Top Artists – Gary Burton

Stan Getz / Getz Au Go Go – A Bossa Nova Classic

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  • Musically and sonically, this is a must own jazz album for audiophiles, perfect for those new to jazz as well as serious jazz aficionados
  • This was a magical night (or two) with Stan feeling the spirit and staying telepathically in the groove with his compadres all evening long
  • An incredibly tough album to find with the right sound and decent surfaces, which is the main reason it’s been about four years since we last did this shootout
  • The top copy of Getz-Gilberto last time around sold for $1499 — if I had to choose between them, I would be tempted to take Getz Au Go Go, especially with sound like this
  • 4 stars: “Highly recommended for all dimensions of jazz enthusiasts.” [We would, of course, give it the full 5 Stars]

This Stan Getz record has the kind of live jazz club sound that audiophiles like us (you and me) dream of.

More importantly, this ain’t no jazz at some stupid pawnshop — this is the real thing. Stan Getz, Gary Burton, Kenny Burrell and the lovely Astrud Gilberto, the living embodiment of cool jazz, are coming to a listening room near you.

Fans of cool jazz — in point of fact, some of the coolest jazz ever recorded — take note.

Cool Jazz Is Right

I’ve gotten more enjoyment out of this Getz album than any other, including those that are much more famous such as Getz/Gilberto (which doesn’t sound as good by the way). This one is (mostly) live in a nightclub and it immediately puts you in the right mood to hear this kind of jazz.

Listening to side one, I’m struck with the idea that this is the coolest jazz record of cool jazz ever recorded. Getz’s take on Summertime is a perfect example of his “feel” during these sessions. His playing is pure emotion; every note seems to come directly from his heart.

What really sets these performances apart is the relaxed quality of the playing. Getz seems to be almost nonchalant, but it’s not a bored or disinterested sound he’s making. It’s more of a man completely comfortable in this live setting, surrounded by like-minded musicians, all communicating the same vibe. Perhaps they all got hold of some really good grass that day. That’s the feeling one gets from their playing. As one is listening, there’s a certain euphoria that seems to be part of the music. This is definitely one of those albums to get lost in. (more…)

Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto / Getz-Gilberto on Japanese Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

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Sonic Grade: C

This is a Minty looking Verve Japanese Import LP.

It’s not competitive with the best domestic pressings, but you could definitely do worse.

Trying to find domestic copies that aren’t trashed is getting harder every day, so if you’re a click and pop counter, this copy may be the ticket.

Stan Getz is a truly great tenor saxophonist, the cool school’s most popular player. This LP is all the evidence you need. Side 1 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.

A Must Own Jazz Record

We consider this album a masterpiece. It’s a recording that should be part of any serious Jazz Collecton.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Further Reading

Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto / Getz-Gilberto

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  • A vintage Verve Stereo pressing of this Brazilian-flavored cool jazz classic with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a superb Double Plus (A++) side one
  • An impossibly difficult album to find in audiophile playing condition – we sunk a lot of time and dough into finding this copy, and it ain’t all that quiet, but it’s about as quiet as we can find them on vintage vinyl
  • If you want to hear this music right, the only way we know to do that is to get hold of as many copies as you can, clean them and play them and hope for the best, our business model in a nutshell
  • These sides have wonderful transparency and lovely presence – Astrud’s vocals sound breathy and Getz’s sax is full bodied, with fast transients
  • 5 stars: “This music has nearly universal appeal; it’s one of those rare jazz records about which the purist elite and the buying public are in total agreement. Beyond essential.”
  • You may be surprised to learn that the right reissues of this album consistently win the shootouts, something we’ve know for many years
  • Not that it does us much good, as they are so hard to find that our last shootout was, I kid you not, 2012
  • If I were to compile a list of The Best Non-Classical Albums from 1964, this album would obviously have to be on it

We have been trying to find great sound (on reasonable surfaces) for this album for years — I kid you not — which is why this is one of only a very small handful of Hot Stamper versions to hit the site in, oh, about ten years.

We have fired up this shootout multiple times since 2012 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.

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Stan Getz – Live and Learn

More of the Music of Stan Getz

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

A classic case of We Was Wrong.

Many years ago we had written these silly lines in a review:

Of course, you would never know this is a good recording by playing the average domestic copy. This Japanese LP is one of the few pressings that can show you that this wonderful smoky night club jazz LP really can have Demo Disc sound.

Ridiculous, right? Well, at the time we believed it. Now our understanding is quite a bit more sophisticated, in the sense that the Japanese pressing is clearly better than many originals, but certainly not all of them.

More importantly, there are amazing sounding domestic reissues of the album that we’ve auditioned over the last ten years or so that really blew our minds and helped to set an even higher standard for the sound of Getz Au Go Go.

Our old story:

Way back in 2005 I discussed this very subject when listing a sealed copy:

There are pressing variations for this title on Japanese vinyl, and there’s no way to know what this one sounds like but all of them are better than any other pressing I know of. As I played the open copy we have listed on the site (1/12/05) I couldn’t help but marvel at the quality of the sound.

These days we would crack open a sealed one, clean it up and shoot it out with any others we could lay our hands on, because finding a copy with sound like this is a positive THRILL.

I’m no fan of Japanese pressings as readers of this Web site know very well, but the Japanese sure got this one right!

The domestic copies of this album are mediocre at best — there’s simply no real top end to be found on any Verve pressing I have ever heard.

The top end is precisely where the magic is! Astrud Gilberto’s breathy voice needs high frequencies to sound breathy.

Gary Burton’s vibes need high frequencies to emerge from the mix, otherwise you can hardly hear them.

And Stan Getz’s sax shouldn’t sound like it’s being played under a blanket.

The only version of this album that allows you to hear all the players right is a Japanese pressing, and then only when you get a good one.

That was our understanding in 2005, after being seriously into audio and records for 30 years, as a professional audiophile record dealer for 18 of them. Clearly we had a lot to learn, and we were on the road to learning it, having embarked on our first real Hot Stamper shootout just the year before. (We had been doing them less formally since the ’90s of course. It was only in 2004 that we were able to do them with the requisite scientific protocols in place.)

In 2005, we simply did not have the cleaning system or the playback system capable of showing us what was wrong with the sound of the Japanese pressing we were so impressed by at the time.

And we couldn’t clean and play the standard Verve pressings right either.

We were unable to move forward. The technologies we needed to get to the truth had not been invented yet.

The Revolutions in Audio of the last twenty years are are responsible for allowing us to get the domestic pressings — originals and reissues — to sound much better than the Japanese imports we mistakenly thought were superior.

When I got started in audio in the early- to mid- ’70s, the following important elements of the modern stereo system did not exist:

  • Stand-alone phono stages.
  • Modern cabling and power cords.
  • Vibration controlling platforms for turntables and equipment.
  • Synchronous Drive Systems for turntable motors.
  • Carbon fiber mats that sit on top of massive metal turntable platters.
  • Highly adjustable tonearms (for VTA, etc.) with extremely delicate adjustments and precision bearings.
  • And there wasn’t much in the way of innovative room treatments like the Hallographs we use.

And one of the most important revolutions is not a playback technology per se, but makes much better playback possible:

  • Modern record cleaning machines and fluids.

A lot of things had to change in order for us to reproduce records at the level that is required for us to do our record shootouts and be confident about our findings, and we pursued every one of them about as far as time and money allowed.

Practically every one of the 5000 listings on this blog is a testament to the changes brought about by those hard-won advancements.

For a further discussion of these issues, please click here.

Further Reading

Gary Burton – Lofty Fake Anagram (Now With Title Explanation)

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More Jazz Fusion

  • Lofty Fake Anagram returns in “Living Stereo” with excellent Double Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish
  • The RCA Stereo sound (not Living Stereo, but not that far from those halcyon days) is huge, spacious, lively, transparent and punchy – this is jazz fusion that is more jazz than fusion
  • 4 1/2 stars: “. . . it is the interplay between Burton and the rockish Coryell in this early fusion group (predating Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew by two years) that makes this session most notable.”

The Title According to The Man Himself

Typical of the weirdo ’60’s, there isn’t any anagram in the title. It came from a longer statement conjured up by Paul Haines, a writer acquaintance at the time. He had created a computer program to see if he could come up with a sentence that could not be turned into an anagram.

The result—”Your rappaplat bugle calls”—was what Paul referred to as his “lofty fakeanagram.” According to Paul, the computer couldn’t turn that odd sentence into another series of words. For some reason, “lofty fake anagram” had a ring to it that I was looking for in a title—something tat was both ambiguous and provocative.

That is also the last time I titled a record or a song with something that required an explanation. People kept asking what it meant, and I got tired of having to offer my pretty obtuse explanation. (more…)

Gary Burton and Keith Jarrett – Gary Burton and Keith Jarrett

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  • This superb collaboration finally makes its Hot Stamper debut here with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last
  • Huge space, size and clarity, with Tubey Magical richness befitting the 1970 recording dates of these sessions
  • Dave Sanders’ engineering is brilliant as usual – if you go to the blog you can see some of his finest recordings, with this soon to join the group
  • 4 1/2 stars: “This combination works. . . Elements of pop music, rock, country, and the jazz avant-garde are used in the mixture of styles and the results are quite logical.”

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Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd – Jazz Samba

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  • A stunning copy of Jazz Samba with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • Exceptionally spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a noticeable step up over practically every other pressing we played
  • 5 stars: “[Jazz Samba] was the true beginning of the bossa nova craze, and introduced several standards of the genre… But above all, Jazz Samba stands on its own artistic merit as a shimmering, graceful collection that’s as subtly advanced — in harmony and rhythm — as it is beautiful.

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Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto – Getz-Gilberto #2

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  • A KILLER sounding copy with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) Live Jazz sound from start to finish 
  • This original stereo pressing is the first copy to make it to the site in years – boy are these hard to find in this kind of clean condition with top quality sonics
  • Rich, tubey and musical, the sound is wonderful for these live performances of two very different groups, one featuring Getz, the other Jobim 
  • 4 1/2 Stars: “Getz/Gilberto #2 holds its own with an appealing selection of fine jazz and bossa nova cuts.”

This original Verve Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in a real jazz club, this is the record for you. It’s what Vintage Records are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds. (more…)

Bob Brookmeyer – Bob Brookmeyer And Friends

Another Record We’ve Discovered with (Potentially) Excellent Sound

More Vintage Hot Stamper Pressings on Columbia

  • This original Black Print 360 pressing was one of the best we played in our recent shootout
  • Stan Getz is the real standout on this album, a very pleasant surprise since exceptionally good recordings of his music are so hard to find
  • Another example of the phenomenal sound quality found on so many recordings made at CBS’s 30th Street Studios in New York
  • Wikipedia notes: “Another way to view this all-star rhythm section would be as Miles Davis’ piano and bass player, Stan Getz’ vibraphonist, and John Coltrane’s drummer.”
  • “Stan Getz, known for his ‘lyrical’ style, is in top form throughout and brings out the best of his cohorts, including two young musicians, Gary Burton on vibes and Herbie Hancock on keyboards…” 

If you like the sound of relaxed, tube-mastered jazz — and what red blooded audiophile doesn’t — you can’t do much better than Bob Brookmeyer And Friends. The warmth and immediacy of the sound here are guaranteed to blow practically any jazz septet record you own right out of the water.

Getz and Burton have always been magical together. Their work on Getz Au Go Go is legendary. Every time I play that record I am astonished at how good it is, one of those very special jazz recordings that are easy to get lost in. (more…)

Gary Burton Quartet – In Concert

  • This sensational jazz album boasts outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from first note to last
  • Captured live at Carnegie Hall, this recording eloquently communicates the space of the concert hall with stereo precision
  • Big, rich, and Tubey Magical, this pressing lets us hear Burton’s quartet with the energy and clarity these classic jazz performances deserve
  • 4 stars: ” The material (by Mike Gibbs, Burton, Coryell and Bob Dylan) is quite strong, and there are some hints of the avant-garde. “

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