legralegra

Michel Legrand – Legrand Jazz

More of the Music of Michel Legrand

Hot Stamper Pressings of Large Group Jazz Recordings Available Now

  • Legrand Jazz returns to the site for the first time in close to ten years, with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) throughout this vintage 6-Eye Stereo pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are open and spacious with real depth to the soundfield and lots of separation between the various instruments, a very important quality for a recording of a large ensemble recording such as this
  • Rich, solid bass; you-are-there immediacy; energy and drive; instruments that are positively jumping out of the speakers – add it all up and you can see that this copy had the sound we were looking for
  • Legrand rounded up 31 of the greatest jazz players of the 50s, divided them up into three groups, and the result was a landmark recording with audiophile sound to die for
  • We’re talking jazz giants: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Ben Webster, Herbie Mann, Art Farmer, Donald Byrd, Phil Woods — everybody who was anybody is on this record
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Throughout this superlative album, the arrangements are colorful and unusual, making one wish that Legrand had recorded more jazz albums through the years.”
  • Robert Brook recently played the “award winning” Impex 45 RPM pressing from 2019 (as did we) and wants to know what you made of the sound

This album is more common in mono than stereo, but we found the sound of the mono pressing we played seriously wanting. It’s dramatically smaller and more squawky and crude than even the worst of the stereo pressings we played.

We had a copy we liked years ago, but that was years ago. We don’t have that copy anymore and we don’t have a stereo that sounds the way our old one did either.

The unique voices of each of the jazz giants featured on this landmark recording contributes memorable solos then receeds into the group to provide the structure for the rest of the music. Which is an awkward way of saying everybody does his thing in service to the song and then gets out of the way. “The Jitterbug Waltz,” which opens up side one, is a perfect example: the arrangement is completely original, and within its structure, Miles Davis, Phil Woods, John Coltrane and others solo beautifully, each taking a turn at the melody. If three minutes into this song you don’t like what you’re hearing, jazz is just not for you.

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Robert Brook’s Guide to Legrand Jazz on Impex

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Robert tries to remain positive when choosing the words that would best describe the award winning Impex release of Legrand Jazz. In the end he goes with the spoken word over the written one.

Years ago I wrote about how important the Legrand Jazz album was for me in my growth as a critical listener. It’s yet another example of an album that helped make me a better audiophile by showing me the error of my tweaking and tuning ways.

Let’s watch the video and see what Robert has learned about Impex’s recent release.

Legrand Jazz (featuring Miles Davis) – the 2019 IMPEX Double 45 rpm

Michael Fremer gives the Impex pressings an 11 for sound. He writes (bolding added by me):

“This IMPEX reissue is sourced from an “analog mix-down transfer of the original 1958 work tape by Mark Wilder at Battery Studios” and cut by Chris Bellman and Bob Donnelly at Bernie Grundman Mastering on Grundman’s all-tube mastering system. I have a clean, original 6-Eye pressing that this superbly pressed reissue betters in every way. This will make both your stereo and your heart sing. Some of the greatest jazz musicians of that or any era wailing and clearly having a Legrand time. Limited to 3000 copies. Don’t miss it!”

Who are you going to believe, the Self-Appointed Vinyl Experts of the World and Bestowers of Prestigious Audio Awards (which you may have never heard of; I sure hadn’t), or some guy who’s just dedicated to being an Analog Audiophile and knows a good record when he hears one? (Or doesn’t hear one, as the case may be.)

Like Robert, I tried being kinder and gentler, but it didn’t take. I may resolve to try harder in 2024. Then again, I may not. If we’re nicer to the people currently making Heavy Vinyl records, aren’t we running the risk, a la P.J. O’Rourke, of encouraging them?

Various and Sundry

We just finished a shootout for the originals of Legrand Jazz and will be listing them soon.

We’ve also played the Impex pressing and will be discussing its sound at some point.

More on Robert’s system here. You may notice that it has a lot in common with the one we have.

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I Once Fell Into a Common Audiophile Trap – This Album Helped Me Find My Way Out

More Vintage Hot Stamper Pressings on Columbia Available Now

Playback Accuracy Is Key to Audio and Record Collecting

This 2005 commentary discusses how easy it is to be fooled by tweaks that seem to offer more transparency and detail at the expense of weight and heft. Detail is everything to some audiophiles, but detail can be a trap that’s easy to fall into if we do not guard against it.

The brass on this wonderful Six Eye Mono pressing of the album set me straight. [Since that time I have not been able to find mono pressings that sounded as good as I remember this one sounding. That sh*t happens.]

I was playing this record today (5/24/05) after having made some changes in my stereo over the weekend, and I noticed some things didn’t sound quite right. Knowing that this is an exceptionally good sounding record, albeit a very challenging one, I started playing around with the stereo, trying to recapture the sound as I remembered it from the last copy that had come in a few months back.

As I tweaked and untweaked the system around this record, I could hear immediately what was better and what was worse, what was more musical and what was more Hi-Fi. The track I was playing was Night In Tunisia, which has practically every brass instrument known to man, in every combination one can imagine.

Since this is a Mono pressing, I didn’t have to worry about issues like soundstaging, which can be misleading, or perhaps distracting is a better way to describe the problem.

I was concerned with tonality and the overall presentation of the various elements in the recording.

To make a long story short, I ended up undoing all the things that I had done to the system over the weekend! In other words, what improvements I thought I had made turned out not to be improvements at all. And this is the album that showed me the error of my ways.

Brass instruments are some of the most difficult to reproduce, especially brass choirs. You have to get the leading edges so that the instruments have “bite.” You can’t have too much harmonic distortion or smearing, because harmonic distortion and smearing are very obvious on brass instruments.

But the one thing above all that is intolerable when trying to reproduce brass is a lack of weight or heft. There is nothing worse than thin sounding brass. It becomes hard, shrill, sour and altogether unpleasant.

This is another reason why I don’t like small speakers: they have trouble reproducing the weight of brass instruments, in every kind of music, but especially jazz and orchestral music.

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Legrand Jazz – Skip the Mono

More of the Music of Michel Legrand

Hot Stamper Pressings of Large Group Jazz Recordings Available Now

This review is from well over ten years ago.

This album is more common in mono than stereo, but we found the sound of the mono pressing we played seriously wanting. It’s dramatically smaller and more squawky and crude than even the worst of the stereo pressings we played. 

We had a copy we liked years ago, but that was years ago.

We don’t have that copy anymore and we don’t have a stereo that sounds the way our old one did either.

Jazz Giants

Michel Legrand rounded up 31 of the greatest jazz players of the ’50s, divided them up into three groups, and the result was this album, a landmark recording.

We’re talking jazz GIANTS: Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Ben Webster, Herbie Mann, Art Farmer, Donald Byrd, Phil Woods — everybody who was anybody is on this record.

Each of their unique voices contributes memorable solos, then receeds into the group to provide the structure for the rest of the music. Which is an awkward way of saying everybody does his thing in service to the song and then gets out of the way. The Jitterbug Waltz, which opens up side one, is a perfect example: the arrangement is completely original, and within its structure, Miles Davis, Phil Woods, John Coltrane and others solo beautifully, each taking a turn at the melody. If three minutes into this song you don’t like what you’re hearing, jazz is just not for you.

Check out Michel’s After The Rain album if you have a chance. It’s one of my favorite jazz LPs. As I say in the review, it’s pure magic.

A Big Group of Musicians Needs This Kind of Space

One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.

Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.

And most of the time those very special pressings are just plain more involving. When you hear a copy that does all that — a copy like this one — it’s an entirely different listening experience.

Side One

The Jitterbug Waltz

This is one of the best tracks on the album. If this first song doesn’t do it for you, you can save yourself the trouble of playing through the rest of the album.

Nuages
A Night in Tunisia

This is the song I spoke about in my commentary concerning the brass. Four trumpets, two trombones, four saxes, (including Teo Macero on baritone!) and French horn make up the brass contingent, soloing and playing in every combination there is. To back them up we have rhythm, piano and vibes. That’s a lot to get right, and this song will help you distinguish more right from less right.

Blue and Sentimental
Stompin’ at the Savoy
Django

Side Two

Wild Man Blues 
Rosetta 
‘Round Midnight 
Don’t Get Around Much Anymore 
In a Mist

AMG Review

Throughout this superlative album, the arrangements are colorful and unusual, making one wish that Legrand had recorded more jazz albums through the years.