
- INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it can be found on this wonderful reissue
- Discovery may not have produced or released a lot of top sounding titles, but this record by itself puts them well ahead of Classic Records, Mobile Fidelity and the dozens of other remastering houses who have turned out close to zero records of this sonic quality
- If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1957 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy should be just the record for you – the music and sound are enchanting.
- This copy is super-spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience – the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny
- With engineering from the legendary Bones Howe at Radio Recorders, this record’s audiophile credentials are fully in order
- If you’re a fan of brilliant West Coast Jazz charts, this All Tube Recording from 1957 belongs in your collection.
- The complete list of titles from 1957 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.
This is a wonderful example of the kind of record that makes record collecting FUN.
If you large group swinging West Coast Jazz is your thing – think Art Pepper Plus Eleven – you will really get a kick out of this one.
Albert Marx was the producer of the original sessions back in 1957. Fast-forward to the ’80s and Marx is now the owner of his very own jazz label, Discovery Records. Who would know the sound of the original tapes better than he? Working with Dave Ellsworth at KM, Marx has here produced one of the best jazz reissues we’ve heard in years.
The Original
We finally got hold of an original, and sure enough, it had some of the qualities we might have guessed it would have.
It was big and rich, as expected, but it was also crude and gritty, like a lot of old jazz and pop vocal records from the ’50s are.
The reissue not only got rid of those problems, but because it was cut properly on much better mastering equipment, it was also more open and resolving of studio space and detail.
If you want to know what a properly remastered record sounds like, this pressing will show you. It should also make clear that the second-rate pressings being made today are a disgrace, pure and simple, a drum we have been beating on for at least the last fifteen years.
If only these modern engineers could put together the quality mastering chain that Albert Marx had available to him, Dave Ellsworth and his team, not to mention the knowledge of how to use it right, and the critical listening skills required to get it right and to recognize when it was right.
Practically all of the qualities missing from modern records are found right here on this budget Discovery pressing. If more reissues sounded like this, we might have to seriously rethink our business model.
But modern reissues don’t sound like this. They practically never do. Which makes the service we offer more necessary than ever.
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