Jobim – Gilberto & Jobim

  • A superb sounding copy with Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish; exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are clean, clear and open with lovely breathy vocals, plenty of Tubey Magic, and less of the grit and grain the plagues the average copy
  • “The back cover of this Capitol LP claims “Here’s the album that started it all,” and to an extent that is true. A year before Stan Getz first met up with Charlie Byrd to launch bossa nova in the United States, Joao Gilberto (with backing by an orchestra led by Antonio Carlos Jobim) recorded a dozen bossa nova performances, including “One Note Samba,” “Meditation,” “Corcovado” and even “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover.” – All Music, 4 1/2 Stars

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Astrud Gilberto – The Astrud Gilberto Album

  • With seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them, this Van Gelder mastered copy was one of the best we played in our shootout (but the vinyl is iffy at best)
  • The sound here has real texture to the strings and breath to the vocals, key elements if this music is going to work
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The Astrud Gilberto Album was at least as good as Getz/Gilberto (despite what jazz fans say), for several reasons. Gilberto sounded beautiful on a range of material, from the sentimental “Dindi” to the playful “Agua de Beber,” and as long as intelligent musicians were playing to her strengths (as they do here), the results were splendid.”

If you can tolerate the slightly noisier surfaces of this pressing you are in for some amazing music and sound. If for any reason you are not happy with the sound or condition of the album,we are of course happy to take it back for a full refund including the domestic return postage.

This is an early stereo LP – the monos may be five times more common, but every last one we played was awful!

Check out this list of top jazz players:

Astrud Gilberto – vocals
Antônio Carlos Jobim – vocals, guitar (track 2)
João Gilberto – guitar
Joe Mondragon – bass
Bud Shank – alto sax, flute
João Donato – piano
Stu Williamson – trumpet
Milt Bernhart – trombone
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Frank Sinatra – Dindi, or, The Man Is a Genius

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More of the Music of Frank Sinatra

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If you like romantic music you would be hard pressed to find a better album than this one. The song Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars perfectly encapsulates the mood of the album.

Our favorite track here is Dindi. Sinatra is the king of lost loves, and the song Dindi offers him another opportunity for regret. Nobody does it better than Frank. It’s a cliche to say he wears his heart on his sleeve, but the man made a career out of it. If the cliche fits…

Antonio Carlos Jobim – Tide – Our Shootout Winner from 2008

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Reviews and Commentaries for Antonio Carlos Jobim

GREAT SOUND ON BOTH SIDES! We’ve been trying our hardest to find a Jobim record with Hot sound, because we love the music so much. It’s taken some time, but we’ve finally found a few magnificent copies of Tide — and this one’s the champ!    

Viva Brazil!

Jobim is the master of samba music, and this is one of his best albums! Normally I don’t like flute jazz. The L.A. Four bores me to tears. Herbie Mann has one good album, Live at the Villiage Vanguard (with two string bass players, the only record of its kind that I know of), but the flute works great for Brazilian music, because the music itself is so light and airy, it just fits. You don’t see us recommending too many CDs around here, but the 3-disc Man From Ipanema set is WONDERFUL. (For those looking for Brazilian music with more of a rock influence, we definitely recommend starting with Sergio Mendes’ early A&M albums. If you want to go a bit further, search for some Gilberto Gil or Caetano Veloso.)

One Tough Ticket

It’s beyond difficult to find great sounding copies of Jobim’s albums, but we keep on picking up his records because we love to play them so much. Many of the pressings we bring back are weak sonically, too noisy, or both. Recently, we threw a copy of Tide on the table just for fun, and were thrilled when we heard some promising sound. We hit the shelves and the stores determined to pull together enough copies with the right stampers to make this shootout happen.  (more…)

Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto / Getz-Gilberto – Our Shootout Winner from 2012

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

We have been trying to find great sound (on reasonable surfaces) for this album for YEARS — I kid you not — but this 2-pack is the first Hot Stamper version to ever hit the site. We have fired up this shootout multiple times since 2006 and been left empty-handed each and every time until the last go-around. We have sunk an insane amount of dough into trying to get a few killer copies because we love the music so much, but we just haven’t had much to show for it. If you love this Brazilian-flavored cool jazz as much as we do, you might want to snap this one up because who knows when or if we’ll find another one.

Stan Getz is a truly great tenor saxophonist, the cool school’s most popular player. This LP is all the evidence you need. Side one has those wonderfully relaxed Brazilian tempos and the smooth sax stylings of Stan Getz.

Side two for me is even more magical. Getz fires up and lets loose some of his most emotionally intense playing. These sad, poetic songs are about feeling more than anything else and Getz communicates that so completely you don’t have to speak Portugese to know what Jobim is saying. Call it cool jazz with feeling.

Side one here has good bass, wonderful transparency and more presence than we heard elsewhere. The female vocals sound excellent and the sax is full bodied with clear leading-edge transients.

The side two of this set is even better, more extended up top and incredibly smooth and sweet overall. It’s got the impressive presence of the first side but could stand to be a bit fuller.

Both sides are a bit noisy as is pretty much always the case with this record — a big reason why we’ve struggled so hard with this album. The other big reason is that most copies just plain sound mediocre or worse, which you can find out for yourself by flipping over either of the Hot sides in this set.

This is an all-time jazz classic and it’s a shame we can’t find more great copies. This one isn’t going to be a top Demo Disc for any of you but it will give you two sides that show you how lovely this music sounds when you’re lucky enough to get a hold of a copy that’s not poorly mastered and obscured by seriously noisy vinyl.

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Stan Getz / Jazz Samba Encore – Notes from 2015

Yet another wonderful Getz Samba record, the third in the series. Some of our faourite music has this Samba syncopation: Sergio Mendes, first and foremost of course, but also Airto, and all the wonderful Getz albums from this period. Their enchanting Brazilian rhythms make their music fun. 

In 2006 we wrote:

This is the first copy of this record that we’ve found that was clean enough to put up on the site. Don’t expect to see another one any time soon.

We weren’t kidding. Here it is, a genuine Hot Stamper pressing, only nine years later!

Stan Getz is a truly great tenor saxophonist, the cool school’s most popular player. This album is all the supporting evidence one would ever need to prove the point. All his samba albums from this era are worth owning. We have yet to hear any Getz record from the ’70s or later that impressed us musically or sonically. If you know of any good ones drop us a line.

Side One

Big, rich and tubey, by the second track the presence is even better – listen for it.

Side Two

A wide stage and rich sound (in the lovely vocal especially). Getz’s sax is dynamic all get out as usual.

When you hear Maria Toledo singing that opening track on side two you will know you are in the presence of greatness.

AMG Review

Here’s some more bossa nova from Stan Getz when the bloom was still on the first Brazilian boom. This time, however, on his third such album, Getz relies mostly upon native Brazilians for his backing. Thus, the soft-focused grooves are considerably more attuned to what was actually coming out of Brazil at the time.

Two bona fide giants, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá (who gets co-billing), provide the guitars and all of the material, and Maria Toledo contributes an occasional throaty vocal. Getz injects more high-wailing passages into his intuitive affinity for the groove, even going for some fast bop on “Un Abraco No Getz,” and Bonfá takes adept care of the guitar solos against Jobim’s rock-steady rhythm.

Clearly Jobim’s songwriting contributions — “So Danco Samba,” “How Insensitive,” and “O Morro Nao Tem Vez” — would have the longest shelf life, and though the album didn’t sell as well as its two predecessors, it certainly helped break these tunes into the permanent jazz repertoire. Avid bossa nova fans will certainly treasure this album for the lesser-known Bonfá tunes.