david-turner

Miles Davis – Green Haze (‘The Musings of Miles’ and ‘Miles’)

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • Boasting excellent Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on all FOUR sides, these vintage Mono pressings are doing just about everything right – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience – talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny
  • This Prestige Two-Fer simply combines two complete Miles Davis titles recorded by Rudy Van Gelder in 1955 – ‘The Musings of Miles’ and ‘Miles’
  • The 1976 transfers of tape to disc by David Turner are superb in all respects – this is remastering done right
  • 4 stars: “… it is for the excellent rhythm sections and the playing of Miles Davis that this two-fer is highly recommended.”
  • If you’re a fan of Miles, this All Tube MONO Recording from 1955 belongs in your collection.

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. (more…)

Sonny Rollins – Taking Care Of Business (Work Time, Tenor Madness and Tour de Force)

More of the Music of Sonny Rollins

  • Taking Care Of Business returns to the site for only the second time in close to two and a half years, here with roughly Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades all FOUR sides of these vintage Prestige pressings – just shy of our Shootout Winner (side three actually won the shootout)
  • The complete Tenor Madness album is found here, with big, full-bodied, MONO jazz sound at its best, courtesy of the great one, Rudy Van Gelder
  • This is what classic 50s jazz is supposed to sound like – they knew how to do these kinds of records 70+ years ago, and those mastering skills are in short supply nowadays, if not downright extinct
  • The transfers from 1978 by David Turner are in tune with the sound of these recordings – there’s not a trace of phony EQ on this entire record
  • “Tenor Madness was the recording that, once and for all, established Newk as one of the premier tenor saxophonists, an accolade that in retrospect, has continued through six full decades and gives an indication why a young Rollins was so well liked, as his fluency, whimsical nature, and solid construct of melodies and solos gave him the title of the next Coleman Hawkins or Lester Young of mainstream jazz.”

This Two-Fer includes all of Tenor Madness and most of Work Time and Tour De Force.

Top jazz players such as Ray Bryant, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Kenny Drew, Max Roach and Paul Chambers can be heard on the album.

If you want all the tubey magic of the earlier pressings, a top quality pressing of the real Tenor Madness album on Prestige is going to give you more of that sound. David Turner’s mastering setup in the 70s has a healthy dose of tubes, but it can’t compete in that area with the All Tube cutting systems that were making records in the 50s and 60s.

Without one of those early pressing around to compare, we don’t think you’re going to feel you are missing out on anything in the sound with this killer copy.

And where can you find an early Prestige pressing with audiophile playing surfaces like these?

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We Was Wrong about Saxophone Colossus and More in 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sonny Rollins Available Now

The album is a compilation of three major sessions from 1956, all with both Sonny Rollins and Max Roach. Allmusic describes it this way:

“Saxophone Colossus, the album that really made the jazz public fully aware of the majestic talents of Sonny Rollins, is combined here with seven other great performances from the same highly creative period in the long career of this major artist.”

In 2010 we thought this two-fer had very good sound for the music it contained. Here is what we had to say all those years ago:

This Prestige Two-Fer Double LP has FOUR GREAT SIDES with each rating an A+ or better. The standout sides here are two and four, both rating an A++. Both sides are EXCELLENT and very lively with lots of energy and presence. Side one rates an A+ and has a wonderfully extended top end and side three rates an A+ – A++ with clean and clear sound and huge breathy horns.

Well, it turns out that in 2010 we had a lot to learn.

We were about to do a shootout for Saxophone Colossus about five [make that ten or more] years ago, and we decided to pull out some of the two-fer pressings we had sitting in the backroom to see how they would hold up against the early pressings we liked, which you can read about here.

It did not go well. The album sounded like a cheap reissue, which of course it is, but many cheap reissues sound great, so we never hold the price of the record against it when deciding whether or not it is worth cleaning and auditioning.

There are scores of budget jazz reissues from the 70s and 80s that sound great, some of them two-fer pressings.

Just not this one. It’s passable at best, and a very far cry from what the best pressings can sound like.

More on Saxophone Colossus

Our last White Hot Stamper Gold Label Mono pressing went for big bucks, 900 of them in fact.

Of course, a clean original goes for many times that, which is one reason you have never seen such a record on our site.

How much would we have to charge for a Hot Stamper pressing of an album we paid many thousands of dollars for? Far more than our customers would be willing to pay us, that’s for sure.

You Say You Don’t Have Nine Hundred Bucks for This Album?

Try the DCC pressing from 1995.

The DCC Heavy Vinyl pressing is probably a nice record. I haven’t played it in many years, but I remember liking it back in the day.

It’s dramatically better than the 80s OJC, which, like many OJC pressings, is thin, hard, tizzy up top and devoid of Tubey Magic.

I would be surprised if the DCC Gold CD isn’t even better than their vinyl pressing.

They usually are.

Steve Hoffmann brilliantly mastered many classic albums for DCC. I like DCC’s CDs much better than their records.

Their records did not have to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system, a subject we discussed in some depth here.

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Art Pepper / Art Pepper Today

More Art Pepper

  • Outstanding sound throughout this original Galaxy pressing, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • It has more presence, space, clarity and top end extension than most of what we played in our recent shootout
  • Big, rich and full-bodied sound was not that easy to find on the album, but this copy had plenty of all three
  • 4 stars: “Altoist Art Pepper, in the midst of a successful comeback, recorded this excellent set for Galaxy. With pianist Stanley Cowell, bassist Cecil McBee, and drummer Roy Haynes, Pepper performs a definitive version of his intense ballad ‘Patricia.’ Other highlights include ‘Miss Who,’ ‘Lover Come Back to Me’ and ‘Chris’ Blues.'”

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John Coltrane – On A Misty Night

More John Coltrane

  • This wonderful double album reissue from 1978 (only the second copy to ever hit the site) boasts roughly Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) MONO sound on all FOUR sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner (side three actually won the shootout)
  • Includes the complete 1957 albums Tenor Conclave with Hank Mobley, Al Cohn, and Zoot Sims, and Mating Call with Tadd Dameron
  • Exceptionally spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied (thanks, RVG!) – these pressings were a big step up over practically every other copy we played
  • The transfers from 1978 by David Turner are in tune with the sound of these recordings – there’s not a trace of phony EQ on any of these four sides
  • 4 stars: “…the title piece, “On a Misty Night” [is] a lovely excursion that provides Coltrane the chance to let loose with his trademark lyrical phrasing. One need only hear the sweet and sinuous opening to realize the presence of true genius.”

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Thelonious Monk – In Person

More of the Music of Thelonious Monk

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Albums Available Now


  • In Person returns to the site with solid Double Plus (A++) sound on all FOUR sides of these vintage Milestone pressings – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Unusually rich, full-bodied, lively and present sound which brings out the best in this music
  • Features incomparable jazz greats Donald Byrd and Joe Gordon
  • The 1976 transfers of tape to disc by David Turner are superb in all respects – remastering is not a dirty word when it sounds like this
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The first half of In Person contains the pianist/composer’s famous Town Hall concert of 1959… The second half of this two-fer finds Monk leading a strong sextet with trumpeter Joe Gordon and tenors Rouse and Harold Land live…”

The Riverside pressings we’ve auditioned of both The Thelonious Monk Orchestra – At Town Hall and Thelonious Monk Quartet Plus Two – At The Blackhawk were just awful sounding. The OJC reissues from the ’80s, although better, were not overflowing with the rich, natural, relaxed sound we were looking for either.

Ah, but a few years back we happened to drop the needle on one of these good Milestone Two-Fers. Here was the sound we were looking for and had had so little luck in finding.

Which prompts the question that should be on the mind of every audiophile:

What are the rules for collecting records with the best sound quality?

The answer, of course, is that there are no such rules and never will be.

There is only trial and error. Our full-time staff has been running trials — we call them shootouts and needle drops — for decades, with far more errors than successes. Such is the nature of records. It may be a tautology to note that the average record has mediocre sound, but it nevertheless pays to keep this inconvenient fact in mind.

Even worse, if you make the mistake of pinning your audiophile hopes on a current reissue — and you have reasonably high standards and two working ears — your disappointment is almost guaranteed.

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John Coltrane – The Stardust Session

  • A stunning copy of this Coltrane double album – recorded in one day! – with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on all FOUR sides – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Spacious, open, transparent, rich and sweet, it’s a remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Jazz with the benefits brought about by lower-distortion, wider-bandwidth cutting equipment in the 70s
  • Superb sound quality courtesy of Rudy Van Gelder‘s engineering (1958/1963) and the superior mastering of David Turner (1972)
  • 4 Stars: “…Coltrane is heard near the end of his ‘sheets of sound’ period, perfecting his distinctive style and taking colorful and aggressive solos.”

These records take their material from three John Coltrane albums: “Bahia,” “Stardust” and “Standard Coltrane.” We would be surprised if the originals of any of them can beat the sound of this reissue.

Note that the complete Standard Coltrane can be found on these four sides, along with a substantial portion of the other two Coltrane albums listed above.

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John Coltrane – More Lasting Than Bronze

More 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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Illinois Jacquet / How High the Moon – A Killer Two-Fer Thanks to David Turner

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

More Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder

  • This superb Prestige Two-Fer boasts Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on side two and outstanding double plus (A++) sound on the other three
  • Compiled from four Jacquet albums released in 1968 and 1969, including favorites like “Bottoms Up,”The Blues; That’s Me”, and “The King”
  • Jacquet’s one of the creators of the big, soulful tenor sax sound – I know of no one who does it better 
  • “… a fine sampler to Jacquet’s music… it features Illinois in a variety of settings (ranging from a quartet to a mini-big band)…”

The album combines material from four different Illinois Jacquet albums (Bottoms Up, The King, The Soul Explosion, and The Blues; That’s Me!). The sound is AMAZING and Jacquet plays with wonderful emotion and skill throughout.

Check out the man’s bassoon playing on ‘Round Midnight, the last track on side four — now there’s a sound you don’t hear too often on a jazz record!

As a bonus, they selected only about half the material from each of these classic albums, turning over to each of them about one side of these two discs. Which simply means that the quality and variety are consistently high on all four of these sides. No unreleased material or alternate takes; in other words, no filler. (more…)

What Are Some Good General Rules for Acquiring Records with the Highest Quality Sound?

More Entries from Tom’s Audiophile Notebook

The Riverside pressings we’ve auditioned of both The Thelonious Monk Orchestra – At Town Hall and Thelonious Monk Quartet Plus Two – At The Blackhawk were just awful sounding.

The OJC reissues of both albums from the 80s, although better, were not overflowing with the rich, natural, relaxed analog sound we were looking for either.

Ah, but a few years back (2015, maybe?) we happened to drop the needle on one of these Monk Milestone Two-Fers. Here was the sound we were looking for and had had so little luck finding until then.

Which prompts the question that should be on the mind of every audiophile:

What are the rules for collecting records with the best sound quality?

The answer, of course, is that there are no such rules and there never will be.

There is only trial and error. Our full-time staff has been running trials — we call them shootouts and needle drops — for more than twenty years now, with far more errors than successes. Such is the nature of records.

It may be a tautology to note that the average record has mediocre sound, but it nevertheless pays to keep that undeniable fact in mind.

Even worse, if you make the mistake of pinning your hopes on a current Heavy Vinyl reissue — and you happen to be a member of that blessed minority of audiophiles with top quality equipment; a dedicated, heavily-treated room; decades of experience; reasonably high standards and well-trained ears — your disappointment is almost assured.