1962-best

John Coltrane / Standard Coltrane

More of the Music of John Coltrane

  • You’ll find STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this Prestige recording pressed on fairly quiet OJC vinyl
  • For those of you who want the album with the original track listing exactly as it came out in 1962, with sound that could not be beat, this one’s for you
  • Let’s give Rudy Van Gelder a hand, the tonality on both of these sides is hard to fault
  • “…this set of four tunes catches the saxophonist in four distinct moods. ‘Invitation’ finds him trying some of the ideas that he used so effectively with Thelonious Monk in 1957. One of these was the building of contrasting harmonic lines around a single “home” note. It’s a fascinating musical game in the hands of a jazzman as imaginative Coltrane.” – Downbeat

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The Everly Brothers – The Golden Hits of The Everly Brothers on the Gold Label

More Sixties Pop

  • A killer sounding Gold Label WB Stereo LP with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • Our early pressing here showed us a wonderfully Tubey Magical midrange for the Everlys that we’re pretty sure most audiophiles have never heard
  • So much good material here – “Cathy’s Clown,” “Crying In The Rain,” “So Sad,” “That’s Old Fashioned,” “Lucille,” etc.
  • “There are few sounds in American popular music more thrilling and sublimely satisfying than the harmonies of Don and Phil Everly…”

It took us a long time to find enough records to do this shootout. How many extremely popular 60+ year old records survived into the present era in such clean condition? We can’t be sure when the next shootout will be, but we can be pretty sure it won’t be any time soon.

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Mel Torme – My Kind of Music

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings

  • Here is an original Stereo Verve pressing (and only the second copy to ever hit the site) with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish
  • Remarkably spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – the Velvet Fog is right in the room with you on this one
  • The reproduction of Torme’s voice is exactly what you would expect from a Hot Stamper – he sounds rich, smooth, tonally correct and above all real
  • “The mellow arrangements…wrapped Tormé in soft strings, but also allowed for many individual voices, including guitar and trumpet. It’s a style of arranging that perfectly suited Tormé’s growing inclination toward breezy, contemplative adult-pop during the 60s.”

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Herbie Hancock – Takin’ Off

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) grades from first note to last, this 70s Blue Note reissue is doing just about everything right – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Once again Rudy Van Gelder delivers the sound that audiophiles and jazz fans alike thrill to
  • These sides are lively, dynamic and full-bodied, and there’s real weight to the piano, always critically important to the piano recordings we play
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear how excellent sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting stitches and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…Takin’ Off is an exceptional first effort, laying the groundwork for Hancock to begin pushing the boundaries of hard bop on his next several records.”

I just learned the secret to getting this one to sound right, and I am happy to share it with you. Turn it up! When you get some volume going, the musicians really come to life on this album. It may sound crazy, but you need to play this one as loud as you would play your average rock record.

Billy Higgins whacks the hell out of his snare on the second track on side one. He really goes to town on that thing. Imagine you are sitting twenty feet from him in a jazz club; it would be plenty loud, right? Now find the equivalent volume setting on your preamp, drop the needle and get ready to feel the music, the way you would feel it if you were in that club.

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Gershwin – Concerto In F / Cuban Overture / Wild / Fiedler

More of the Music of George Gershwin

  • Both sides of this original Shaded Dog pressing were giving us the big and bold Living Stereo sound we were looking for on these wonderful orchestral pieces, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • 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
  • If you love the sound of a big bass drum, the Concerto in F is the work for you, and the engineers know how to capture both the bass and the space surrounding it
  • The rich, textured sheen of the strings that Living Stereo made possible in the 50s and early 60s is clearly evident throughout these pieces, something that the Heavy Vinyl crowd will never experience, because that sound just does not exist on modern repressings
  • Everything that is wrong with the low-res Classic reissue – boosted mids, strings lacking in texture and sheen, etc. – is nowhere to be found on these superb sides, overflowing with Living Stereo Tubey Magic from 1962
  • This is yet another Must Own orchestral recording from 1962
  • For a more complete list, the highest quality recordings of piano concertos that we’ve auditioned to date can be found here

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Debussy – La Mer / Ansermet

More of the music of Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

  • A vintage Decca import pressing of these wonderful orchestral pieces that was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades
  • La Mer is on side one and it is lovely – rich and sweet, tonally correct, dynamic, and extended on the top and the bottom
  • Two other major works found on this compilation are Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Clair De Lune
  • The richness of the strings is displayed here beautifully for fans of the classical Golden Age – it’s practically impossible to hear that kind of string sound on any recording made in the last thirty years
  •  When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from 1972, but that’s precisely what it is. Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts

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Henry Mancini / Hatari!

More Soundtrack Recordings of Interest

  • An original Living Stereo pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both of these TAS-approved sides
  • This side two is wonderfully relaxed, natural, and musical, with a remarkably sweet top end, and side one is not far behind in all those areas
  • The brass is breathy with a nice bite, avoiding most of the blare-y quality we heard on so many other pressings (particularly on side two)
  • And you’re not going to believe all the ambience surrounding this room full of musicians, especially on the drums (also particularly on side two) – we love that sound

“Baby Elephant Walk” is of course the track everyone knows, and just wait until you hear how breathy the calliope is here. When the piccolos come in watch out! There is more high frequency information on this album from the woodwinds alone than from all the instruments on 99 out of 100 other records. (A tough tracking test if ever there was one!)

High Fidelity

What do we love about these Living Stereo Hot Stamper pressings? The timbre of every instrument is “Hi-Fi” in the best sense of the word. The instruments here are reproduced with remarkable fidelity. Now that’s what I call Hi-Fi, not the kind of audiophile phony BS sound that passes for Hi-Fidelity these days. There’s no boosted top, there’s no bloated bottom, there’s no sucked-out midrange. There’s no added digital reverb (Patricia Barber, Diana Krall, et al.). The microphones are not fifty feet away from the musicians (Water Lily) nor are they inches away (Three Blind Mice).

This is Hi-Fidelity for those who recognize the real thing when they hear it. I’m pretty sure our customers do, and any of you out there who pick this one up should get a real kick out of it!

Hard to Find?

Not really; they made loads of these back in the day. But so many just don’t sound good. As we so often say about famous TAS list records like this, playing the average copy would make you think that Harry must have been smoking something when he nominated Hatari to be a Super Disc.

And we have to defend him when a copy like this comes along that really is a Super Disc. (Well, sort of. It’s a great sounding record. Super Disc I’m not so sure about.)

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Strauss / Also Sprach Zarathustra / Reiner

More of the Music of Richard Strauss

  • An early Shaded Dog pressing of this wonderful classical Masterpiece with superb Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • 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
  • The vibrant colors of the orchestra are captured brilliantly in All Tube Analog by the RCA engineers, creating an immersive and engrossing listening experience for the work without equal in our experience
  • There is plenty on offer for the discriminating audiophile, with the spaciousness, clarity, tonality and freedom from artificiality that are hallmarks of the best Living Stereo recordings
  • “Reiner’s close familiarity with the score and personal relationship with Strauss himself add extra weight to the authority and importance of his interpretation of Also sprach Zarathustra.”

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Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd – Jazz Samba

More Stan Getz

More Charlie Byrd

  • An outstanding copy of Jazz Samba (only the second to hit the site in over four years) with Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last – fairly (and unusually) quiet vinyl too
  • Remarkably spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a solid step up over most of the other pressings we played in our recent shootout
  • No other copy outside of our Shootout Winner earned a better grade than 2+ on either side, and some of the originals were godawful (watch for the “wrong” stampers coming to the blog soon)
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear how excellent sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting stitches and just be swept away by the music
  • If you can find a quiet copy of this album with top quality sound more than once every five years, congratulations, because we sure can’t
  • 5 stars: “[Jazz Samba] was the true beginning of the Bossa Nova craze, and introduced several standards of the genre… But above all, Jazz Samba stands on its own artistic merit as a shimmering, graceful collection that’s as subtly advanced – in harmony and rhythm – as it is beautiful.

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Mozart / Piano Concerto No. 17 and No. 21 – Anda

More of the Music of Wofgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

  • This vintage Large Tulip label copy of these classical masterpieces boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • Spacious, three-dimensional and real beyond practically any DG recording you’ve heard – you hear into the soundstage on this record like you will not believe
  • 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
  • “Mozart’s piano concertos are filled with assured transition passages, modulations, dissonances, Neapolitan relationships and suspensions. Today, at least three of these works (nos 20, 21 and 23) are among the most recorded and popular classical works in the repertoire…”

The string tone here is especially rich and sweet, yet full of texture and that lovely rosiny quality that vintage pressings capture so well. (Sometimes capture so well. We’ve played plenty of copies with a smeary quality that robs the strings of their lovely sheen.)

The piano is beautifully recorded as well. Geza Anda’s performance is hard to fault here. You will have a very hard time finding better recordings of these Mozart piano concertos, of that we have no doubt. (more…)