1960-all

Wes Montgomery / While We’re Young – Reviewed in 2010

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

This Minty Milestone Two-Fer Promo Double LP set features material from two Wes Montgomery albums: The Incredible Jazz Guitar and So Much Guitar.

There’s a reason Steve Hoffman chose So Much Guitar to do on Gold CD. It’s a superb recording, and it sounds great here.

This is an Older Review.

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a fine art.

We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)

(more…)

Sketches of Spain – Our Mono Shootout Winner from Way Back in 2008

More Vintage Columbia Pressings

This Mono Six Eye Columbia original pressing is the WINNER and [not-at-all] CURRENT CHAMPION of our Sketches of Spain shootouts. This record always sounded so thin and aggressive, with Miles’ horn always somewhat pinched and sour, but now it sounds wonderful. Who knew this record could sound so good?

Let’s talk about this mono copy. It is clearly more transparent, with less distortion, than any other copy we heard (and this means out of more than twenty!) There may be better sounding pressings out there, but I would be surprised to find one that would be more than a marginal improvement over what I’m hearing on this copy — and that goes for both sides. (more…)

Helen Humes – ’Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now

This EXCEPTIONALLY QUIET Contemporary Recording has wonderful sound on both sides. It’s got SHOCKINGLY DYNAMIC VOCALS — just listen to Miss Humes really belting it out on a great reading of Stardust! The sound is really rich and full with a BIG punchy bottom end. The clarity and transparency are superb, and you can really hear the leading edge transients on the various horns (Carter on trumpet, Rosolino on trombone).

You Can Depend On Me, the opening track, has an exceptionally weighty piano; it’s as if Andre Previn himself were pounding on a baby grand right there in your living room.

We don’t imagine that you are ever going to find a copy that sounds as good as this one.

All the usual suspects are here from the Contemporary corral: Benny Carter, Andre Previn, Leroy Vinnegar, Shelly Manne — providing big band back up for the lovely Miss Humes. We’re even bigger fans of Songs I Like To Sing, but the best moments here are every bit as wonderful.  

This is yet another stellar piece of wax from the best sounding jazz label of all time, Contemporary Records. Dynamic, rich, tonally correct, full of ambience — this record has it all.

(more…)

Chopin / The Chopin Scherzos / Rubinstein – Reviewed in 2008

This is an RCA Living Stereo reissue LP with EXCELLENT SOUND. The strengths of this particular LP are not hard to hear: super quiet vinyl, which no original would have, and super transparent mids and highs, again something that no original (in our experience) has ever had. 

Like most of Rubinstein’s records on RCA, there is no real weight to the piano, but at least on this pressing the smear and noise common to practically every original is GONE!

Lovely music too. 

Jesse Belvin – Mr. Easy

Zero distortion. zero smear, huge amounts of space and breathy rich vocals – what’s not to like? Marty Paich and Art Pepper lend a hand, and with Al Schmitt behind the board the sound is 1960 Living Stereo Tubey Magic at its finest.

If you know anything about this record you know that it is practically impossible to find in clean condition. The mono pressings are much more common but we did not care for their sound in the least.

We consider ourselves lucky to have found one with this kind of sound, because side one is getting everything so right we simply have no faults to make note of.

Notice especially how rich and textured the strings are on Marty Paich’s arrangements.

Side two was clearly not as good, hence the lower sonic grade. We could have called side two A++ but we felt that a more conservative approach might be a wiser choice in this case.

Al Schmitt

Al Schmitt recorded and mixed Mr. Easy for RCA back in 1960 and on side one of this very copy it should be clear to all that he knocked it out of the park.

We know his work well; he happens to have been at the controls for many albums with audiophile quality sound: Aja, Hatari, Breezin’, Late for the Sky, Toto IV, as well as some we can’t stand (the entire Diana Krall digital-echo-drenched catalog comes to mind).

The guy’s won 13 Grammy Awards, that ought to tell you something.