Top Artists – Jack Sheldon

The Curtis Counce Group – Vol. 2: Counceltation

More Curtis Counce

More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

  • With excellent Double Plus (A++) grades throughout, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage Contemporary pressing
  • Another Classic Roy DuNann recording, this one is from 1957 and it is going to be very hard to beat for audiophile sound
  • Counce is a wonderful bassist and here he’s joined by Jack Sheldon, Harold Land, Carl Perkins and Frank Butler; I think you’ll be very impressed with how good this music from the late ’50s still sounds today
  • 4 1/2 Stars: “Bassist Curtis Counce led one of the finer West Coast-based groups of the 1950s, a quintet that was greatly underrated… This excellent music falls somewhere between hard bop and cool jazz.”
  • If you’re a fan of Mr. Counce, this is a Top Jazz Title from 1957 that surely belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1957 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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The Hi-Lo’s / And All That Jazz – A Demo Disc for Tubey Magic

More Pop and Jazz Vocals

  • Superb sound throughout this early 6-Eye Stereo pressing, with both sides earning excellent Double Plus (A++) grades – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • On the right system, the better copies of this All Tube Chain Demo Disc from 1958 will demonstrate the superiority of both the analog medium and the vintage pressing (not to mention the concept of Hot Stampers)
  • With a copy this good, The Hi-Lo’s will appear as living, breathing (albeit disembodied) persons right in your very own listening room – we call that “the breath of life,” and there is plenty to be found on this record
  • “The Hi-Los weren’t really a jazz unit, but more of a pop band that knew how to incorporate jazz’s harmonic sensibilities. This was among their better albums, complete with catchy title.”
  • More records with exceptionally Tubey Magical Sound
  • More reviews of our most Tubey Magical Demo Discs

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Julie London – Julie (in Stereo)

More Julie London

More Recordings Engineered by Ted Keep

  • This STUNNING vintage Liberty stereo pressing boasts Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last – exceptionally quiet vinyl for a Julie London album too (don’t get me started)
  • In-the-room presence, preternaturally breathy vocals, and boatloads of wonderful Tubey Magic
  • This amazing sleeper of a record belongs right up at the top of Ms. London’s oeuvre (25 albums strong) along with Julie Is Her Name – high praise indeed
  • 4 stars: “Usually put into a torch song setting, this release allows London to shed that garment and become jazzy. Instead of being sultry, she becomes dazzling and sparkling. She also becomes more adept at phrasing and timing and takes a risk or two in the tradition of a jazz singer.”
  • If you’re a fan of Julie’s, this is a Top Title from 1957 that we think belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1957 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

The great Jimmy Rowles plays piano, handled the arrangements and fronts the big group here, taking the music in a wonderfully jazzy direction that suits Julie’s vocal style perfectly. (more…)

Tom Waits – Foreign Affairs

More Tom Waits

  • This early pressing was hard to fault – it will put Tom Waits right between your speakers, with a batch of great session players behind and to the side, all playing live in the studio
  • “The album contains more ballads than most of his records do, but they were the most effective vehicles for the kind of storytelling he was trying to get to. Produced and engineered by Bones Howe, Foreign Affairs was recorded live in studio by a quintet that included West Coast jazzmen Jack Sheldon on trumpet, saxophonist Frank Vicari, bassist Jim Hughart, and drummer Shelly Manne.

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Julie London – Julie (in Mono)

More Julie London

More Recordings Engineered by Ted Keep

  • This outstanding vintage Liberty MONO pressing boasts outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • In-the-room presence, preternaturally breathy vocals, and boatloads of wonderful Tubey Magic
  • This amazing sleeper of a record belongs right up at the top of Ms. London’s oeuvre (25 albums strong) along with Julie Is Her Name – high praise indeed
  • 4 stars: “Usually put into a torch song setting, this release allows London to shed that garment and become jazzy. Instead of being sultry, she becomes dazzling and sparkling. She also becomes more adept at phrasing and timing and takes a risk or two in the tradition of a jazz singer.”

The great Jimmy Rowles plays piano, handled the arrangements and fronts the big group here, taking the music in a wonderfully jazzy direction that suits Julie’s vocal style perfectly.

Having done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.). The music is not so much about the details in the recording, but rather in trying to recreate a solid, palpable, real Julie London singing live in your listening room. The best copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of older recordings (this one is now more than 63 years old), 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 less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we’ve played can serve as a guide. (more…)

The Curtis Counce Group – Volume 1 – Landslide

More Contemporary Label Jazz

More Jack Sheldon


  • A STUNNING copy of the group’s 1956 release with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • The clarity and transparency on this vintage pressing are wonderful, but more importantly it’s the unerringly correct tonality that’s most impressive when you play these real Contemporary pressings against the competition
  • Yet another amazing All Tube Contemporary recording from Roy DuNann and Lester Koenig at the beginning of the stereo era
  • 4 1/2 stars: “During 1956-1957, bassist Curtis Counce led an excellent Los Angeles-based hard bop quintet… All of Counce’s recordings are well-worth getting by collectors [and especially audiophiles] interested in 1950s straight-ahead jazz [with top quality sound].”

Jack Sheldon is absolutely amazing and completely original on trumpet here. Check out his stellar work on the first track, Landslide. Not only that, but the sound of his instrument is wonderful — you’ll never hear a trumpet sound so rich and full on a Rudy Van Gelder recording, that’s for sure!

Both sides are over twenty minutes, giving you a lot of well-played West Coast Jazz for your money. (more…)

Mel Torme – Back in Town – Reviewed in 2011

More Mel Torme

Mel Torme Albums We’ve Reviewed

This is a nice looking Verve LP with relatively quiet vinyl and surprisingly good sound. Natural, smooth and sweet, I doubt there are copies out there that sound much better. The music itself is great fun. Hearing Mel sing with the female vocalists is really a treat.

This is an Older Review.

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a fine art.

We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.

As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.

The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.

The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.

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Jack Sheldon – Jack Sheldon And His All-Star Band Comes with Many Covers

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If you like the sound of relaxed, tube-mastered jazz — and what red-blooded audiophile doesn’t — you can’t do much better than Jack Sheldon And His All-Star Band. The warmth and immediacy of the sound here are guaranteed to blow practically any Big Band record you own right out of the water.

This is a wonderful example of the kind of record that makes record collecting FUN.

If you large group swinging West Coast Jazz is your thing — think Art Pepper Plus Eleven — you should get a big kick out of this one.

Both sides of this very special pressing are huge, rich, tubey and clear. As soon as the band got going we knew that this was absolutely the right sound for this music. There was practically nothing that could beat it, in any area of reproduction. (more…)

The Curtis Counce Group – Carl’s Blues

 

  • A superb sounding copy on the real Contemporary label, boasting outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish – fairly quiet vinyl throughout
  • This vintage pressing has the studio space, presence, driving energy, and midrange magic that’s almost always missing from whatever 180g reissue (at 33 or 45, don’t fall for that BS) has been made from the 59 year old tapes
  • “Although the Curtis Counce Quintet was not a commercial success, their four Contemporary albums were all timeless in their own way, undated examples of high-quality hard bop from the late ’50s. Excellent music that still sounds fresh four decades later.”

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Jack Sheldon / Unreleased UHQR Test Pressing – Reviewed in 2007

This is a PRACTICALLY BRAND NEW UHQR JVC Test Record. The record is virtually unplayed! The RAREST of the RARE! I’m SHOCKED at how good this record sounds. It has AMAZING live jazz sound. 

Jack Sheldon – Playin’ It Straight

Here’s Jack on trumpet with his Late-Show All-Stars: Alan Broadbent, piano; Pete Christlieb, tenor & baritone saxes & flute; Joel Di Bartolo, bass: Mundell Lowe, guitar; Tommy Newsom, alto sax & flute; and Ed Shaughnessy, drums. 

For those of you who do not know the complete story, basically the UHQR — the Ultra High Quality Record — was invented by JVC as a test to see how good a cost-no-object vinyl pressing could sound. It was thicker, had a longer pressing cycle, and other technological improvements, all with the goal of making the ultimate LP.

Mobile Fidelity produced limited editions of eight titles on UHQR, and both Reference and Telarc produced one each.

Apparently tests were done by others as well, because here we have some M&K recordings on UHQR. I believe they are not known to exist — until now. I bought them from M&K myself a few years back, along with some Flamenco Fevers and a box full of unplayed For Dukes. That was a good day for Better Records!

TRACK LISTING

Playin’ It Straight 
Steeplechase
That Old Feeling
Lover
Sweet Georgia Brown
I Hadn’t Anyone Til You
On Green Dolphin Street
Here’s That Rainy Day 

The secret is our exclusive RealTime Recording Process. Conceived and carried out by our own perfectionist audiophile/engineers, it keeps us working at the leading edge of recording technology. Every link in the chain—from microphones through recorders and/or disc-cutting lathe to custom-plating and pressing—is continuously monitored and upgraded to significantly exceed even the highest previous standards.

Our AKG microphones are first fitted with AKG’s latest capsules, in Austria, then further modified by RealTime engineers. Microphone output feeds RealTime’s own unique, passive mixer. No limiters, compressors, pan pots or other signal-degrading devices are used and the entire length of our signal path is 100% free of transformers.

Even our Neumann DC-coupled SAL/SX-74 600 watt/channel disc-cutting lathe is highly modified. And it is driven by a newly-developed Technics direct-drive cutting lathe motor. Disc masters are immediately flown overseas for custom-plating and careful pressing on the finest virgin vinyl available.

RealTime Records: the sound of unrivaled realism — so closely mirroring the original performance that any difference is virtually impossible to distinguish. Sample the sound of unrivaled realism on RealTime Records.