1959

Winds In Hi-Fi / Fennell – Another Top Mercury, Formerly on the TAS List

Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now

  • An early Plum Label copy of this famous TAS list LP with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • This pressing boasts incredible sound from start to finish – Mercury knows how to capture the bite of the brass
  • Fennell is a master of this sort of sweet and lyrical Wind Music
  • Both sides of this spectacular Demo Disc recording are big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic – here is the Mercury sound we love, and that is so hard to find
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you

Harry Pearson put this record on his TAS list of Super Discs many years ago, but, like so many amazingly good recordings from the golden age, it no longer appears to qualify for inclusion.

Regardless of its current status with the writers at The Absolute Sound, a group whose taste and acumen must be considered questionable at best, the credit must go to Fennel along with the brilliant engineering team at Mercury. I’ve been told that he was a stickler for making sure everyone was perfectly in tune and playing correctly within the ensemble. That’s exactly what you hear when you play a record like this — it’s practically sonic perfection.

Fennell made a number of band music recordings for Mercury. My favorite is British Band Classics Vol. 2, which was the first Mercury recording I ever heard. I went out and bought a copy of it immediately from my local Tower Records on Golden Import.

Years later when I heard the real thing, and original pressing, I realized the Golden Import was a pretty second rate reissue, fine for the $3.99 I might have paid but a big step down from the early pressings.

Also, if you ever see a clean copy of Vol. 1, only available in Mono, pick it up. If it’s cut right it, too, is out of this world.

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Gershwin / Rhapsody In Blue / An American In Paris – Bernstein

More of the Music of George Gershwin

  • This vintage 6-Eye Stereo pressing boasts INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades from top to bottom
  • Here is sound that is both tubey and real, with much more space and a much bigger and more realistic presentation of the hall than any of the other copies we played
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Paired with his buoyant 1958 performance of An American in Paris with the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein’s rendition of Rhapsody is lively, flashy, bluesy, and intensely romantic in feeling, and these positive characteristics no doubt contributed to keeping this album in print for many years as one of Columbia’s great successes.”

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Finlandia – The Music of Sibelius and Grieg / Mackerras

More of the Music of Jean Sibelius

More of the Music of Edvard Grieg

  • An outstanding copy with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from first note to last
  • Both sides are big, rich, transparent, spacious and dynamic – no Heavy Vinyl pressing can begin to do what this record is doing
  • Yet another wonderful example of just how much energy and power the deservedly-lauded Decca recording engineers were able to capture on analog tape in the earliest days of stereo
  • These spectacular works are played with deep feeling – we know of no better performance, or any recording of these pieces with better sound
  •  When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from the 70s, but that’s precisely what it is. Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performance coupled with the highest quality sound. This record has earned a place on that list.

The 1959 master has been transferred brilliantly using “modern” cutting equipment (from the early-’70s, not the low-rez junk they’re forced to make do with these days), giving you, the listener, sound that only the best of both worlds can offer.

The brass is HUGE and POWERFUL. Not many recordings capture the brass this well. (Ansermet on London comes to mind of course but many of his performances leave much to be desired. Here Mackerras is on top of his game with performances that are definitive.)

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Ben Webster – Soulville

Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

  • A vintage Verve Two-Fer set with very good Hot Stamper sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides
  • Unlike the Speakers Corner version from a few years back, this is the real thing, mastered by real pros, not audiophiles
  • This reissue combines the albums Soulville and Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson
  • With rave reviews for both albums, AMG lauds Soulville as, “one of the highlights of that golden 50s run,” and notes Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson is “one of the jazz legend’s all-time great records.”

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Beethoven – Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) / Solti

More of the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven

  • Both sides of this vintage copy were giving us the rich and Tubey Magical Decca / London sound we were looking for, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s simply bigger, more transparent, less distorted, more three-dimensional and more real than most of what we played
  • A top performance from Solti and the Vienna Phil – it’s classic Solti: fast-paced, exciting and powerful
  • Solti’s Beethoven recordings from 1959 are superb, with the 5th and 7th being every bit as good – it’s his later recordings, the ones from the early 1970s, that we find fault with
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.
  • And if you have an original Decca or London of this title, be prepared to be knocked out by how much better this later pressing sounds — knocked out like we were, truth be told

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Beethoven – Symphony No. 4 / Ansermet

More of the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven

  • A vintage London pressing of Ansermet and the Suisse Romande’s wonderful performance, here with big, rich, Tubey Magical Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound throughout – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Both of these sides have an abundance of energy, loads of detail and texture, remarkable transparency and excellent clarity – all qualities the best classical pressings have in abundance
  • The texture on the strings is captured perfectly – this is an area in which modern pressings fail utterly, and without good string reproduction, especially in the lower registers, a Beethoven symphony is simply not a pleasurable experience when reproduced on highly resolving equipment

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The Gerry Mulligan Quartet – What Is There To Say?

More of the Music of Gerry Mulligan

  • With STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this early 6-Eye Stereo LP is doing practically everything right
  • The sound here is tubier, more transparent, more dynamic, with more of that “jumpin’ out of the speakers” quality that only The Real Thing ever has
  • With explosive dynamics and rich, full-bodied, Tubey Magical sax sound, it’s hard to imagine any reissue, vintage or otherwise, can hold a candle to the sound of this amazing record
  • Recorded at Columbia’s famous 30th Street studios, here is a record that sounds like Kind of Blue, Ah Um and Time Out, for the simple reason that all were recorded in the same studio using the same equipment (and perhaps even the same engineers)
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 5 stars: “The last of the pianoless quartet albums that Gerry Mulligan recorded in the 1950s is one of the best … every selection is memorable…”

Clean and Clear Yet Rich and Sweet

This copy managed to find the perfect balance of these attributes; you want to find that rare copy that keeps what is good about a Tubey Magical analog recording from The Golden Age of ’50s Jazz but manages to avoid the pitfalls so common to them: compression, opacity and blubber. To be sure, the fault is not with the recording (I guess; again, not having heard the master tape) but with the typical pressing. Bad vinyl, bad mastering, who knows why so many copies sound so thick, dead and dull?

The Big Room

Huge amounts of ambience fill out the space the extends from wall to wall (and all the way to the back wall of the studio), leaving plenty of room around each of the players.

Full-bodied sound, open and spacious, bursting with life and energy — these are the hallmarks of our Truly Hot Stampers.

If your stereo is cookin’ these days, this record will surely be an unqualified Sonic Treat. We guarantee that no heavy vinyl pressing, of this or any other album, has the kind of analog magic found here. Or your money back.

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Beethoven – Symphony No. 7 / Karajan

More of the Music of Beethoven

  • This Decca-recorded, Shaded Dog pressing of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 debuts on the site with big, spacious, and lively Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sound or close to it from first note to last
  • Side one is doing just about everything right – it’s rich, clear, undistorted, open, and has depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • The texture on the strings is captured perfectly (particularly on side one) – this is an area in which modern pressings fail utterly, and without good string reproduction, especially in the lower registers, a Beethoven symphony is simply not a pleasurable experience on highly resolving equipment

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Esquivel – Exploring New Sounds in Stereo

More Exotica Recordings

  • An original Living Stereo pressing (one of only a handful of copies to ever hit the site) with two solid Double Plus (A++) sides
  • This copy is remarkably spacious and open, yet rich and and oh-so-Tubey Magical, with brass that has little to none of the “blarey” quality that plagues so many copies
  • Speaking of blarey brass, the first track on side one of every copy we played had a bad case of it, probably an EQ choice made in the mix to help it get more play on the radio
  • Folks, I can tell you right now, most original Living Stereo Popular (LSP) pressings, of this or any other LSP title, do not begin to recreate the studio wizardry found on this 1959 album
  • 4 1/2 stars: “There is a lot to recommend it. ‘Whatchamacallit’ is probably his second best-loved tune… Other highlights include the exotic ‘Bella Mora,’ the cheesy ‘My Number One Love,’ and ‘The 3rd Man Theme.'”

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Suppe – Overtures / Solti

More Imported Pressings on Decca and London

  • Solti and the Vienna Phil’s exquisite performance of Suppe’s Overtures debuts on the site with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout this original London Stereo pressing
  • Lovely string tone and texture, rich bass, a big hall, no smear, lovely transparency – the sonics here are hard to fault
  • This recording is overflowing with the kind of rich, spacious, Tubey Magical sound that can only be found on vintage vinyl

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