1961-best

Stravinsky – Les Noces / Symphony Of Psalms / Ansermet

More of the Music of Igor Stravinsky

  • Stravinsky’s Les Noces / Symphony of Psalms appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with bold, dynamic, and Tubey Magical Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound throughout this early London pressing – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • These sides are doing practically everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard
  • The sonics here have the power to transport you completely, with solid imaging and a real sense of space, qualities that allow us to forget we are in our listening rooms and not in a concert hall

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Peggy Lee – If You Go

More of the Music of Peggy Lee

  • Outstanding sound throughout, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from first note to last
  • Side two of this vintage Capitol stereo pressing is rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical – we’re talking All Tube Analog from 1961, after all – with wonderfully sweet and breathy vocals, and side one is not far behind in all those areas
  • Both our top copies in the shootout were too noisy to sell, ouch! I doubt if we will be doing this title again, the vinyl is just too noisy on these old Capitol pressings
  • “… the man writing the charts here is Quincy Jones, and he is only occasionally interested in underscoring the heartbreak with suitably sad music… Lee responds to the music with a world-weary tone, but an occasional swing in her step, as if this is not her first romance, nor her first one to go wrong.”

This vintage Capitol pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely begin to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back. (more…)

Ella Fitzgerald – Ella Swings Brightly With Nelson

More of the Music of Ella Fitzgerald

  • A vintage Stereo Verve pressing (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in almost two and a half years) with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish, and pressed on vinyl that’s about as quiet as we can ever hope to find it
  • Remarkably lovely All Tube sound from 1961, with a huge, rich orchestra conducted by the legendary Nelson Riddle
  • Fitzgerald’s performance on this album won her the Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance, her 7th Grammy
  • “The singer has rarely sounded better than during this period. Fitzgerald sticks mostly to familiar standards and is particularly memorable on ‘Don’t Be That Way,’ ‘What Am I Here For,’ ‘I’m Gonna Go Fishin,’ ‘ and ‘I Won’t Dance.'”

Take it from an Ella fan, you can’t go wrong with this one, assuming you can put up with some light crackle underneath the music. The record itself looks exceptionally clean and well-cared for, but it clearly does not play as quietly as we would have hoped.

The sound is rich and full-bodied in the best tradition of a classic vintage jazz vocal album. You could easily demonstrate your stereo with a record this good! The space is HUGE and the sound so rich.

Prodigious amounts of Tubey Magic as well, which is key to the best sounding copies. The sound needs weight, warmth and tubes or you might as well be playing a CD. (more…)

Falla – Three Cornered Hat / Ansermet

More of the Music of Manuel de Falla

  • An early London pressing of Falla’s orchestral spectacular with stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from start to finish, just shy of our Shootout Winner – this copy is a true Demo Disc in the world of vintage classical vinyl
  • 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
  • When you play the best pressings of this title it’s almost hard to believe how well recorded it is – even Billboard in 1961 noted the brilliant sound jumped from their speakers
  • “Anyone interested in theatrical music will know that within a few months the work had earned the category of a ‘classic’ and since then has been placed in the annals of great ballets such as Petrushka and Schéhérazade.”
  • If you’re a fan of delightful orchestral showpieces such as these, Decca’s wonderful recording from 1961 belongs in your collection
  • 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.

This is High Fidelity Audiophile Gold, with bells, drums, voices, trumpets, strings, woodwinds and more, all sounding so real it will take your breath away. The Golden Age tapes have clearly been mastered brilliantly onto this vintage London vinyl.

No doubt you have run into something like this in our classical listings:

This London is energetic, dynamic, spacious, transparent, rich and sweet. James Walker was the producer, Roy Wallace the engineer for these sessions from 1961 in Geneva’s glorious Victoria Hall. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording. 

We were impressed with the fact that this pressing excelled in so many areas of reproduction. The illusion of disappearing speakers is one of the more attractive aspects of the sound here, allowing the listener to inhabit the space of the concert hall in an especially engrossing way.
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Nat “King” Cole – The Nat King Cole Story

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings

  • The Nat King Cole Story debuts on the site with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on FIVE of the six sides of these vintage Stereo Capitol pressings, and solid Double Plus (A++) sound on the sixth
  • Here is the sound we love at Better Records – full-bodied and Tubey Magical, with especially smooth, present vocals
  • Turn down the lights, gently drop the needle at the start of side one and you will soon find a living breathing Nat “King” Cole standing right in front of you
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – “Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup” is pretty much ruined here – but if you can live without that song, this copy is going to blow your mind
  • 4 stars: “The 36 selections mostly focus on his pop successes of the 1950s, although there are a few wistful looks back at his trio days. [T]he remakes…find Cole in peak form and comprise a highly enjoyable retrospective of his vocal career.” -AllMusic

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Chet Atkins – Workshop

More of the Music of Chet Atkins

  • Here is an outstanding copy (one of only a handful to hit the site in years) with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from start to finish
  • Demo Disc quality sound – that is, if what you’re demonstrating is Living Stereo magic at its best
  • Both of these sides boast more of that rich, sweet Bill Porter Tubey Magic that we can’t get enough of here at Better Records
  • 4 stars: “Atkins’ relaxed fingerpicking works the material into a smooth consistency that sometimes belies the complexity of his technique, but the album is an engaging listen and an effortless-sounding intersection of diverse styles.”

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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…)

Rimsky-Korsakov / Scheherazade / Ansermet (Decca)

More of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov

  • Excellent sound throughout this vintage Decca pressing of Ansermet and the Suisse Romande’s superb performance of this dazzlingly symphonic suite, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • 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
  • This copy will go head to head with the hottest Reiner pressing and is guaranteed to blow the doors off of it or your money back
  • The top end is natural and sweet – this is the way the solo violin in the left channel is supposed to sound
  • Extraordinary Demo Disc sound – the brass has weight and energy on that powerful first movement like nothing you’ve ever heard in your life )outside of a live performance)
  • This is the first full price Decca pressing we have ever offered with Hot Stampers — most Decca pressings of this title are awful sounding and it took us a long time to figure out how to find the good ones
  • 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

We did a monster shootout for this music way back in 2014, one we had been planning for more than two years. On hand were quite a few copies of the Reiner on RCA; the Ansermet on London (CS 6212, his second stereo recording, from 1961, not the earlier and noticeably poorer sounding recording from in 1959); the Ormandy on Columbia, and a few others we felt had potential.

The only recordings that held up all the way through — the fourth movement being the Ball Breaker of all time, for both the engineers and musicians — were those by Reiner and Ansermet. This was disappointing considering how much time and money we spent finding, cleaning and playing those ten or so other pressings.

Here it is over a decade later and we’re capitalizing on what we learned from the first big go around, which is simply this: the Ansermet recording on Decca/London can not only hold its own with the Reiner on RCA, but beat it in virtually every area. The presentation and the sound itself are both more relaxed and natural, even when compared to the best RCA pressings.

The emotional content of the first three movements (all of side one) under Ansermet’s direction are clearly superior. The roller coaster excitement Reiner and the CSO bring to the fourth movement cannot be faulted, or equaled. In every other way, Ansermet’s performance is the one for me.

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Frank Sinatra – Ring-A-Ding Ding!

More of the Music of Frank Sinatra

  • Ring-A-Ding Ding! makes its Hot Stamper debut with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout this early Reprise Tri-Color label pressing
  • Exceptionally spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – Frank is right in the room with you on this one
  • The sound here is rich, warm and smooth, with Vintage Analog Tubey Magic to die for
  • “…it set a kind of template for the rest of his ’60s Reprise albums. Instead of following a theme, the record captures the atmosphere of Sinatra in 1961.”

Having done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.). The music is not so much about the details in the recording, but rather in trying to recreate a solid, palpable, real Frank Sinatra singing live in your listening room. The best copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.

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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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