Top Artists – Benny Carter

Benny Carter – Additions to Further Definitions

More of the Music of Benny Carter

  • Additions to Further Definitions appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this original Impulse stereo pressing
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this stunning copy in our notes: “jumping out of the speakers”…”tubey and 3D”…”very full sax”…”present and open and relaxed”…”big and rich”
  • Both of these sides are exceptionally transparent, with superb immediacy and remarkably clarity – thanks, RVG!
  • The music comes alive on this copy, with space, size and richness that few other pressings can match

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Audiophiles Should Skip Swingin’ the ’20s on OJC

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

This album is fairly common on the OJC pressing from 1988, but more recently we’ve found the sound of the OJC pressings we’ve played seriously wanting. They have the kind of bad reissue sound that plays right into the prejudices of record collectors and audiophiles alike, the kind for whom nothing but an original will do.

They were dramatically smaller, flatter, more recessed and more lifeless than even the worst of the ’70s LPs we played. (We tend to like those, by the way.)

The lesson? Not all reissues are created equal. Some OJC pressings are great — including even some of the new ones — some are awful, and the only way to judge them fairly is to judge them individually, which requires actually playing a large sample.

Since virtually no record collectors or audiophiles like doing that, they make faulty judgments – OJC’s are cheap reissues sourced from digital tapes, run for the hills! – based on their biases and reliance on inadequate sample sizes.

You can find those who subscribe to this approach on every audiophile forum there is. The methods they have adopted do not produce good results, but as long as they stick to them, they will never have to worry about discovering that inconvenient truth.

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Analogue Productions Fails Spectacularly Right Out of the Gate with Jazz Giant

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Albums Available Now

You may remember what a disaster the Analogue Productions version of Jazz Giant from the 90s was.

Or maybe you agree with a certain writer that they were god’s gift to the record lovers of the world in need of higher quality pressings. We thought they were crap right from the get-go and were not the least bit shy about saying so,

I haven’t heard the new 45 RPM version and don’t intend to play one, but I seriously doubt that it sounds like our good Hot Stamper pressings. We have yet to hear a single Heavy Vinyl 45 that sounds any good to us, judged by the standards we set in our shootouts.

Actually, to run the risk of sounding even more pedantic than usual, the records themselves set the standards.

We simply grade them on the curve they establish for themselves.

We guarantee that none of their LPs can hold a candle to our vintage records or your money back. If you have one of the new pressings and don’t know what’s wrong with it, or don’t think that anything is wrong with it, try one of ours.

It will show you just how much better a real record can sound, with more space, more transparency, more energy, more presence, more drive, more ambience — more of everything that’s good about the sound of music on vinyl.

It is our contention that no one alive today makes records that sound as good as the vintage LPs we sell. Once you hear one of our Hot Stamper pressings, those Heavy Vinyl records you bought might not ever sound right to you again.

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The Yellow Label Reissues Can Sound Very Good, But Great? Not a Chance

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

The earlier pressing on the site as of this writing is an amazingly well recorded album with many fine qualities:

Boasting seriously good grades from top to bottom, this vintage Contemporary pressing is doing just about everything right.

These sides are bigger and more open, with more bass and energy, than most others we played – the saxes and trumpets are immediate and lively.

Mr. Earl Hines himself showed up, a man who knows this music like nobody’s business – Leroy Vinnegar and Shelly Manne round out the quartet.

“Great musicians produce great results, and most of the LP’s tracks were done in one or two takes. The result is ‘a spontaneous, swinging record of what happened’ when Carter met Hines ‘for the first time. . . .'”

Our notes for the Yellow Label reissues point out that they are always more compressed, with some added upper midrange. The intro benefits from this but the peaks can get congested.

The earlier pressings, especially the originals on the Black Label, are the most likely to sound right, but they are tough to find in audiophile playing condition.

If you see a copy on the site with these grades — less than 2+ on both sides — it will proabably have a Yellow Label and some of the shortcomings we mention above.

Correct, In This Case

Some people like to search for relationships between the sound of the pressing and the label it has, but in our experience that is more often than not a fool’s errand once confirmation biases and other kinds of mistaken audiophile thinking are taken into account.

When the conventional wisdom turns out to be correct — in other words, when it comports with reality, at least for the six copies of this album that we played — we are happy to temporarily put aside our skepticism and learn the lessons playing a stack of copies of this title has taught us.

Why? Because the experimental evidence supports it.

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Billie Holiday – Music For Torching

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums

  • Boasting solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from first note to last, this Verve Mono reissue is doing just about everything right
  • A superb recording of jazz standards with a great lineup and Billie in top form – plenty of Tubey Magical richness and naturally breathy vocals as well
  • Great performances for classics such as “It Had to Be You,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “A Fine Romance,” and too many more to list
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The overall feeling on this 1955 recording is strictly after-hours: the party is long over but a few close friends remain for nightcaps and, is that the sun peeking through the windows?”

You’d be hard pressed to find a female vocal album from the 1950s with sound comparable to this one. We just finished up a big shootout for the sublimely titled Music For Torching, and this lovely copy was clearly one of the better pressings we played. If you love smoky jazz standards the way only Lady Day can sing them, we think you’ll be blown away to hear her sound this warm, rich and present.

The formula is simple: Take one of the best female vocalists in the game, back her with a stellar crew of jazzmen and set them loose to knock out incredible versions of classic torch songs — It Had To Be You, A Fine Romance, Come Rain Or Come Shine and so forth.

The good news is that the performances turned out to be some of the best ever recorded by this extraordinary singer, and fortunately for us audiophiles, the mono sound turned out to be dramatically better than we would have expected from Norman Granz’s Verve label in 1955.

Both sides are blessed with the kind of mid-’50’s Tubey Magical Analog Sound that’s been lost to the world of recorded music for decades — decades I tell you!

Nobody can manage to get a recording to sound like this anymore and it seems as if no one can even remaster a recording like this anymore, if our direct experience with scores of such albums counts as any sort of evidence.

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Jazz Giant and Tube Versus Transistor Tradeoffs

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

In a commentary from more than ten years ago we weighed the tradeoffs in the sound of the originals versus the reissues.

This superb sounding original Black Label Contemporary pressing of Benny Carter’s swingin’ jazz quartet is the very definition of a top jazz stereo recording from the late ’50s recorded and mastered through an All Tube Chain.

There’s good extension on the top end for an early pressing, with TONS of what you would most expect: Tubey Magic and Richness. If that’s what you’re looking for, this copy has got it!

We prefer the later pressings in most ways, but this record does something that no later pressing we have ever played can do — get Benny’s trumpet to sound uncannily REAL.

If you want to demonstrate to your skeptical audiophile friends what no CD (or modern remastered record) can begin to do, play side two of this copy for them. They may be in for quite a shock.

The sound of the muted trumpet on side two is out of this world. 

It’s exactly the sonic signature of good tube equipment — making some elements of a recording sound shockingly real.

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Benny Carter – Jazz Giant

More of the Music of Benny Carter

  • Both sides of this superb Contemporary reissue earned excellent sonic grades
  • If you still think that Analogue Productions is remastering records properly, you have definitely never heard a real Contemporary that sounds as good as this one does
  • The music of this Jazz Giant comes alive on this copy, with space, size, clarity and richness that few other pressings can match
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Benny Carter had already been a major jazz musician for nearly 30 years when he recorded this particularly strong septet session for Contemporary … This timeless music is beyond the simple categories of ‘swing’ or ‘bop’ and should just be called ‘classic.'”

If you like the sound of Contemporary Records, you won’t find a better example than this. Midrange magic doesn’t get anymore magical.

It’s been several years since our last shootout, but we hope the lucky buyer of this copy realizes it was more than worth it. To find a copy of Jazz Giant that sounds as good as this one is a very special event indeed.

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Benny Carter – Swingin’ the ’20s

More of the Music of Benny Carter

  • Boasting seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom, this vintage Contemporary pressing is doing just about everything right
  • These sides are bigger and more open, with more bass and energy, than most others we played – the saxes and trumpets are immediate and lively
  • Mr. Earl Hines himself showed up, a man who knows this music like nobody’s business – Leroy Vinnegar and Shelly Manne round out the quartet
  • “Great musicians produce great results, and most of the LP’s tracks were done in one or two takes. The result is ‘a spontaneous, swinging record of what happened’ when Carter met Hines ‘for the first time. . . .'”

For us audiophiles, both the sound and the music here are enchanting. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good a 1959 All Tube Analog recording can sound, this killer copy will do the trick. (more…)

How Does the D1/D1 Jazz Giant Black Label Pressing Sound?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

Even though the Black label original of Jazz Gianot we played in our shootout held its own well enough, it did suffer from a slight case of “old record” sound.

Head to head with the best vintage reissues, it was a bit crude, didn’t extend fully on the top end, and wasn’t as resolving in the midrange.

The fact that it earned a Super Hot (A++) sonic grade means that it could not have sounded too much like an old record. It was still doing most everything right.

It just had a few sonic shortcomings we recognized were holding it back.

The reissues that beat it in the shootout showed us just how good the album could sound, maybe not night and day better, but definitely better, a full grade better.

The Black Label original we played would still beat the pants off the godawful Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl pressing that came out in the 90s, the one mastered by the formerly-brilliant Doug Sax.

For those who may not have been collecting back then, we describe in great detail the bad sound of the Heavy Vinyl pressing that AP produced for their version of Way Out West in 1992.

Mobile Fidelity got into the reissue act in 1994, making murky-sounding records on 200 gram vinyl and calling them Anadisqs.

Classic Records started producing their bright, screechy reissues of Living Stereo titles that year as well.

It seems a lot of bad sounding records were being made back then!

Is it any different now? (If it is, please contact me at tom@better-records.com and tell me what you think the differences are. I am at a loss after playing these six Heavy Vinyl titles in 2024 and finding that all of them fell well short of the mark. What mark is that, you ask? Why, the mark set by their vintage counterparts.)

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Proper VTA Is Essential to Getting the Sound of Benny’s Muted Trumpet Right

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

For us audiophiles both the sound and the music here are enchanting. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good a 1959 All Tube Analog recording can sound, this killer copy will do the trick.

The sound of the muted trumpet on side two is out of this world.

It has exactly the sonic signature of good tube equipment — the ability to make some elements of a recording sound shockingly real. There are tradeoffs with tube mastering to be sure, a subject we discuss in some depth here.

The trumpet is also a very good test for turntable setup, tracking, as well as arm and cartridge compatability. You’ve got to be set up properly for every aspect for a difficult-to-reproduce instrument like the trumpet to sound right.

Accurate VTA adjustment is critical to the record reproduction. If you do not have an arm that allows you to easily adjust its VTA, then you will just have to do it the hard way (which normally means loosening a set screw and moving the arm up and down until you get lucky with the right height).

Yes, it may be time consuming, it may even be a major pain in the ass, but there is no question in my mind that you will hear a dramatic improvement in the sound of your records once you have learned to precisely adjust the VTA for each and every one of them.

VTA is not a corner anyone should be cutting.

Careful adjustment of VTA is critical to getting good sound.

Of course, so are anti-skate, azimuth and tracking weight.

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