Top Engineers – Phil Iehle

Charles Mingus – Tonight at Noon

More of the Music of Charles Mingus

  • Tonight at Noon appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this vintage Atlantic Stereo pressing
  • This copy is overflowing with the kind of rich, spacious, Tubey Magical sound that can only be found on vintage vinyl
  • Phil Iehle and Tom Dowd made up the engineering team for these sessions from 1957 and 1961, which explains why the better copies of the album sound so damn good
  • 4 stars: “…the tunes here are actually studio outtakes from the recordings for The Clown and Oh Yeah. Despite the fact that this is an assembled album, it holds plenty of magic nonetheless.”

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Charles Mingus – Oh Yeah

More of the Music of Charles Mingus

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, this vintage Stereo Atlantic Blue and Green Label pressing of Mingus’s brilliant Oh Yeah was doing just about everything right
  • Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with three-dimensionality that will fill your listening room from wall to wall
  • Phil Iehle and Tom Dowd made up the engineering team for these sessions, which explains why the better copies of the album sound so damn good
  • A raucous (and rockin’) deviation from traditional jazz, this compilation incorporates R&B and soul influences – Mingus even lends his rich vocal stylings to a few songs
  • Forget the later label pressings — we stopped buying them years ago
  • 5 stars: “Oh Yeah is probably the most offbeat Mingus album ever, and that’s what makes it so vital.”
  • It’s hard to imagine that any list of the Best Jazz Albums of 1962 would not have this record on it

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John Coltrane – Coltrane Jazz

More of the Music of John Coltrane

  • Both sides of this copy have excellent sound for Coltrane’s brilliant sixth studio album
  • This pressing captures the classic Coltrane sound that Tom Dowd and Phil Iehle achieved in the studio in 1961, with plenty of the Tubey Magic that makes a vintage jazz album like this one such a special listening experience
  • It’s the rare pressing that isn’t mediocre if not outright awful – it took us a long time to find the right stampers for this one
  • It’s trial and error, no more, no less, a process that has worked for plenty of other hard-to-find-good-sound-for Coltrane albums too
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The first album to hit the shelves after Giant Steps… While not the groundbreaker that Giant Steps was, Coltrane Jazz was a good consolidation of his gains as he prepared to launch into his peak years of the 1960s.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1961 that belongs in any jazz-loving audiophile’s collection

For us audiophiles both the sound and the music here are wonderful. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1961 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy will do the trick.

This pressing is super spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience. Talk about Tubey Magic, 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.

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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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Herbie Mann – Impressions of the Middle East

More Jazz Recordings of Interest

More Recordings Engineered by Tom Dowd

  • Impressions of the Middle East debuts on the site on this early Green and Blue Stereo Atlantic pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Exceptionally spacious, tubey and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied — this is the sound of vintage jazz
  • Phil Iehle and Tom Dowd made up the engineering team for these sessions, which explains why the better copies of the album sound so damn good
  • If you’re looking for a little something different, with outstanding vintage 60s jazz sound, this is guaranteed to be worth your while, and if not, just send it back and we’ll let someone else give it a try
  • It’s yet another recording we’ve discovered with (potentially) excellent sound

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The Young Rascals – Self-Titled

More of The Young Rascals 

More Rock and Pop

  • The Young Rascals’ self-titled debut LP hits the site with excellent grades from start to finish
  • We chanced upon an amazing sounding stereo original about ten years ago, and only ten years later (!) we finally had enough clean copies to do a proper shootout
  • We often say that the average copy of Album X is no great shakes — here’s a title where almost no copies sound good and the average pressing is awful
  • Big, rich, energetic, with tons of analog Tubey Magic, this blue and green Atlantic stereo pressing has exactly the right sound for this music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The Young Rascals is that rare example of a genuinely great album that got heard and played, and sold and sold. [It] couples a raw garage band sound with compelling white soul more successfully than just about any record since the Beatles’ Please Please Me.”

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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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Herbie Mann – Returns To The Village Gate

More Herbie Mann

Hot Stamper Pressings of Superb Jazz Recordings in Stock

  • Herbie Mann’s 1963 release makes its Hot Stamper debut on this early Atlantic Blue & Green label pressing with phenomenal you-are-there sound
  • You won’t believe how good the Live Jazz Club sound captured on this album is, but a White Hot Stamper pressing like this one is guaranteed to make the case
  • This is an exceptionally well recorded jazz flute album, and if you want to hear this kind of sound, you going to need an early ’60s pressing, because none of the reissues we played even came close to our good stereo originals
  • “By 1961, flutist Herbie Mann was really starting to catch on with the general public. This release, a follow-up to his hit At the Village Gate…features Mann in an ideal group with either Hagood Hardy or Dave Pike on vibes, Ahmed Abdul-Malik or Nabil Totah on bass, drummer Rudy Collins and two percussionists. Mann really cooks on four of his own originals, plus ‘Bags’ Groove,’ blending in the influence of African, Afro-Cuban and even Brazilian jazz.”
  • A Jazz Classic from 1963 that should appeal to any fan of Bossa Nova music

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John Coltrane – Giant Steps

More John Coltrane

More 5 Star Albums

  • Coltrane’s Atlantic debut returns to the site on this KILLER vintage pressing with Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound from the first note to the last – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • As is so often the case, the right stampers make all the difference in the world on this album, and these are some of the best, even though the label may not be the right colors
  • It takes us years to find a copy that plays as quietly as this one with no marks in the vinyl – it will be quite a while before another of its kind comes our way
  • It’s big, lively, tubey, present and very transparent – nothing we played could compete with it
  • Credit superb engineering from Phil Iehle and Tom Dowd, who would work on some of Coltrane’s most iconic albums at the label
  • 5 stars: “[Coltrane] was…beginning to rewrite the jazz canon with material that would be centered on solos — the 180-degree antithesis of the art form up to that point. These arrangements would create a place for the solo to become infinitely more compelling.”

As you might expect, the original Blue and Green label pressings have (potentially) superb sound on Giant Steps, but somewhat surprisingly — assuming you’ve heard a Nearly White Hot original — the Red and Green label pressings can sound every bit as good.

The Tubey Magical richness and warmth carried over into the ’70s, at least on some copies of this title, and we’re very glad they did, as finding clean original Coltrane albums from the early ’60s is not so easy these days.

If you know anything about this music, you know that Coltrane builds up a head of steam on practically every track on the album. He is blasting away here and it is a thrill to be sure. The soundfield opens up naturally, with real depth.

The clarity does not come at the expense of brightness or thinness of any kind. In fact, just the opposite is the case — the sound is so rich and tubey you will be practically bowled over by it.

The extension on both ends of the frequency spectrum is one of the qualities that often sets the better copies apart from the pack. All the top end and the deep bottom end weight and fullness that are so essential to the sound are simply not to be found on most pressings — but here they are.

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Jerry Jeff Walker / Mr. Bojangles

More Jerry Jeff Walker

  • Clean and clear, rich and natural, with good vocal presence and wonderful energy throughout
  • The title track sounds amazing, but that’s just one of the great songs with excellent sound on the album
  • The engineering team of Tom Dowd and Phil Iehle really worked their magic on this one
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…Walker favored the country and folk side of folk-rock much more than the rock side.”

This is only the second title by Jerry Jeff that we’ve been able to do shootouts for. Most of the records we’ve played of his from the ’70s left a lot to be desired sonically and more often than not musically, so we gave up on them.

His Vanguard release from 1969 has superb sound, as does this Atco from 1968. There may be one or two more coming down the pike but that could be many years from now. His records never sold all that well, and not many of them can be found in Southern California.

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