Top Artists – Miles Davis

Miles Davis – Miles Davis (Cookin’ and Relaxin’)

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • With incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) MONO sound or close to it on all FOUR sides, these 70s reissue pressings are practically as good as we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Full-bodied, warm and natural with plenty of space around all of the players, this is the sound of vintage analog – accept no substitutes
  • This Prestige Two-Fer combines two complete Miles Davis titles recorded by the great Rudy Van Gelder in 1956 – ‘Cookin” and ‘Relaxin”
  • Marks 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: “…there is an undeniable telepathic cohesion that allows this band — consisting of Miles Davis (trumpet), John Coltrane (tenor sax), Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums) — to work so efficiently both on the stage and the studio. This same unifying force is also undoubtedly responsible for the extrasensory dimensions scattered throughout these recordings. The immediate yet somewhat understated ability of each musician to react with ingenuity and precision is expressed in the consistency and singularity of each solo as it is maintained from one musician to the next without the slightest deviation.”

Way off the charts Demo Disc quality sound of the highest order on the best tracks. The extension high and low sets these sides apart. The presence of the instruments and the space around them just cannot be beaten.

It also sounds like it’s recorded completely live in the studio, direct to one track you might say. As good a recording as Kind of Blue is, I think the best parts of this album are more immediate and more real than anything on KOB.

Talk About Timbre

Man, when you play a Hot Stamper copy of an amazing recording such as this, the timbre of the instruments is so spot-on it makes all the hard work and money you’ve put into your stereo more than pay off. To paraphrase The Hollies, you get paid back with interest. If you hear anything funny in the mids and highs of this record, don’t blame the record.

This is the kind of record that shows up audiophile BS equipment for what it is: audiophile BS. If you are checking for richness, Tubey Magic and freedom from artificiality, I can’t think of a better test disc. It has loads of the first two and none of the last.

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Michel Legrand – Legrand Jazz

More Large Group Jazz Recordings

  • This original 6-Eye Stereo pressing was doing just about everything right, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish
  • Both of these sides are open and spacious with real depth to the soundfield and lots of separation between the various instruments, a very important quality for a recording of a large ensemble recording such as this
  • Rich, solid bass; you-are-there immediacy; energy and drive; instruments that are positively jumping out of the speakers – add it all up and you can see that this copy had the sound we were looking for
  • Legrand rounded up 31 of the greatest jazz players of the 50s, divided them up into three groups, and the result was a landmark 30th Street Studio recording with audiophile sound to die for
  • We’re talking jazz giants: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Ben Webster, Herbie Mann, Art Farmer, Donald Byrd, Phil Woods — everybody who was anybody is on this record
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Throughout this superlative album, the arrangements are colorful and unusual, making one wish that Legrand had recorded more jazz albums through the years.”
  • Robert Brook recently played the “award winning” Impex 45 RPM pressing from 2019 (as did we) and wants to know what you think of the sound

This album is more common in mono than stereo, but we found the sound of the mono pressing we played seriously wanting. It’s dramatically smaller and more squawky and crude than even the worst of the stereo pressings we played.

We had a copy we liked years ago, but that was years ago. We don’t have that copy anymore and we don’t have a stereo that sounds the way our old one did either.

The unique voices of each of the jazz giants featured on this landmark recording contributes memorable solos then receeds into the group to provide the structure for the rest of the music. Which is an awkward way of saying everybody does his thing in service to the song and then gets out of the way. “The Jitterbug Waltz,” which opens up side one, is a perfect example: the arrangement is completely original, and within its structure, Miles Davis, Phil Woods, John Coltrane and others solo beautifully, each taking a turn at the melody. If three minutes into this song you don’t like what you’re hearing, jazz is just not for you.

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The Original Jazz Classics Series Put Out a Passable Relaxin’

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

We much prefer the right version of the 70s Two-Fer reissue (PR 24001) to the OJCs of both Cookin’ and Relaxin’ (OJC-190). Previously we had written:

These 70s reissue pressings are practically as good as any we have ever heard. Full-bodied, warm and natural, with plenty of space around all of the players, this is the sound of vintage analog.

It had been a while since we last played the OJC pressing of either album, so we picked up a copy of Relaxin’ and threw it into the shootout, where it did about as badly as expected.

The first side earned our 1+ grade, which means that, like a lot of reissues it’s passable, but really not good enough for a serious audiophile (hopefully meaning you) to bother with, which is why we didn’t even play side two (the N/A you see noted where the grade should be).

The OJC is clearly better suited to the old school audio systems of the 60s and 70s rather than the modern systems in use today. These kinds of reissues used to sound good on those older systems, and I should know, I used to have an old school stereo, and some of the records I used to think sounded good back in the day don’t sound too good to me anymore (although this one never did).

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Miles Davis – Miles Smiles

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • Solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER bring Davis’s 1967 release to life on this original Stereo 360 pressing
  • Both of these sides are full-bodied, high-rez and spacious, with Miles’s horn uncannily present, a sound you just cannot find on Heavy Vinyl no matter who makes it
  • Miles here is backed by his classic 60s All Star crew – Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter & Tony Williams
  • 5 stars: “This is music that demands attention, never taking predictable paths or easy choices. Its greatest triumph is that it masks this adventurousness within music that is warm and accessible – it just never acts that way… Arguably, this quintet was never better than they are here, when all their strengths are in full bloom.”

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Miles Davis – Quiet Nights

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • This oh-so-spacious Miles Davis / Gil Evans classic boasts STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this original black print Stereo 360 pressing
  • Rich, warm, smooth and clear throughout, this 30th Street Studios recording is another engineering triumph from the legendary Fred Plaut
  • Produced by Teo Macero, the album is the fourth and final collaboration between Davis and Evans
  • This is a lot of money for a somewhat noisy copy with some audible marks, but the sound is so awesome and quiet pressings of the album so hard to come by that we hope someone will take a chance on it and get the thrill we did from hearing it sound right for once
  • In the Saturday Review, Quiet Nights received praise for Davis’s “wonderful

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Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain on 6-Eye in Stereo

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this 6-Eye Stereo pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Sketches of Spain you’ve heard
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich and tubey the sound is
  • Reasonably quiet vinyl for an early label pressing, few are this clean, and none come much quieter if our experience with dozens of them over the decades counts for anything
  • The better copies capture the realistic sound of Davis’s horn, the body, the breath and the bite (and the correct amount of squawk as well)
  • Balanced, clear and undistorted, this 30th Street recording shows just how good Columbia’s engineers (lead by the inestimable Fred Plaut) were back then
  • 5 stars: “Sketches of Spain is the most luxuriant and stridently romantic recording Davis ever made. To listen to it in the 21st century is still a spine-tingling experience…”
  • This pressing is clearly a Demo Disc for orchestral size and space

On the better pressings of this masterpiece, the sound is truly magical. (AMG has that dead right in their review.) It is lively but never strained. Davis’s horn has breath and bite, just like the real thing. What more can you ask for?

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Miles Davis – Aura

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • This 2-LP set of Miles’s last Columbia label recording debuts on the site with superb Double Plus (A++) sound on all FOUR sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • You’d be hard-pressed to find a copy that’s this well balanced, big and lively, with wonderful clarity in the mids and highs
  • Backed by a full orchestra, and with John McLaughlin on guitar, Aura is unlike anything else in Davis’s catalogue – it’s a unique musical journey worth taking for those of a more adventurous nature
  • Won a Grammy Award in 1990 for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance.
  • “The music is an amalgam of classical impressionism, European new music, jazz, rock, electronic, and other genres. As a tribute and separate orchestral work, it’s quite moving and beautiful, full of moody interludes and evocations of nuance, color, texture, and dynamic.”

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How to Avoid Making this Rookie Record Collecting Mistake

Record Shopping Day Video!

Not sure how much of this video you can stand — nothing could interest me less than watching a couple of vinyl enthusiasts spouting off on what they think about some random records sitting in a local store’s bins.

But one or two bits caught my eye. I thought I might take the opportunity to share my take on them with you.

Is there any value to the comments of these two collectors? If you care about what music they like, perhaps.  Anything about what to look for on the label or jacket that might correspond to better sound?  If it’s there I sure didn’t see it, but I admit to speeding through most of it, so I can’t say for sure.

The first bit I refer to above is at 18:42.  The album in question is the legendary Kind of Blue. At this point the unseen helmet-cammed audiophile picks up the record, recognizes the cover, and proceeds to pull the record out to see what era the pressing is from.

Drat! The disappointment in this audiophile’s voice is palpable as he drops the record back in the bin with his dismissive comment that  “it’s a later pressing.”

But we here at Better Records would be falling all over ourselves to get our hands on that later pressing.

Those late pressings can and often do win shootouts. We would never look down our noses at a Red Label Columbia jazz LP, and neither should you.

UPDATE 2025

As good as the best pressings on the Red Label can sound, it has been years since one won a shootout. Here is our commentary for a recent 70s copy that went up on the site, one that earned a Super Hot grade on both sides.

They tend to sell for four or five hundred dollars these days. Why so much you ask? Because they beat the pants off of every so-called audiophile pressing of the album ever made. The testimony of one of our customers does a good job of describing the differences.

In addition, it turns out that at least nine out of ten of the copies with the red label are not remotely as good as the ones that earn Super Hot grades. The good ones are so rare that we only pick them up locally since practically none of the ones we find on the web have the right stampers. Trying to find the right red label needle in the haystack is more trouble than it’s worth, so don’t expect to see many coming to the site.

Our intrepid audiophile explorer does much the same thing about 23 minutes in. It seems pretty clear to us that he has no respect for such reissues, another example of one of the most common myths in record collecting land, the myth that the  original pressing is always, or to be fair, usually better.

This is simply not true, and those of our customers who have purchased White Hot Stamper pressings from us that turned out to be reissues know exactly what I am talking about. This is especially true for the records we sell by The Beatles. No original pressing has every won a shootout. [With one exception.]

Let’s get back to Kind of Blue.

Is the 50s original always better, is the 70s reissue always better, is the 60s 360 pressing always better?

No to one, two and three.

Why? Because no pressing is always better. All pressings are unique and should only be judged on their merits, and you do that by playing them, not by looking at their labels. For us this truth is practically axiomatic. It is in fact the premise of our entire business. Over the course of the 28 years we have been selling records we have never found any compelling evidence to invalidate it.

The day that someone can accurately predict the sound quality of a specific record by looking at the label or cover is a day I do not expect to come, ever.

UPDATE 2025

The above is somewhat misleading. With enough clean 6-Eye pressings on hand to play in a shooout, one of them will win.

That being the case, we have created two lists for those who would like to know which Columbia labels win shootouts — one for 6-Eye winners and one for 360 Label winners.

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Miles Davis – Collector’s Items

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • Excellent MONO sound throughout these 70s reissue pressings, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on all FOUR sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This Prestige Two-Fer contains the complete Collector’s Items (1956) and Blue Moods (1955), both brilliantly remastered by the one and only RVG
  • The Demo Disc sound throughout these sides is rich, full, sweet, tonally right on the money, and lively as can be
  • Davis partners here with jazz greats, including Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker and others

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We Was Wrong about Sketches Of Spain on Six Eye

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

Many, many years ago (15?) we had this to say about a killer Red Label pressing we had played at the time.

When you get a Hot Stamper like this one the sound is truly MAGICAL. (AMG has that dead right in their review.)

Tons of ambience, Tubey Magic all over the place; let’s face it, this is one of those famous Columbia recordings that shows just how good the Columbia engineers were back then. The sound is lively but never strained. Davis’s horn has breath and bite just like the real thing. What more can you ask for?

We Was Wrong in the Past About HP and Six-Eye Labels

In previous commentary we had written:

Harry Pearson added this record to his TAS List of Super Discs a few years back, not exactly a tough call it seems to us. Who can’t hear that this is an amazing sounding recording?

Of course you can be quite sure that he would have been listening exclusively to the earliest pressings on the Six Eye label. Which simply means that he probably never heard a copy with the clarity, transparency and freedom from distortion that these later label pressings offer.

The Six Eyes are full of Tubey Magic, don’t get me wrong; Davis’s trumpet can be and usually is wonderful sounding. It’s everything else that tends to suffer, especially the strings, which are shrill and smeary on most copies, Six Eyes, 360s and Red Labels included.

UPDATE

Over the course of the last fifteen or more years we’ve come to appreciate just how good the right Six Eye stereo pressing can sound.

Nowadays, all the copies earning the highest grades will be original stereo pressings. Other pressings can do well, earning grades of 2+ or so, but none will do as well as the originals.

This has never been our experience with Kind of Blue by the way. The later pressings have always done the best job of communicating the music on that album.

UPDATE #2

Our comments for Kind Of Blue are no longer true either. The Six-Eye pressings of the album win all the shootouts now.

The above shows just how wrong we were about the sound of some later label Columbia pressings we used to like.  The commentary below concerning early versus later RCA pressings is part and parcel of the same dynamic.

Back in 2010 we liked reissue pressings of Living Stereo recordings a lot more than we do now. Only the advent of top quality cleaning equipment and fluids and much improved playback made it possible for us to reproduce the early Shaded Dogs in all their glory.

When my system was darker and less revealing, a lot of records that were mastered to be cleaner and brighter sounded great to me. Records like RCA Red Seal pressings, some OJC jazz titles, and lots of other bad records that I used to like were a good complement to my system back in those days. Now, not so much.

When we encourage our readers to get good sound so they can recognize and acquire good records, it’s because we learned that lesson the hard way, by getting lots of great recordings wrong.

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels.

“Advanced” is a code word for having little to no interest in any remastered pressing marketed to the audiophile community. If you want to avoid the worst of them, we are happy to help you do that. The more progress in audio you make, the more you will  regret having wasted your money on them, and we hate the thought of seeing your hard-earned money go down the drain.

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