Top Artists – Judy Collins

How Paul and Judy Finally Turned Me Against DCC

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul Simon Available Now

When I finally got around to comparing the two, I remember being taken aback by how much better my original Artisan pressing sounded than the supposedly superior DCC, the one pressed at high quality Heavy Vinyl at RTI to the most exacting standards possible, yada, yada, yada.

What finally turned me completely against DCC were the awful Paul Simon solo albums they remastered. Two were released, two I had as unreleased test pressings, and all of them were clearly and markedly inferior to the good original pressings I had owned.

So much for believing in DCC.

Since that time we have learned that placing your faith in any record label or cutting operation is a mistake.

You have to play the records to know how they sound.

Nothing else works, and nothing else can work.

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Judy Collins / Judith

More of the Music of Judy Collins

This vintage pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in years) boasts INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
Both of these sides are rich and full with plenty of space around all of the instruments, and exceptionally breathy and present vocals
Here’s the Midrange Magic that’s missing from the reissues and whatever 180g pressing has been made from the tapes (or, to be clear, a modern digital master copied from who-knows-what-tapes)
Engineering by Phil Ramone, who went on to win the Grammy the following year for Still Crazy After All These Years
“Her graceful and affecting versions of Jimmy Webb’s ‘The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress’ and Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Send in the Clowns’ (as well as her own ‘Houses’) are lovely and inspired…”

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Judy Collins – Whales and Nightingales

More Folk Rock

Whales and Nightingales makes its Hot Stamper debut with superb Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this original Elektra pressing
Surprisingly rich and smooth, with the kind of breathy immediacy to the vocals that only vintage vinyl can offer
Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
“Whales & Nightingales is full of good songs … It opened new doors for her and for folk music in general.”

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Wildflowers – Three of Her Best on Side One

More of the Music of Judy Collins

The first three songs on side one alone are worth the price of the album, three of the best Judy ever recorded.

Joni Mitchell’s Michael from Mountains is one of the best songs on her debut album; Judy sings it with comparable taste and skill.

Since You Asked is Judy’s own composition, her first to be recorded in fact. In this writer’s opinion it’s the best song she ever wrote, “as good as it gets” as we like to say.

And of course Leonard Cohen’s Sisters of Mercy is one of his many masterpieces and brilliant in all respects as performed here.

What to Listen for

Most copies were small and veiled, with edgy, dry vocals that often get hard or shrill when loud — definitely not our sound.

We were surprised that so few copies sounded the way we expected them to, that so few had the Tubey Magical qualities that we’ve come to expect from Elektra in 1967.

The label was home to The Doors and Love at the time, so what happened here?

John Haeny, the engineer, worked on Waiting for the Sun, which is an amazing sounding Doors album on the right pressing. Why so few great sounding Wildflowers?

If that’s a legitimate question to pose, then first answer me this: why so few great sounding copies of Waiting for the Sun?

It’s simple — the 1967 Elektra magic of the tape did not make it to the 1967 Elektra vinyl with any consistency. That’s why it’s hard to find good sounding Judy Collins records or good sounding Doors records. This is our first big Judy Collins shootout for precisely that reason.

We can find great sounding Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell records all day long; the site is full of them. Judy Collins, not so much. Almost none outside of this one.

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Wildflowers – Sometimes the Hits Are Mastered from Sub-Generation Tapes…

More of the Music of Judy Collins

And there’s not much you can do about it.

Both Sides Now, the Top Ten hit that finally put Judy on the map, is clearly made from a copy tape and doesn’t sound as good as the songs that follow it on side two. Hey, it happens, and I suspect it happens more often than most audiophiles think. I would wager that back in the day most people who bought this album never even noticed.

One thing I’ve noticed about audiophiles over the years is that they’re pretty much like most people.

The difference of course is that they call themselves audiophiles, and audiophiles are supposed to care about sound quality.

They may care about it, but are they capable of evaluating high quality sound? What is the evidence for the affirmative in this proposition?

Are they actually capable of critical listening?

Do they listen critically enough to notice a dubby track on an otherwise good sounding record when they hear it?

Or dubby sound in general?

Or to notice that one side of a record often sounds very different from another?

Or that some reissues sound better than the originals of the album?

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Judy Collins – Who Knows Where The Time Goes

More Judy Collins

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Judy Collins

The sweetness and transparency to the guitars and vocals on this wonderful pressing won us over
“Who Knows Where the Time Goes” – one of our favorite Judy Collins songs – is achingly powerful here
4 stars: “Enthusiasts of Judy Collins rank this among their favorite recordings and it is likewise a perfect touchstone for the burgeoning listener as well.”
If you’re a fan of Judy’s, this early pressing from 1968 surely belongs in your collection
The complete list of titles from 1968 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

Finding the Best Sound

Most copies were a bit thinner than ideal, and even the best pressings we heard had a bit of that quality. Frequency extension high and low was also hard to come by.

If the sound is rich and full-bodied, yet clear and transparent, you probably have yourself one of the few that were mastered and pressed properly — and one of the few that survived the turntables of their day to be playable forty-plus years later on the revealing equipment you undoubtedly own.

If you don’t own such a copy, and with all due respect chances are you don’t, we have a lovely copy right here for you, only a click away.

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Judy Collins #3 – Gold Versus Red Label in 2007

More of the Music of Judy Collins

This commentary was written in 2007, and our system was not as revealing back then as it is now. Also we had not discovered the Walker Record Cleaning Fluids.

We tend to prefer the Gold Label Elektra pressings on this album now, but we like to keep an open mind, so that if a Red Label pressing wins a shootout, we don’t have to say we was wrong again.

As for other records we may have been wrong about, you can find some of them here under the heading: Live and Learn.

This is a Minty Elektra Red Label LP with two AMAZING sounding sides! Typical copies are dull and thin sounding, making Judy Blue Eyes’ beautiful voice sound honky and weak like she has a head cold. This copy is the remedy!

It has rich, full-bodied sound with the sweetest highs and tons of ambience, especially around the guitars and bass. Most importantly, there is virtually NO STRAIN on the her vocals, which is extremely rare.

Out of the three labels we listened to for this shootout, nothing could compare to this Red Label.

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