Top Artists – Charles Mingus

Letter of the Week – Uncleaned Ah Um Originals vs. Cleaned Reissues

More of the Music of Charles Mingus

The letter below sheds some light on a vitally important mastering issue: specifically, the answer to the question, Which are better sounding, originals or reissues?

The letter finishes this way.

Incidentally, just a couple of days ago I conducted my own shootout between the Red Label “Mingus Ah Um” I bought from you a few weeks back and my pristine, Six Eye White Label Promo original. To my surprise, you were absolutely right about the greater clarity of the former (starting with the snare drum on the first track).

If I had to choose between them when selecting half a dozen “desert island” LPs (and “Mingus Ah Um” would definitely be one), the Red Label version would be the pick. Much obliged for the edification.

We of course could not agree more. We wrote back:

Once you hear the sound of “old school mastering” and get to know it, you can recognize it for what it does right and what it too often does wrong. Then, and only then, can you appreciate what is really happening when switching from newer to older pressings, what is being gained and what is being lost.

It’s the kind of Home Audio Exercise we constantly talk about on the site. And there’s a good reason for that.

As we never tire of saying, hearing is believing.

Update 2022

We do not want to give the wrong impression about Ah Um. At least one of the original stereo pressings, properly cleaned, assuming we have a few to play, will win the shootout every time.

Which one will win we never know. But one of them will.

No Red Label pressing from the 70s will beat a top quality Six-Eye.

But if you have an original and it is not cleaned right, which is almost always going to be the case, since most cleaning fluids and machines these days do not do a very good job of making your records sound the way they should, then our Red Label reissue can beat your copy. Which is what our letter writer found to be true.

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Letter of the Week – “This record is an absolute treat and a real sleeper in the jazz catalogue.”

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Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Charles Mingus

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased.

Hey Tom, 

I wanted to congratulate you on the Mingus record I purchased. It is an absolute masterpiece.

The performers are a who’s who of the golden age of Jazz. The arrangements and performances are as good as any in large group jazz I’ve ever heard.

The sound is as you say. Tonally perfect with wonderful spatial expansiveness and transparency. The only comparable large group jazz with comparable recorded fidelity I’ve heard is on Ellington Indigos, which ironically you had for sale in the same mailer; and Duke Ellington is Mingus’ idol in terms of arrangement and sound.

This record is an absolute treat and a real sleeper in the jazz catalogue. The combination of the Duke, Debussy and Ravel creates textures that are unique in all of music, classical or jazz. Sketches of Spain is close, but not quite in the same league.

Brilliant discovery on your part, and great fortune on mine. Thank you.

Phil

Phil,

We recently discovered that the best copies of this album are even better sounding!

Mingus’s Pre Bird Makes the Case For the Hot Stamper

More of the Music of Charles Mingus

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Charles Mingus

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below is a link to the review he wrote recently for one of our favorite Mingus records, Pre-Bird.

Mingus’s PRE BIRD and THE CASE For the HOT STAMPER

A few quick thoughts on the album which which we hope will be of interest to our readers:

We used to think the early Limelight pressing shown here was so amazing sounding that finding better sound for this recording would simply be impossible, but the original Mercury showed us just how wrong we were – the right Mercury pressing takes the recording to another level, one we never imagined it could reach. (In our experience records do that from time to time. We’ve written about some of the ones we’ve played here.)

Here is a small excerpt from our most recent commentary for the album:

The best copies recreate a live studio space the size of which you will not believe (assuming your room can do a good job of recreating their room). (Here are some of the other recordings we’ve auditioned with exceptional amounts of size and space.

The sound is tonally correct, Tubey Magical and above all natural. The timbre of each and every instrument is right and it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it — so high-resolution too.

If you love ’50s and ’60s large group jazz you cannot go wrong here. Mingus was a genius and the original music on this record is just one more album supporting the undeniability of that fact.

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Charles Mingus – Three Or Four Shades Of Blues

  • An incredible sounding copy with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from the first note to the last
  • These sides are KILLER — clean, clear and full-bodied with a big bottom end and lots of space around all of the players
  • Robert Christgau called it the best composed bebop he’d heard in 1977; if you’re a bebop fan, we’re sure you’ll agree!

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Charles Mingus – Me Myself an Eye

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Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Charles Mingus

If you hear something that sounds like Frank Zappa’s music circa Waka Jawaka, don’t be surprised, we heard it too. Mingus and Zappa were both eccentric geniuses so it only makes sense that they arrived at some of the same musical ideas as they evolved as composers. 

Side one is big, rich, Tubey Magical and natural. The saxophone that solos is front and center and lively. Above all the music works on this side.

Side two is especially rich and tubey. It will sound thick and dark unless you get the volume up to the level it wants to be for the mix to work (which simply means that the album was balanced at louder levels to sound correct at louder levels). A little more top end extension would be nice but the music sounds right on the copy the way it is. (more…)

Mingus Revisited – 25 Guys in a Big Room Playing Live

More of the Music of Charles Mingus

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Charles Mingus

This copy sounds like a big room full of musicians (25 in all!) playing live, which it surely was. The Tubey Magical richness of this 1960 recording is breathtaking – no modern record can touch it. Allmusic gives it 4 stars and we think it’s maybe even a better than that.

On both sides the best sound can be heard starting with the second track, but on side one the first track was very spacious and had a fuller sounding piano than practically any other we played.

This copy has the original bound-in booklet with pictures and background on the recording, which was “directed” by none other than Leonard Feather.

The best copies recreate a live studio space the size of which you will not believe.

On both sides the best sound can be heard starting with the second track, but on side one the first track was very spacious and had a fuller sounding piano than practically any other we played.

Side one is tonally correct, Tubey Magical and above all natural. The timbre of each and every instrument is right and it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it.

Side two is big, clear and balanced, with an especially sweet, rich, tubey sax — what a sound! So high-resolution too. The top extends beautifully on this copy, and that was not true for most of the copies we played.

If you love ’50s and ’60s jazz you cannot go wrong here. Mingus was a genius and the original music on this record is just one more album’s worth of proof of that fact.

Hi-Fidelity

What do we love about these vintage jazz Hot Stamper pressings? The timbre of every instrument is Hi-Fi in the best sense of the word. The unique sounds of the instruments are reproduced with remarkable fidelity. That’s what we at Better Records mean by “Hi-Fi”, not the kind of Audiophile Phony BS Sound that passes for Hi-Fidelity these days. There’s no boosted top, there’s no bloated bottom, there’s no sucked-out midrange.

This is Hi-Fidelity for those who recognize The Real Thing when they hear it. I’m pretty sure our customers do, and whoever picks this one up is guaranteed to get a real kick out of it.