- Surprisingly rich, lively and clear, with plenty of space for this exceptional group to occupy
- Credit must go to Rudy Van Gelder once again for capturing the swinging energy of this superbly sympathetic ensemble
- 4 stars: “McLean never really copied Charlie Parker and was one of the first in his generation to develop his own sound.”
Both sides are Tubey Magical, rich, open, spacious and tonally correct. These guys are playing live in the studio and you can really feel their presence on every track — assuming you have a copy that sounds like this one.
Based on what I’m hearing my feeling is that most of the natural, full-bodied, smooth, sweet sound of the album is on the master tape, and that all that was needed to transfer that vintage sound correctly onto vinyl disc was simply to thread up the tape on a high quality machine and hit play.
The fact that practically nobody seems to be able to make an especially good sounding record these days — certainly not as good sounding as this one — tells me that in fact I’m wrong to think that such an approach would work. Somebody should have been able to figure out how to do it by now. In our experience that is simply not the case today, and has not been for many years, if not decades. (more…)
