raittbest

Bonnie Raitt – Nick Of Time

More of the Music of Bonnie Raitt

  • Incredible sound for Bonnie’s 1989 Masterpiece, with both sides of this original copy earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • There was a time when these Capitol pressings were sitting in the bins all over town, but those days are gone, my friend
  • Some of the sweetest, richest, most analog sound we’ve heard from any record Don Was produced – “Have A Heart” is a Demo Disc quality track
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Producer Don Was used Raitt’s classic early-70s records as a blueprint, choosing to update the sound with a smooth, professional production and a batch of excellent contemporary songs. In this context, Raitt flourishes; she never rocks too hard, but there is grit to her singing and playing, even when the surfaces are clean and inviting. A great comeback album that made for a great story.”
  • Yes, the sound is heavily processed, with the kind of gloss that we’ve come to expect from Don Was, but these qualities take nothing away from the consistently high quality of the songwriting and production
  • If you like the vintage smooth sound of this album, there are plenty of Hot Stamper pressings currently available that offer it

The sound here is powerfully big and bold, with meaty, deep bass (such a big part of the rockers here, “Thing Called Love” being a prime example).

When you hear it like this — something probably pretty close to what he heard during the control room playback for the final mix — it actually makes sense. It works. It’s not exactly “natural,” but natural is not what they were going for, now is it?

We play albums like this very loud. I’ve seen Bonnie Raitt live a number of times, and although I can’t begin to get her to play as loud in my listening room as she did on stage, I can try. To do less is to do her music a profound disservice.

(more…)

Bonnie Raitt / Self-Titled – Our Shootout Winner (with Liner Notes)

More Bonnie Raitt

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Bonnie Raitt

The average Green Label Warner Bros. copy we played was lackluster to say the least.

The words on some of my notes read flat, veiled, dry, dark, edgy.

[Many years later we would characterize the above shortcomings as the Warner Bros. House Sound.]

None too promising, but we persevered and found a good one.

The reissues we heard tended to be modern and thin. Definitely not our sound. 

Bonnie Raitt fans take note: This album did not sell well. It appears that it never even charted, which means that original copies are hard to come by.

On top of that, clean ones tend to be expensive and prices are climbing.

With those things considered, it is unlikely we would ever do this shootout again.

Side One

A++. By track two the sound is rich and solid, yet clear. Lovely Tubey Magic and an unprocessed live quality make this one sound about as right as it’s going to get. The drums are especially real sounding, with little in the way of EQ and compression (not that those are bad things).

The rich piano and vocals on track three seal the deal — It’s Super Hot.

Note that the first track, a cover of Bluebird, was a bad idea from the start. The sour sound did it no favors either.

Side Two

A++. Yes, it’s a dead room, but on the best pressings there is still ambience and space to be heard. 

The vocals, often edgy on other copies, were not edgy here. The sound is rich and clear, the ideal combination.

Based on what were the winners of this shootout, this album should sound better this way:

For those of you who might be interested in finding their own Hot Stamper pressings of other titles, we here provide more moderately helpful title specific advice.

(more…)

Bonnie Raitt – Home Plate

More Bonnie Raitt

More Women Who Rock

  • An outstanding copy of Home Plate with Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Sound this good means you’re probably hearing the album better than they did when they played back the master tape in the control room — studio monitors being what they are
  • Since this is one of my three favorite Bonnie Raitt albums — the others being Sweet Forgiveness and Nine Lives — and quite possibly the best sounding album she ever made, it goes without saying that this is THE Must Own Bonnie Raitt Hot Stamper Pressing of All Time
  • “. . . a wonderful hybrid of American music, built on a thoroughly impressive set of songs, all delivered with Raitt’s warm, expertly shaded, and undeniably sexy singing.”

Another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume. This is a classic case of a record that really starts to work when the levels are up. It’s so free from distortion and phony processing it wants to be played loud, and that’s the level this music works at. It’s the level it was no doubt mixed at, and that mix sounds pretty flat at moderate levels. If you want to hear the real rockin’ Bonnie Raitt you gots to turn it up!

Like a lot of the best recordings from the mid-’70s, the production and recording quality are clean and clear, and we mean that in a good way. There is very little processing to the sound of anything here; drums sound like drums, guitars like guitars, and Bonnie sings without the aid of autotuning — because she can sing on-key, and beautifully. Her vocals kill on every song. (Her dad had a pretty good set of pipes too.)

Click here to see more of our favorite Rock and Pop records with relatively unprocessed sound.

(more…)

Bonnie Raitt – Luck of the Draw

More Bonnie Raitt

More Women Who Rock

  • This import pressing will blow the doors off any other Luck Of The Draw you’ve heard with superb sound from start to finish
  • Amazingly open and transparent, with tons of energy and real immediacy to Bonnie’s wonderfully breathy vocals
  • This copy had more ANALOG qualities than most others in our recent shootout, which tended to have that digital / sterile sound that ruins so many albums from the era
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…Luck of the Draw is an unqualified success, filled with strong songs — including the hits ‘Something to Talk About’ and ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me,’ plus the Delbert McClinton duet ‘Good Man, Good Woman’ — appealing productions, and just enough dirt to make old-school fans feel at home.”

(more…)

Bonnie Raitt / Sweet Forgiveness – One of Her Two Best from the 70s

More Bonnie Raitt

Reviews and Commentaries for Bonnie Raitt’s Albums

  • Full-bodied and warm, with harmonically rich guitars as well as real immediacy to Bonnie’s heartfelt vocals, this is the classic sound of Seventies Rock
  • The sound is big, bold, clear, rich and dynamic, which wouldn’t mean anything if the music weren’t good, but this actually happens to be Bonnie’s best album in our opinion, with Home Plate a close runner-up

I learned recently that John Haeny is one of the two engineers on this album, which goes a long way toward explaining the excellent ’70s analog sound. He worked on The Pretender, Don’t Cry Now, and many of the early and quite wonderful sounding albums Judy Collins did for Elektra in the earlier part of the decade. This guy knows sound.

(A good copy of The Pretender is an amazing Demo Disc that will put 99% of all the rock records you’ve ever played to shame. But the truly Hot Stamper pressings are few and far between, so most audiophiles have no idea how well recorded that album is.) (more…)

Bonnie Raitt / Streetlights – Our Shootout Winner from 2013

More Bonnie Raitt

Reviews and Commentaries for Bonnie Raitt’s Albums

xxxxx

Our first Hot Stamper shootout for Bonnie Raitt’s classic fourth album yielded a surprisingly good copy, this one, with practically unbeatable (nearly) White Hot Stamper sound on side two, backed with a Super Hot side one that easily put most of the other copies we played to shame. The first three songs on side one — That Song About the Midway, Rainy Day Man, Angel from Montgomery — represent some of the strongest material Bonnie ever got to work with, and they alone would serve to qualify this as a Must Own Bonnie Raitt album.  (more…)

Bonnie Raitt / The Glow – Our Shootout Winner from 2012

More of the Music of Bonnie Raitt

After a nearly two year hiatus, finally, a Top Copy makes it to the site. Side one here is nearly White Hot (A++ to A+++), which means it finished just a half step behind our shootout winner. It’s got that big, rich, solid ANALOG Val Garay (James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt) sound that we go crazy for here at Better Records (where the records are still made from analog tapes, even if it’s only because there aren’t any other kind to make them from!).

And side two is nearly as good, earning Two big Pluses for itself for Bonnie’s-in-the-room-with-you presence and huge Disappearing-Speaker-Effect presentation. It may not have all the space within the soundstage as the best we played. but it’s as wide and as tall as any. Either way, it certainly is impressive. On big speakers, you are there.

The Glow’s best material can be found in the deeper cuts — I would point potential listeners in the direction of Your Good Thing (Is About to End) on side one — with an amazing sax solo (he holds the patent in perpetuity) courtesy of David Sanborn, and (Goin’) Wild for You Baby at the end of side two. Once you get past the more radio-friendly lead-off tracks on both sides, the quality of the writing and performing improve markedly. (more…)