1961-must-own-jazz

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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Ellington-Basie / First Time – The Count Meets the Duke

More Duke Ellington

More Count Basie

  • This original 6-Eye Stereo pressing was doing pretty much everything right, with both sides earning superb Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Reasonably quiet vinyl too, considering its age – how many early ’60s Columbia Stereo pressings survived with audiophile-quality playing surfaces the way this one did?
  • Huge amounts of three-dimensional space and ambience, along with boatloads of Tubey Magic – here’s a 30th Street recording from 1961 that demonstrates just how good Columbia’s engineers were back then
  • If all you’ve heard are the Classic Records reissues of Ellington, you are in for a treat, because there is a world of difference between the real thing and the Classic wannabe
  • It’s yet another Tubey Magical demo disc from the golden age of vacuum tube recording
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… a very successful and surprisingly uncrowded encounter… Ellington and Basie both play piano (their interaction with each other is wonderful) and the arrangements allowed the stars from both bands to take turns soloing.”
  • It’s hard to imagine that any list of the best jazz albums of 1961 would not have The Count Meets the Duke on it. The sound is out of this world on the best copies.

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Red Garland Trio – Bright And Breezy

More of the Music of Red Garland

  • This vintage copy was doing practically everything right, with both sides earning STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The sound is clear, spacious, relaxed, and full-bodied, with Tubey Magical richness and analog smoothness that only the better vintage pressings can offer
  • The typical copies are thin, lean, and lifeless, but we managed to unearth some copies that really get it right and here is a knockout one
  • “During 1961-1962…pianist Red Garland recorded four LPs for the Jazzland label. [T]his trio set with bassist Sam Jones and drummer Charlie Persip…is very much up to par. An enjoyable straight-ahead session.”

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Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Further Out in Mono

More Dave Brubeck

Mono or Stereo? Both Can Be Good

  • With superb Double Plus (A++) sound throughout, this vintage 6-Eye Mono pressing will be very hard to beat – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s extremely unlikely that any mono pressing will win a shootout, but just to keep us on our toes, we like to put some monos of famous albums in our shootouts from time to time to see how they measure up
  • This 2+ early pressing was the best of the bunch, and it’s guaranteed to beat the pants off any modern Heavy Vinyl pressing ever made
  • These sides are Tubey Magical, rich, full-bodied and warm, yet clear, lively and dynamic
  • 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.”
  • Mono or stereo? Both can be good

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 – More Lasting Than Bronze

More of the Music of John Coltrane

  • This superb Prestige Two-Fer offers seriously good sound on all FOUR sides
  • Compiled from two nearly complete Classic Coltrane releases, Lush Life and Coltrane, this collection boasts masterful sound – thanks RVG!
  • Full-bodied, energetic, and tonally correct from top to bottom – these pressings are guaranteed to bring Coltrane’s music to life
  • Regarding the song Lush Life: “Rarely does a single performance uncover the essence of an artist with such aptness. The well-crafted melody is treated above all with dignity, which may be part of the reason it remains flawless.”
  • If you’re a Coltrane fan, these recordings from 1957 surely belong in your collection
  • Another brilliant sounding Two-Fer, proving once again that the right budget reissues can sound dramatically better than anything being pressed these days on vinyl at any price

The jackets for these Two-Fers tend to have some ringwear. We will of course put these two discs in the nicest cover we have available.

This is the kind of recording that makes people revere Rudy Van Gelder. And since he mastered these pressings, we have to give him even more credit for doing the transfer exceptionally well. I am on record as saying that some of his own transfers are problematical. Not this one. Since this has two of Coltrane’s greatest albums together, I can’t recommend this record any more highly.

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Oscar Peterson / The Trio – Live From Chicago

Reviews and Commentaries for the Recordings of Oscar Peterson

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  • Tonally correct from top to bottom and as transparent as any vintage recording you’ve heard, the combination of clarity and Tubey Magic here is hard to beat
  • The Trio, including Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen, are in fine form on these live recordings from the London House in Chicago; if you want to hear one of the great jazz trios at the height of their powers, this is the ticket!
  • “…[Peterson] was generally in peak form during this era. He sticks to standards on this live [album] (a good example of the Trio’s playing), stretching out ‘Sometimes I’m Happy’ creatively for over 11 minutes and uplifting such songs as ‘In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,’ ‘Chicago’ and ‘The Night We Called It a Day.'”
  • If you’re a fan of Oscar’s, this Top Title from 1961 belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1961 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

Peterson really puts on a great show. He’s made an awful lot of records during his career and most of them aren’t especially noteworthy. This album is clearly an exception to that rule. (If You Could See Me Now is another one.)

This pressing was a HUGE step up from the other copies we played in our recent shootout. This killer copy has the immediacy that puts you front and center at The London House for a great jazz show. Ray Brown is his usual incredible self on bass.

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Eric Dolphy – Out There in 2021

More Saxophone Jazz

  • Insanely good sound throughout with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades
  • This copy was doing it all right: rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical yet still super open and spacious
  • “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.” – All Music, 5 Stars

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Cannonball Adderley – African Waltz

More Cannonball Adderley

A Favorite from 1961

  • With a seriously good Double Plus (A++) side one and a side two that’s close to it, this early Black Label stereo pressing has plenty of analog magic in its grooves
  • ALIVE with musical energy, there’s also plenty of space for the players to occupy, a quality vital to this big group’s big sound
  • “The surging, compelling, thoroughly earthy sound of this orchestra, led by CANNONBALL ADDERLEY and including as impressive a roster of jazz stars as has ever been assembled, has already been responsible for a major breakthrough on the musical front… Quickly and enthusiastically accepted by a wide public, it leaped almost overnight into the bestseller category.

Vintage original covers for this album are hard to find in clean shape. Most of them will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG, and it will probably be VG+. If you are picky about your covers please let us know in advance so that we can be sure we have a nice cover for you. (more…)

Gil Evans – Out Of The Cool

More Gil Evans

  • Insanely good Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it throughout
  • 4 stars on Allmusic: “The music here is of a wondrous variety, bookended by two stellar Evans compositions in “La Nevada,” and “Sunken Treasure”… This set is not only brilliant, it’s fun.”

This is an incredibly well-recorded big band jazz album from 1961 with excellent music, and copy like this one gives you WONDERFUL SOUND. We’ve been collecting these for ages trying to get this shootout going, but it’s difficult to find reasonably quiet copies that sound like this!

Both sides have big punchy bass, loads of tubey magic, amazing transparency and lots of space and openness. There’s real depth to the instruments and space around the players, so it’s easy to make sense of everything that happens. The clarity is wonderful as well, and you can clearly hear the transients to the horns.

Big band jazz records are almost always difficult to record and master properly. We’ve struggled through a number of shootouts for large jazz groups and found that most of the time it’s just not worth the trouble. This album is an entirely different story, however. These guys did a great job of capturing all the various instruments and giving them their own sense of space. Peek inside the gatefold cover and you’ll find a key to where each player and microphone was located. On a copy as transparent and open-sounding as this one, you can really get a sense of how everything unfolds, and it’s easy to picture the studio setup as the music plays. (more…)

Cannonball Adderley – Know What I Mean?

More Cannonball Adderley

More Bill Evans

  • This outstanding pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides
  • 1961 recording technology coupled with the mastering chops of the very gifted George Horn results in the top quality sound found here
  • These guys are playing live in the studio and you can really feel their presence on every track — assuming you have a copy that sounds like this one
  • 4 stars: “It’s hard to imagine any fan of mainstream jazz not finding much to love on this very fine recording.”

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