1960

Ibert / Saint-Saens / Bizet – Divertissement / Danse Macabre & more / Martinon

More of the Music of Saint-Saens

  • With two excellent Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy of these wonderful orchestral works that sounds remotely as good as this vintage London Blueback pressing
  • These sides are clear, full-bodied and present, with plenty of space around the players, the unmistakable sonic hallmark of the properly mastered, properly pressed vintage analog LP
  • The presentation of the orchestra is wide, tall, spacious, rich and tubey, yet the dynamics and transparency are first rate

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Rosemary Clooney – Clap Hands! Here Comes Rosie!

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings

  • Clap Hands! Here Comes Rosie! appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with solid Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sound throughout this original RCA pressing
  • Balanced, musical, present and full-bodied throughout – this pressing puts a living, breathing, big-as-life Rosemary Clooney performing right in your listening room
  • “…a delightful piece of lightweight jazz-pop … Clooney’s at her best on these ‘jazzy’ renditions of the standards ‘Give Me the Simple Life,’ ‘Something’s Gotta Give,’ ‘Too Marvelous for Words,’ and ‘Makin’ Whoopee.'”

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Hi-Fi a la Espanola / Fennell

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • An original Plum Label Stereo Mercury pressing (the first copy to ever hit the site) with a huge, powerful and tubey Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • Both of these TAS-approved sides boast an abundance of energy, loads of rich detail and texture, superb transparency and excellent clarity – the very definition of Demo Disc sound
  • Don’t expect to see anything but the real FR pressing when you get this one home — the RFR pressings are not remotely as good and did not even qualify for the lowest Hot Stamper grade on both sides
  • We owe a debt of gratitude to Harry Pearson for championing records such as this one – who is fit to carry his mantle today? (Besides us of course!)
  • We have been working up a shootout for this title for a very long time — after hearing how dubby and veiled the Classic Record pressing of the album was, we knew only the real thing would be worth doing

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Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain on 6-Eye in Stereo

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this 6-Eye Stereo pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Sketches of Spain you’ve heard
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich and tubey the sound is
  • Reasonably quiet vinyl for an early label pressing, few are this clean, and none come much quieter if our experience with dozens of them over the decades counts for anything
  • The better copies capture the realistic sound of Davis’s horn, the body, the breath and the bite (and the correct amount of squawk as well)
  • Balanced, clear and undistorted, this 30th Street recording shows just how good Columbia’s engineers (lead by the inestimable Fred Plaut) were back then
  • 5 stars: “Sketches of Spain is the most luxuriant and stridently romantic recording Davis ever made. To listen to it in the 21st century is still a spine-tingling experience…”
  • This pressing is clearly a Demo Disc for orchestral size and space

On the better pressings of this masterpiece, the sound is truly magical. (AMG has that dead right in their review.) It is lively but never strained. Davis’s horn has breath and bite, just like the real thing. What more can you ask for?

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Wagner / Excerpts from Operas / Dorati

More of the Music of Richard Wagner

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them, we guarantee you’ve never heard this underrated Wagner album sound remotely as good as it does here
  • It’s also fairly quiet at the high end Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Mercury is one of the few labels that can bring to life the power of the orchestra that Wagner’s music demands, and the engineers (Robert Eberenz, et al) do not disappoint (particularly on side two)
  • One of the better Watford Town Hall recordings (The Firebird would be another one), this album was recorded in 1959 and it fully captures the magic of the venue as only an All Tube Recording / Mastering Chain from that era can (also particularly on side two)
  • If you’re a fan of orchestral showpieces such as these, this Mercury recording from 1960 belongs in your collection.

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Shelly Manne & His Men – At The Black Hawk, Vol. 4

More of the Music of Shelly Manne

  • Here is an early Contemporary stereo pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides
  • This is West Coast Jazz at its best, and if anyone can capture the realism of a live jazz club, it’s the engineers and producers at Contemporary
  • For our shootout, we chose to play Volumes 2, 3 and 4 on the same day, which taught us something we might not have known otherwise — Volume 4 tends to have the best sound of those three albums
  • If you want to hear a healthy dose of the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful live session recorded at the Black Hawk in September 1959, this copy will let you do that
  • 4 stars: “Shelly Manne’s 1959 quintet (with trumpeter Joe Gordon, tenor saxophonist Richie Kamuca, pianist Victor Feldman, bassist Monty Budwig, and the drummer/leader) was … a hard-swinging unit well versed in bebop. The lengthy solos are consistently excellent, making this entire series recommended to straight-ahead jazz fans.

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Shelly Manne & His Men / At The Blackhawk, Volume 2

More of the Music of Shelly Manne

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from first note to last, this early Contemporary stereo pressing will be very hard to beat
  • This is West Coast Jazz at its best, and if anyone can capture the realism of a live jazz club, it’s the engineers and producers at Contemporary
  • Each instrument here sounds right – the piano is weighty and percussive; the drums are punchy; and the brass has lovely leading edge transients
  • 4 stars: “These lengthy performances (“Vamp’s Blues” is over 19 minutes long) give trumpeter Joe Gordon, the cool-toned tenor-saxophonist Richie Kamuca, pianist Victor Feldman, bassist Monty Budwig and the leader/drummer a chance to really stretch out. Fine 1950s bebop.”

Wonderful sound and music! This is West Coast Jazz at its best. The sound is superb — airy, open, and spacious with a stunningly good bottom end. You won’t believe how alive the bass sounds — the depth and definition are out of this world! Each instrument here sounds just right — weighty, percussive piano; punchy drums; and lovely leading edge transients on the brass. Contemporary got live nightclub jazz sound down to a “T” here.

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The Curtis Counce Group – Carl’s Blues

More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

 

  • Both sides of this vintage Contemporary recording pressed on exceptionally quiet OJC vinyl boast solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • This pressing has the studio space, presence, driving energy, and Midrange Magic that’s almost always missing from whatever 180g reissue (at 33 or 45, don’t fall for that BS) has been made from the 65 year old tapes
  • Out of the five pressings we could find in audiophile playing condition, only two had Super Hot or better sides, and no copy earned a White Hot grade for side two
  • Which simply means that finding good sound on this title is tough — for those of you who like to do your own shootouts, we wish you good luck, you’re going to need it
  • 4 stars: “Although the Curtis Counce Quintet was not a commercial success, their four Contemporary albums were all timeless in their own way, undated examples of high-quality hard bop from the late 50s. Excellent music that still sounds fresh four [now six] decades later.”

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Liszt / The Music of Franz Liszt / Fiedler

More of the Music of Franz Liszt

  • This vintage Shaded Dog pressing of these wonderful orchestral showpieces boasts two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them
  • 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
  • Classic superb Living Stereo sound on this side one – big and open with an especially clean and extended top end (great fun on those huge cymbal crashes Liszt favored), and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • Powerful, rich, dynamic and life-like orchestral reproduction, set in a huge hall – no Heavy Vinyl pressing can hold a candle to sound as good as this (particularly on side one)
  • “The Hungarian-born composer and pianist Franz Liszt was strongly influenced by the music heard in his youth, particularly Hungarian folk music, with its unique gypsy scale, rhythmic spontaneity and direct, seductive expression.”
  • If you’re a fan of orchestral showpieces such as these, this Living Stereo from 1960 belongs in your collection.

This is, in our opinion, one of the most underrated Living Stereo treasures in the Golden Age canon — but not by this critic (here reviewing the CD):

In the early days of stereo, RCA released an all-Liszt LP by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops that has remained in my memory as one of the finest things the popular maestro ever committed to disc…

Two works, the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and the high energy Rákoczy March, have been out for some time, coupled with “Hi-Fi Fiedler”. Now RCA has added to this current disc the two main pieces, Mazeppa and Les Preludes, from the original collection. They are as wonderful as ever – among the best, if not the best, performances of this music. Fiedler doesn’t dawdle or toy around with the melodies; he lets Liszt’s Romantic vision speak for itself, helping it along with brisk tempos and incisive phrasing. Seldom have the fanfares in Les Préludes had such bite and majesty.

ClassicsToday

The richly textured, rosin-on-the-bow lower strings on this record are to die for.

Find me a modern record with that sound and I will eat it. And by “modern record” we hasten to include both modern recordings and modern remasterings of older recordings. NO ONE alive today can make a record that sound like this. To call it a lost art is to understand something that few vinyl-loving audiophiles appear to have fully grasped since the advent of the Modern Reissue, which is simply this: compared head to head, they are simply not competitive.

After twenty years of trying and literally hundreds of failed examples, both the boutique and major labels of today have yet to make a record that sounds as powerful or as life-like as this RCA from the old days.

Fortunately for us record lovers and collectors, we at Better Records are not trying to make a record sound the way these sides do, we’re just trying to find ones that do, and folks, we found some very, very good sides here.

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Beethoven – Piano Concerto No. 2 / Moonlight Sonata / Backhaus

More of the Music of Beethoven

  • The Hot Stamper debut of Backhaus and the Vienna Phil’s masterful performance of these two sublime classical works, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER throughout this vintage London pressing
  • It’s also remarkably quiet at the high end of Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Piano Concerto No. 2 takes up all of this incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) side one and is practically as good as we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • Both of these sides are big, full-bodied, clean and clear, with a wonderfully present and solid piano, and plenty of 3D space around it
  • Dynamic, huge, lively, transparent and natural – with a record this good, your ability to suspend disbelief will require practically no effort at all
  • After surveying various recordings of the work, it was clear to us that CS 6188 on the early London pressing offers the discerning audiophile the best performance of the piece with the highest quality sound available

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