Top Artists – Sammy Davis, Jr.

Sammy Davis Jr. – Sings The Big Ones For Young Lovers

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  • You will find amazing sound on both sides of this original Reprise stereo pressing
  • “Sammy Davis, who is widely acclaimed to be the greatest all-around-entertainment talent of our times, here swings thru an album filled with the greatest songs he’s ever tackled in his entire recording career. The result ? It has to be the greatest album Sammy’s ever recorded.”
  • 4 stars: “…[a] dozen-song outing, supported by some irresistible backdrops courtesy of arrangers Jimmie Haskell and Perry Botkin Jr… Sings the Big Ones for Young Lovers primarily consists of well-known covers…”
  • If you’re a fan of Sammy’s, this 1964 release belongs in your collection.

Although we liked it well enough, this title unfortunately  did not get much love from our customers.

Years ago it was tagged on the blog as a never again title, which simply means we would no longer plan on doing shootouts for it. (It’s possible we could do it again, expecially if we were to get hold of an amazing sounding pressing, but at this point that does not seem to be in the cards as we have stopped buying them altogether.)

We encourage you to find a nice copy for yourself. Stick with the early label. If you don’t hear the sound we describe below, you have the option to keep buying copies until you do.

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Sammy Davis Jr. – Sammy’s Back On Broadway

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Sammy Davis, Jr. Albums We’ve Reviewed

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  • Sammy’s Back On Broadway comes to the site with shootout winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • Rich, smooth, and shockingly Tubey Magical, the sound on this 1965 Reprise Tri-Color Steamboat pressing is Hard To Fault (HTF)
  • Some of the best sound and music we’ve ever heard from the man – this is an album that proves Sammy was more than a member of The Rat Pack
  • 4 stars: “Although the 1965 album was filled with concurrently modern selections, the mixture of enduring classics and lesser-known material further exemplifies the artist’s impeccable taste and performance style.”

There are an awful lot of bad sounding Sammy Davis, Jr. records out there. We must have played at least a half dozen hard, honky, sour sounding copies before we ran into this forgotten gem. (Dean Martin’s albums are the same way; maybe one out of ten sound good and the rest are just terrible.) (more…)

Sammy Davis Jr. – The Nat King Cole Song Book

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  • A superb sounding original stereo copy with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or very close to it on both sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too!
  • Bigger and richer, with lovely Tubey Magic and breathy vocals, this Tri-Color Reprise pressing lets us hear Sammy at the peak of his powers performing some of Nat’s most memorable songs
  • 4 Stars: “Alongside Cole’s collaborator, Billy May, and notable jazz arranger Claus Ogerman, Davis and company turned in one of the finest and most underrated efforts.”

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Unquestionably the Best Sammy Davis Jr. Album We’ve Ever Played

Hot Stamper Pressings of Our Best Vocal Albums

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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.

This album is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but would certainly benefit from getting to know better.

It’s one of the most emotionally rich and sublimely enjoyable collections of romantic ballads ever recorded.

Our Hot Stamper pressings are guaranteed to demolish the DCC CD (should you have one laying around, an admittedly unlikely proposition to be sure).

The sound is rich, warm and natural beyond expectation — assuming you’ve suffered through other of Sammy’s recordings from the ’60s, as we have, finding little of merit in their sound.

On most of them, at some point in the first track, the phony vocal EQ and heavy reverb would dash whatever hopes we might have had for the sound.

Soon enough the record would be consigned to the trade-in pile, perhaps to find a home where bad sound is not a deal-breaker (which means pretty much everywhere).

For us audiophiles, at least most of the time, it has to be.
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