Top Artists – Harry Nilsson

Son of Schmilsson at 45 RPM – How Can It Possibly Sound This Bad?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Nilsson Available Now

Recently someone loaned us a copy of the Mobile Fidelity pressing of this album, the one they did on two discs cut at 45 RPM in 2021, mastered by that notorious hack, Krieg Wunderlich.

Our last shootout took place all the way back in 2021. Although I listen to this title regularly,  unfortunately it does not sell all that well, so we haven’t been making the effort we should to find copies and offer the best of them to our customers.

Why the album is not more popular is a question we ask about a number of titles on our site. We love the music and we love the sound, as can be seen from what we (and Allmusic) had to say about a very good sounding pressing back then:

  • This is one of Nilsson’s best albums, sonically and musically. (With Ken Scott at the board at Trident Studios the sound just has to be good, doesn’t it?)
  • Son of Schmilsson has more than half a dozen of the best songs Nilsson ever wrote, and should make it a Must Own for every right thinking audiophile with sophisticated tastes in popular music (we hope this means you)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… this is all married to a fantastic set of songs that illustrate what a skilled, versatile songsmith Nilsson was. No, it may not be the easiest album to warm to — and it’s just about the weirdest record to reach number 12 and go gold — but if you appreciate Nilsson’s musicality and weirdo humor, he never got any better.”

So true!

The MoFi, however, is a joke next to a properly-mastered and properly-pressed RCA vintage release. Our notes for it read:

  • Big but flat
  • Voice is recessed and lacks richness
  • Rock songs, track one in particular work OK but
  • Ballads lose all the magic

What good is a Harry Nilsson record where the voice lacks presence and richness?

Or one in which the ballads don’t sound good?

Or one that sounds flat?

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Nilsson’s Aerial Pandemonium Ballet Sounds Absolutely Awful

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Nilsson Available Now

Tracks from the first two Nilsson albums were turned into this monstrosity in 1971. Some were remixed, some parts rerecorded, but whatever they did, they really screwed up the sound of the finished LP.

I cannot even say that the remixing and rerecording and editing are not an improvement on the songs found on the first album — they may be, it’s not a record I know well. What I do know is that this compilation is so bad sounding it doesn’t matter what they did or how well they did it. The record is simply unplayable.

We’ve never done a shootout for the first album, but the second album we know can have wonderful sound on the right pressings. We described a recent Hot Stamper of the second album this way:

Both of these sides are big, clear and full-bodied throughout – if you are a Nilsson fan, this copy is guaranteed to beat anything you’ve heard before, and by a wide margin.

All of the elements are working here – you get silky vocals, punchy bass, breathy brass, silky highs, superb immediacy, remarkable clarity, and the list goes on.

AMG writes:

4 1/2 stars: “As ‘Good Old Desk’ opens Aerial Ballet with a cheerful saunter, it’s clear that Harry Nilsson decided to pick up where he left off with his debut, offering another round of effervescent, devilishly clever pop, equal parts lite psychedelia, pretty ballads, and music hall cabaret.”

All true! Nilsson is one of my favorite artists to this day, 56 years after I first heard the album “Harry,” which is still a personal favorite and one I listen to regularly, along with many others, including a compilation I think is excellent, Personal Best — The Harry Nilsson Anthology.

However, this compilation is shockingly bad — It’s cut loud, and it’s very hot and crude. Ouch is right.

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Harry Nilsson / Nilsson Schmilsson – The Robed Man’s Masterpiece

More of the Music of Harry Nilsson

  • Solid Double Plus (A++) sound brings Harry Nilsson’s indisputable Masterpiece of Bent Rock to life on this vintage copy
  • Both sides are remarkably good sounding, thanks to the brilliant engineering skills of Phill (That’s Two L’s) Brown
  • A Better Records favorite (we give it Five Stars) that really comes to life on a superb pressing such as this one
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…it’s a near-perfect summary of everything Nilsson could do; he could be craftier and stranger, but never did he achieve the perfect balance as he did here.”
  • If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1971, this album would definitely be on it

Big production pop like this is hard to pull off. Harry did an amazing job, but the recording is not perfect judging by the dozen or so copies we played during our most recent shootout, and the scores w’ve suffered through before. Let’s face it: “Jump Into The Fire” will never be smooth and sweet; neither will “Down” on side one. But other tracks on this album have Demo Disc sound.

Nilsson Schmilsson is an album we think we know well. It checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

One of His Best

Son of Schmilsson and the album simply titled Harry are two other superb Nilsson records that both come highly recommended. Harry is my favorite of them all, perhaps because it was so different from anything that I’d ever heard up to that point (I was 15 at the time). A Little Touch… is also a personal favorite, with the great American songbook done in Nilsson’s inimitable style.

By the way, if you get a chance to see the documentary “Who Is Harry Nilsson (and Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?),” you should definitely check it out. Most of us here have seen it by now and it’s a ton of fun.

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Jump Into the Fire with Harry Nilsson

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Nilsson Available Now

This commentary was written more than ten years ago.

Jump Into The Fire is one of the best tests we use for side two.

Copies that are too smooth make the “just bass and drums” intro sound thick and smeared.

Too bright and the vocals will tear your head off.

The “just right” copies rock from the start and never get too far out of control, even when Harry does. The best we can hope for is that the loudest vocal parts stay tolerable. Believe me, it is not that easy to find a copy that’s listenable all the way through, not at the high volume I play the record at anyway!

Again, with Nilsson screaming at the top of his lungs, you better have a good copy to get through this track, and even then it’s a bit of a problem.

A tough test for the old stereo, that’s for sure. Make sure your equipment is tuned up and the electricity is good before you get anywhere near a pressing of this album.

Big production pop like this is hard to pull off. Harry did an amazing job, but the recording is not perfect judging by the dozen or so copies I played this week and the scores I’ve suffered through before.

Let’s face it: Jump Into The Fire will never be smooth and sweet; neither will Down on side one. But other tracks on this album have Demo Disc quality sound, and, of course, the music is to die for.

Side One

Gotta Get Up

A tough one right off the bat. If you have an aggressive sounding copy, you’ll know it pretty quick!

Driving Along (more…)

Harry Nilsson – The Point!

More Harry Nilsson

  • An original pressing (only the second copy to ever hit the site) with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish
  • Side one was very close in sound to our Shootout Winner – the overall grades for this copy are only one half plus lower than our $450 WHS presing that sold
  • Both of these sides are relatively rich, yet still clear and highly resolving – the boosted midrange, the biggest problem with the copies we played, is under much better control here than it was on most of what we played
  • Analog gets this music to sound right, although the long out of print DCC CD that Steve Hoffman mastered is excellent if you can find one
  • 4 stars: “Especially at this stage of his career, Harry Nilsson was uniquely suited for writing and recording children’s music, given his sweet melodicism and love of whimsy. The tale is fantastical enough to be of interest to children (and the moral is strong enough to reassure them and their parents), but the songs and music are so strong that the album continues to be a source of wonder, even as those children become adults.”

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Harry Sometimes Has Honky Vocals

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Nilsson Available Now

The average copy suffers, most notably, from a honky quality in the vocals. It seems to be an EQ problem, since it affects a very large percentage of copies with earlier stampers and not as many of the later pressings. [Not sure if this true anymore.]

The later copies have problems of their own, though, so you can’t just assume that the copies with high numbers will sound better — they don’t always, and the earlier ones can sound amazing when you’re lucky. It just goes to show that (all together now) you can’t know anything about the sound of a record without playing it, and to take it a step further, you can’t really know much about the sound of an album without cleaning and critically listening to multiple copies.

But that’s a lot of hard work, and who has the time? (Other than us.)

This record, along with the others linked below, is good for testing the following qualities:

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Harry Nilsson – Harry

More Harry Nilsson

More Rock and Pop

  • A vintage pressing of Nilsson’s wonderful 1969 LP with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • You’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this one – it’s clean, clear, and present with boatloads of Tubey Magic
  • Full-bodied and rich, with plenty of space around the various instruments, this is the sound vintage analog can give you, and only vintage analog
  • 4 stars: “…Harry is where Harry Nilsson began to become Nilsson, an immensely gifted singer/songwriter/musician with a warped sense of humor that tended to slightly overwhelm his skills, at least to those who aren’t quite operating on the same level.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1969. The next time you see it on the site, grab it, because it is rarely up there. Until then, buy the DCC CD. It’s excellent.

This forgotten gem sank like a stone in 1969, but time has treated this album well. It holds up to this very day. The production is superb throughout. Judging by this early album and the one before it, it appears he was already a pro in the studio, as well as an accomplished songwriter, and, most importantly, the owner of one of the sweetest tenors in popular music, then or now.

Harry checks off a number of important boxes for us:

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Harry Nilsson / Aerial Ballet

More of the Music of Harry Nilsson

  • Nilsson’s sophomore LP returns to the site for the first time in years, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this early (but not original) RCA pressing
  • “Daddy’s Song” is only on the first pressing, and we do not see many of those in audiophile playing condition!
  • Even finding these early reissues is getting to be too much — too time consuming and too expensive, so get while the gettin’s good
  • Both of these sides are big, clear and full-bodied throughout – if you are a Nilsson fan, this copy is guaranteed to beat anything you’ve heard before, and by a wide margin
  • All of the elements are working here – you get silky vocals, punchy bass, breathy brass, silky highs, superb immediacy, remarkable clarity, and the list goes on
  • Problems 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
  • 4 1/2 stars: “As ‘Good Old Desk’ opens Aerial Ballet with a cheerful saunter, it’s clear that Harry Nilsson decided to pick up where he left off with his debut, offering another round of effervescent, devilishly clever pop, equal parts lite psychedelia, pretty ballads, and music hall cabaret.”

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Avoid the Tan Labels and Non-TML Pressings for Nilsson Schmilsson

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Nilsson Available Now

Not that we would ever claim that TML in the dead wax guarantees good sound.

Side two of our tan label copy below was passable, but that’s sonically a very long way from the top copies we played, which of course were all TML, with lots of different stampers, none of which we are likely to reveal, now or in the future, for reasons we are sure you understand.

Anyone who buys one of our White Hot Stamper copies will definitely know, but we only find a couple of those every few years, as this is not a shootout that’s been easy to do for a very long time.

Make sure your equipment is tuned up and the electricity is good before you get anywhere near a pressing of this album.

Big production pop like this is hard to pull off. Harry did an amazing job, but the recording is not perfect judging by the dozen or so copies I played this week and the scores I’ve suffered through before.

Nilsson Schmilsson is an album we think we know well, one that checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

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Letter of the Week – “…it was like there was a blanket taken off the speakers.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Creedence Clearwater Revival Available Now

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

Hey Tom,   

Just some comments on the records purchased in July. Some of these records were a night and day experience for me. [For more tales of night and day experiences, we refer to them as “revelations,” please click here.]

I bought ten years after a space in time and nilsson son of shmilsson from the columbia record club back in the early seventies. I’ve taken good care of them and thought they sounded very good so I didn’t need to upgrade. You mentioned that we’ve never heard these records sound like this, so I thought I’d take a chance.

WOW! Space in time, son of schmillson, eat a peach, it was like there was a blanket taken off the speakers. Everything sounded sooo much better, more involving, the sound jumped out at me. And not that in-your-face shrill “run for the volume control” sound which was so prevalent in the late 80’s and into the 90’s. 

CCR cosmo’s factory, I’ve got an original mofi copy which sounded really good (I must have lucked out, 90% of the mofi’s I bought didn’t have a problem with sibilance. The ones that did have that problem and the dead as a doorknob presentation — anadisc 200 — are all gone.)

The super hot stamper of Cosmos factory on side 1 completely smoked the mofi, side 2 they were comparable. The super hot stamper had more depth to it. You could hear into the recording, making the experience more lifelike.

Thanks, Shane

Shane,

Thanks for writing. We love to hear from our satisfied customers!

Comparing the sound of the pressings you owned — including audiophile LPs in this case — versus the Hot Stamper pressings we sent you will allow you to recognize some fairly consistent differences. We’ve listed them below for handy reference and further study.

We hope these links will help you avoid other records with these same problems. As a general rule, the average pressing — of any kind — will fall short in some or all of the following areas when played head to head against the Hot Stamper pressings we offer:

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