1961-must-own-jazz

Eric Dolphy – Out There in 2026

More Saxophone Jazz

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this vintage Prestige stereo recording pressed on OJC vinyl
  • This copy (the first to hit the site in over four years) was doing just about everything right: it’s rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical yet still super open and spacious
  • 5 stars: “A somber and unusual album by the standards of any style of music, Out There explores Dolphy’s vision in approaching the concept of tonality in a way few others – before, concurrent, or after – have ever envisioned.”

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Miles Davis / In Person – Friday and Saturday Nights

More  of the Music of Miles Davis

  • This 2-LP 6-Eye Stereo pressing boasts very good Hot Stamper sound or BETTER from start to finish
  • We guarantee there is more space, richness, presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard or you get your money back – it’s as simple as that
  • Skip the Red Label pressings – the ones we’ve played were too thin and dry, which is sadly a sound far too common on Columbia reissues from the 70s
  • 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
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Though short-lived, the unique character of this group was its sheer intensity and diversity of attack. Because of the departure of Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane, Davis had to rely as much on a muscular attack in playing his instrument as his considerable gift for melodic improvisation. For his part, Mobley had the shoes of two monster players to fill, and he does so elegantly with a ton of fire in his playing. But it is Kelly and Chambers who really set the pace for this band.”
  • If you’re a jazz fan, this classic title from 1961 belongs in your collection
  • The complete list of titles from 1961 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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Charles Mingus – Pre Bird

More of the Music of Charles Mingus

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it throughout this original Mercury Stereo LP
  • We used to think the early Limelight pressing was impossible to beat, but this superb original Mercury showed us just how wrong we were – it takes the recording to another level (particularly on side two)
  • This copy sounds like a big room full of musicians (25 in all!) playing live, which is exactly what it was
  • The Tubey Magical richness of this 1960 recording (released in 1961, and again in 1965 as Mingus Revisited) is breathtaking (also particularly on side two) – no modern record can touch it
  • AllMusic gives it 4 stars and we think it’s maybe even a bit better than that
  • Two tracks are contrapuntal arrangements of two swing era pieces, whereby “Take the ‘A’ Train” (left channel) is paired with a simultaneous “Exactly Like You” (right channel), and likewise “Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me” with “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart.”
  • An outstanding member of our Core Jazz Collection of currently available exceptional recordings.

The better copies recreate a live studio space the size of which you will not believe (assuming your room can do a good job of recreating their room). The sound is tonally correct, Tubey Magical and above all natural. The timbre of each and every instrument is right and it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it — so high-resolution too.

If you love 50s and 60s jazz, you cannot go wrong here. Mingus was a genius and the original music on this record is just one more album’s worth of proof of the undeniability of that fact.

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Cannonball Adderley – What I Mean

More of the Music of Cannonball Adderley

  • Adderley’s superb double album reissue from 1979, which includes the complete 1961 album Know What I Mean?, here with seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides
  • Sides three and four (Know What I Mean?) were sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich and tubey the sound is
  • With outstanding presence, clarity, space and right-on-the-money timbral accuracy, these pressings are guaranteed to be one of the best sounding jazz records you’ve played in a long, long time
  • A hard record to find, and an even harder record to find with this kind of audiophile sound and playing surfaces
  • This is some of the best sound we have ever heard for this exceptional Golden Age 60s recording, and that is really saying something
  • 4 stars: “This two-LP set combines two fine sessions from 1961. The great altoist is heard with his quintet in 1961 (featuring cornetist Nat Adderley, Victor Feldman on vibes and piano and guest pianist Wynton Kelly) and in a quartet date with pianist Bill Evans.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1961 that belongs in any jazz-loving audiophile’s collection

Sides one and two of this double LP were originally issued as The Cannonball Adderley Quintet Plus, while sides three and four were originally released as Know What I Mean?

All four sides boast excellent mastering and very good sound. The cymbals have that just right “tap” followed by an open and sweet “shimmer.”

The piano and sax, the heart of the music of course, are rendered as accurately as can be expected.

As good as the OJC sounds, and it can sound very good indeed, this Milestone reissue from the decade before is even better. It has more of a “vintage analog pressing” sound, the kind you would expect to hear on a recording from 1962. (more…)

Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Further Out 6-Eye in Stereo

More of the Music of Dave Brubeck

  • Outstanding sound throughout this vintage Stereo 6-Eye pressing, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • It’s bigger, richer, more Tubey Magical, and has more extension on both ends of the spectrum than most other copies we played
  • This copy demonstrates the big-as-life Fred Plaut Columbia sound at its best – better even than Time Out(!)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The selections, which range in time signatures from 5/4 to 9/8, are handled with apparent ease (or at least not too much difficulty) by pianist Brubeck, altoist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright, and drummer Joe Morello on this near-classic.”

Time Further Out is consistently more varied and, dare we say, more musically interesting than Time Out.

If you want to hear big drums in a big room, these Brubeck recordings will show you that sound better than practically any record we know of. These vintage recordings are full-bodied, spacious, three-dimensional, rich, sweet and warm in the best tradition of an All Tube Analog recording.

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Oliver Nelson – The Blues and the Abstract Truth

More of the Music of Oliver Nelson

  • Oliver Nelson’s Masterpiece (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in close to three years), here with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it from first note to last – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Clean, clear and present with a solid bass foundation, as well as the big stage this big group of musicians needs (particularly on side one)
  • If all you know is Van Gelder’s original cutting, you will surely have your eyes and ears opened by this wonderful reissue pressing (also particularly on side one)
  • The knockout pressings we discovered many years ago are ones with very particular markings that are very hard to find, which is explains why this musical Masterpiece comes to the site only once every three years
  • AllMusic gives it 5 stars (of course) and calls this album “…his triumph as a musician for the aspects of not only defining the sound of an era… but on this recording, assembling one of the most potent modern jazz sextets ever.”

The sound is tonally correct, Tubey Magical and above all natural. The timbre of each and every instrument is right and it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it. So high-resolution too. If you love 50s and 60s jazz, you cannot go wrong here.

For those record lovers who still cling to the idea that the originals are better, this record will hopefully set you straight.

Yes, we can all agree that Rudy Van Gelder recorded it, brilliantly as a matter of fact. Shouldn’t he be the most natural choice to transfer the tape to disc, knowing, as we must assume he does, exactly what to fix and what to leave alone in the mix?

Maybe he should be; it’s a point worth arguing.

But ideas such as this are only of value once they have been tested empirically and found to be true.

We tested this very proposition in our recent shootout, as well as in previous ones of course. It is our contention, based on the experience of hearing quite a number of copies over the years, that Rudy did not cut the original record as well as he should have. For those of you who would like to know who did, we proudly offer this copy to make the case.

Three words say it all: Hearing is believing.

(And if you own any modern Heavy Vinyl reissue we would love for you to be able to appreciate all the musical information that you’ve been missing when playing it. I remember the one from the 90s on Impulse being nothing special, and the Speakers Corner pressing in the 2000s if memory serves was passable at best.)

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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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Miles Davis – Someday My Prince Will Come on 360

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • Seriously good sound throughout this Miles Davis classic, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • This early Stereo 360 LP is full-bodied, high-rez and spacious, with Miles’s horn uncannily present, a sound you just cannot find on Heavy Vinyl no matter who makes it
  • If you have the big system and dedicated room a record of this quality demands, you can put Miles right in the room with you with a Hot Stamper pressing as good as this
  • Vintage pressings that play this reasonably quiet and are free of scratches and groove damage are few and far between, but here’s one, perfect for even the most demanding audiophile
  • Another engineering triumph for Fred Plaut at Columbia’s legendary 30th Street Studios – the man is a genius
  • Musically this is one of our very favorite Miles albums, and the sound is Demo Disc quality on the better copies

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Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Further Out on 360

More Dave Brubeck

Reviews and Commentaries for Time Further Out

  • Excellent sound throughout this black print 360 Stereo pressing, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • It’s bigger, richer, more Tubey Magical, and has more extension on both ends of the spectrum than most other copies we played
  • This copy demonstrates the big-as-life Fred Plaut Columbia Sound at its best – better even than Time Out(!)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The selections, which range in time signatures from 5/4 to 9/8, are handled with apparent ease (or at least not too much difficulty) by pianist Brubeck, altoist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright, and drummer Joe Morello on this near-classic.”

Time Further Out is consistently more varied and, dare we say, more musically interesting than Time Out.

If you want to hear big drums in a big room, these Brubeck recordings will show you that sound better than practically any record we know of. These vintage recordings are full-bodied, spacious, three-dimensional, rich, sweet and warm in the best tradition of an All Tube Analog recording.

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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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