Top Artists – John Coltrane

Kind of Blue – Our Shootout Winner from 2013 on the 70s Label

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

UPDATE 2024: As good as the best 70s Red Label pressings may be, it’s unlikely that any copy other than the Six-Eye original will win a shootout these days.

In other words, in 2013 we still had a lot to learn about Kind of Blue even after we had been doing shootouts for the album for the eight years starting in 2005.

Doing shootouts for the album about twice a year, over the next eleven years and roughly 22 shootouts with every Columbia label represented, the data are in, and the right originals win every time, with no exceptions to that rule in a very long time. As you may have read elsewhere on the blog:

We don’t know it all and we’ve never pretended we did. All knowledge is provisional. We may not be the smartest guys in the room, but we’re sure as hell smart enough to know that much.

We regularly learn from our mistakes and we hope you do too.

But we learn things from the records we play not by reading about them, but by playing them. Our experiments, conducted using the shootout process we’ve painstakingly developed and refined over the course of the last twenty years, produces all the data we need: the winners, the losers, and the ranking for all the records in-between.

We’ve learned to ignore everything but the sound of the records we’ve actually played on our reference system.

This approach allows us to have a unique, and, to our way of thinking, uniquely valuable service to offer the discriminating audiophile. When you’re tired of wasting your time and money on the ubiquitous mediocrities that populate the major audiophile dealers’ sites and take up far too much space in your local record store, let us show you just how much more real handpicked-for-quality recordings can do for your enjoyment of music.

Our Commentary from 2013

This is one of the very best copies we’ve ever heard, and we have literally played more than a HUNDRED copies of this album over just the last five years.

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Letter of the Week – “I feel like I’m right there … in the middle of analog heaven.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Kind of Blue he purchased recently:

Hi Tom,

It’s funny how, when the music sounds so good, a little surface noise here or there doesn’t bother me.

The sound of this SHS [Super Hot Stamper] is crazy good and very very engaging.

What an astonishing difference in what one feels when listening to the BR copy versus the Classic or the 33RPM UHQR.

I guess now I’ve got more minty LPs to sell.

This SHS may only be a 2/2 but it kicks ass. It really does.

Turn it up all the way and it just shines…. I feel like I’m right there, on the mezzanine, in the middle of analog heaven.

I am so glad I took a chance on this one.

Many thanks,

Michel

Michel followed up the next day, apparently after he had spent more time listening to the album, with this missive:

I just can’t get enough of KOB.

I can’t believe it sounds so f***ing good.

It’s like a celebration here at the house… hearing this music this way is a completely different thing.

So really I’ve only just heard it.

I remember reading a letter you posted where a customer went to a friend’s house with his BR KOB and when they got to playing that one after some of his friend’s copies,the friend went “oh shit” within like a minute.

Well ditto here. Who would have known?

Michel,

Thanks for writing. The letter you are referring to is this one. It’s a short letter, the best part of which I’ve reproduced below.

I went to my dearest friend’s house yesterday, he was SO excited to play for me his deluxe UHQR version of Kind of Blue.

We listened for a while and then I brought out the Super Hot Stamper of KOB that I got from you and played it.

About 90 seconds in, he was like “uh oh.”  It was about 3 minutes into So What and his exact words were “oh…shit.”

We love it when our customers tell us that they can’t get enough of one of our records, that they can’t believe the difference in the feeling they got when they finally heard a record sound the way it’s supposed to.

An “astonishing difference” hits it right on the head.

Best, TP

P.S.

We never officially reviewed the Classic Records pressing of Kind of Blue, the one that came out in 1995 with the speed-corrected side two. We felt it was no better than decent, another Classic Records jazz mediocrity that could not begin to compete with a properly-mastered, properly-pressed Columbia, regardless of which of the first three labels it might have had. (More on Kind of Blue labels here.)

As a non-trumpet-playing audiophile, the corrected speed side sounded pretty much like the non-corrected speed side to these ears.

But neither side sounded very much like the good copies I had been enjoying starting sometime in the early 90s, which, I admit, was a case of me coming late to the game. But better late than never.

Kind of Blue is an album we admit to being obsessed with — just look at the number of commentaries we’ve written about it.

Some highlights include:

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What to Listen For on My Favorite Things

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

An album like this is all about its Tubey Magical stereoscopic presentation.

If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1961 All Tube Analog sound can be — thanks to legendary engineers Phil Iehle and Tom Dowd — an outstanding pressing of this album is just what the doctor ordered.

What to listen for you ask?

A solid, full-bodied, clear and powerful piano. As we focused in on the sound of the instrument, we couldn’t help but notice what a brilliant player McCoy Tyner is.

This may be John Coltrane’s album, but Tyner’s contribution is critically important to the success of My Favorite Things.

(We rarely care much for Tyner as a leader, which is why you see so few of his albums on the site. Most of his Milestone recordings are terrible, so caveat emptor on those especially.)

Lately we have been writing quite a bit about how pianos are good for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

  • We like our pianos to sound natural (however one chooses to define the term).
  • We like them to be solidly weighted.
  • We like them to be free of smear, a quality that is rarely mentioned in the audiophile record reviews we read.
  • Some of the other records we’ve discovered with top jazz piano sound can be found here

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John Coltrane / Lush Life

More of the Music of John Coltrane

  • Superb sound throughout this vintage Mono Prestige recording, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades
  • The sound is everything that’s good about Rudy Van Gelder‘s recordings – it’s present, spacious, full-bodied, Tubey Magical, dynamic and, most importantly, alive in that way that modern pressings never are
  • Finding the best sounding pressings of this exceptional recording was a turning point for us – here was sound we had never experienced for the work, and what a thrill it was
  • 4 stars: “‘Lush Life’ is not only the focal point of this album, it is rightfully considered as one of Coltrane’s unqualified masterworks.”
  • If you’re a fan of vintage small-group jazz, this Coltrane LP from 1961 surely belongs in your collection

We’d been searching for years trying to find just what kind of Lush Life pressing — what era, what label, what stampers, mono or stereo, import or domestic — had the potential for good sound.

No, scratch that. We should have said excellent sound. Exceptional sound. We’ve played plenty of copies that sounded pretty good, even very good, but exceptional? That pressing had eluded us — until a few years ago.

It was early 2016, in fact, that we chanced upon the right kind of pressing — the right era, the right label, the right stampers, the right sound. Not just the right sound, though. Better sound than we ever thought this album could have.

Previously we had written:

“There are great sounding originals, but they are few and far between…”

We no longer believe that to be true. In fact we believe the opposite of that statement to be true. The original we had on hand — noisy but with reasonably good sound, or so we thought — was an absolute joke next to our better Hot Stamper pressings. Half the size, half the clarity and presence, half the life and energy, half the immediacy, half the studio space. It was simply not remotely competitive with the copies we now know (or at least believe, all knowledge being provisional) to have the best sound.

Are there better originals than the ones we’ve played? Maybe there are. If you want to spend your day searching for them, more power to you. And if you do find one that impresses you, we are happy to send you one of our Hot Copies to play against it. We are confident that the outcome would be clearly favorable to our pressing. Ten seconds of side one should be enough to convince you that our record is in an entirely different league.

By the way, the mono original we played was by far the worst sound I have ever heard for the album. By far.

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John Coltrane – On A Misty Night

More John Coltrane

  • This wonderful double album reissue from 1978 (only the second copy to ever hit the site) boasts roughly Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) MONO sound on all FOUR sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner (side three actually won the shootout)
  • Includes the complete 1957 albums Tenor Conclave with Hank Mobley, Al Cohn, and Zoot Sims, and Mating Call with Tadd Dameron
  • Exceptionally spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied (thanks, RVG!) – these pressings were a big step up over practically every other copy we played
  • The transfers from 1978 by David Turner are in tune with the sound of these recordings – there’s not a trace of phony EQ on any of these four sides
  • 4 stars: “…the title piece, “On a Misty Night” [is] a lovely excursion that provides Coltrane the chance to let loose with his trademark lyrical phrasing. One need only hear the sweet and sinuous opening to realize the presence of true genius.”

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Coltrane / Hartman – John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman

More John Coltrane

  • An incredible copy of this classic Jazz Vocal album, with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “very big and rich and weighty”…”piano and vox jump out [of the speakers]”…”so spacious and sweet”…”present and lively”
  • We had been working on this title for at least five years and had been coming up short time and again, with bad sound and bad vinyl on most of what we’d been buying
  • Five years ago we cracked the code for the right stampers to look for, and we had hoped to do shootouts for this wonderful album on a more regular basis, but that turned out to be a pipe dream
  • They are ridiculously hard to come by, so ridiculously hard that we would be surprised if it doesn’t take another five years to get this shootout going again
  • The sound is huge and spacious with richness and Tubey Magic like nothing you’ve heard
  • I defy anyone to name a Male Vocal record produced in the last forty years that can hold a candle to this one, sonically or musically
  • A wonderful collaboration between a horn player and a singer, perhaps the greatest of all time
  • 5 stars: “John Coltrane’s matchup with singer Johnny Hartman works extremely well. Hartman was in prime form on the six ballads, and his versions of ‘Lush Life’ and ‘My One and Only Love’ have never been topped. Classic, essential for all jazz collections”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but would be well advised to get to know better.

This could very well be the greatest collaboration between a horn player and a singer in the history of music.

I honestly cannot think of another to rank with it. Ella and Louis has the same feel — two giants who work together so sympathetically it’s close to magic, producing definitive performances of enduring standards that have not been equaled in the fifty plus years since they were recorded. And, on the better copies, or should we say the better sides of the better copies, RVG’s sound is stunning. (His mastering, not so much.)

Hats off to Rudy Van Gelder! Here’s an album that justifies his reputation. Not all of them do, you know — or should know — but try telling that to the average jazz-loving audiophile. (more…)

Cannonball Adderley Quintet – In Chicago

More Cannonball Adderley

  • Cannonball’s final Mercury label release appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this original pressing
  • These are just a few of the things we had to say about this stunning copy in our notes: “big and tubey and weighty”…”jumping out [of the speakers]”…”powerful drums”…”breathy, 3D sax”…”deep, note-like bass”…”lively and silky”
  • This is an amazingly well-recorded album – big, rich, and positively exploding with the jazz energy Adderley is known for
  • There are some bad marks and problems in the vinyl (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings), but once you hear just how killer sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Altoist Cannonball Adderley and tenor saxophonist John Coltrane really push each other on these six selections… With pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb playing up to their usual level, this gem is highly recommended.”

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The Search for Lush Life – We Broke Through in 2016

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

We’ve been searching for years trying to find just what kind of Lush Life pressing — what era, what label, what stampers, whether mono or stereo, import or domestic — had the potential for good sound.

No, scratch that. We should have said excellent sound. Exceptional sound. We’ve played plenty of copies that sounded pretty good, even very good, but exceptional? That pressing had eluded us — until a few months ago.

Yes, it was only a few months ago, early in 2016 in fact, that we chanced upon the right kind of pressing — the right era, the right label, the right stampers, the right sound. Not just the right sound though. Better sound than we ever thought this album could have.

Previously we had written:

“There are great sounding originals, but they are few and far between…”

We no longer believe that to be true. In fact we believe the opposite of that statement to be true. The original we had on hand — noisy but with reasonably good sound, or so we thought — was an absolute joke next to our best Hot Stamper pressings. Half the size, half the clarity and presence, half the life and energy, half the immediacy, half the studio space. It was simply not remotely competitive with the copies we now know (or at least believe, all knowledge being provisional) to have the best sound.

Are there better originals than the ones we’ve played? Maybe there are. If you want to spend your days searching for them, more power to you. And if you do find one that impresses you, we are happy to send you one of our Hot Copies to play against it. We are confident that the outcome would be clearly favorable to our pressing. Ten seconds of side one should be enough to convince you that our record is in an entirely different league, a league we had no idea even existed until just this year.

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The Electric Recording Company Does My Favorite Things No Favors

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

My Favorite Things happens to be one of our favorite Coltrane records, but we much prefer the stereo pressing of the album. (This is almost always the case when an album has been recorded in stereo, as My Favorite Things was in 1960, later released on Atlantic vinyl in 1961.)

We even tell you what to listen for to help you separate the best pressings from the merely good ones: the piano.

A solid, full-bodied, clear and powerful piano. As we focused on the sound of the instrument, we couldn’t help but notice how brilliant McCoy Tyner is. This may be John Coltrane’s album, but Tyner’s contribution is critically important to the success of My Favorite Things.

The engineering duties were handled by Tom Dowd (whose work you surely know well) and Phil Iehle, who happens to be the man who recorded some of Coltrane’s most iconic albums for Atlantic: Giant Steps (1960) and Coltrane Jazz (also in 1961).

Our last shootout for My Favorite Things was in 2018, not exactly yesterday, but in our defense let me just say that we have done plenty of other Coltrane albums from this period and feel as though we would have no trouble recognizing the sound his engineers were going for.

Unfortunately for those of you who have bought into the idea that the Electric Recording Company produces records with audiophile quality sound, you will find an utterly alien My Favorite Things, one nobody has ever heard before and one that no audiophile should want anything to do with.

Allow us to lay out the specifics of our complaints:

Notes for Side One

  • Big and full but smeary, flat and dull sax
  • No space or depth anywhere
  • Bloated bass
  • A mess

Notes for Side Two

  1. Side two is even worse
  2. Where is the breathy detail of the sax?

Electric Recording Company

We’ve played a few other ERC releases produced by the gentleman who owns The Electric Recording Company, a Mr. Pete Hutchison.

As you no doubt know, we would not be correct in using the term “mastered.” He does no mastering. He does “transferring.” He transfers the tapes to disc and puts them in nice jackets of his own design.

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John Coltrane – Ascension (Edition II)

More John Coltrane

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this early Stereo Impulse pressing (only the second copy to ever hit the site) is doing just about everything right – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • A great Rudy Van Gelder recording that hits a whole ‘nother level on a copy that was mastered and pressed as well as this one
  • It’s bigger, livelier, tubier, and with more presence and transparency than most of what we played – the sound positively jumps out the speakers
  • “Coltrane’s Ascension was originally released with the second take of the music from the recording session on June 28, 1965. These original pressings are commonly referred to as ‘Edition I.'”
  • “Shortly thereafter, Coltrane expressed a desire to instead use the first take. Impulse swapped out the stamper(s) for one(s) with the first take and inscribed ‘Edition II’ in the dead wax – ceasing production of the original version.” – Discogs
  • 5 stars: “…by the time of this recording [Coltrane] had begun to reach the level of ‘elder statesman’ … and expand his sounds and emotions. Therefore, Ascension reflects more of an event rather than just a jazz record and should be sought out by either experienced jazz appreciators or other open-minded listeners…”
  • If you’re a Coltrane fan, this title from 1965 is clearly one of his best from the era, and, fortunately for us audiophiles, one of his best sounding

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