More Barney Kessel
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Barney Kessel
- Kessel’s brilliant 1959 large group outing is back on the site for the first time in years, here with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides of this vintage Contemporary pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
- With Tubey Magic, richness, sweetness, and dead on tonality from top to bottom, this is a textbook example of Contemporary’s sound when it’s really working
- Skip the OJC on this title – some sides of the copies we played were good, but make no mistake, there is world of difference between those sides and the Hot Stamper pressings we are offering on our site
- An All Star West Coast lineup came together for this one: Art Pepper (on sax and clarinet!), Shelly Manne, Joe Gordon and others
- 4 1/2 stars: “Such tunes as ‘I Wanna Be Loved by You,’ ‘Runnin’ Wild,’ ‘Down Among the Sheltering Palms,’ and ‘By the Beautiful Sea’ are given fairly modern arrangements…”
This copy is spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience. The liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny. This is vintage analog at its best, so full-bodied and relaxed you’ll wonder how it ever came to be that anyone seriously contemplated trying to improve it. (more…)