ajf67

This is a nice one. Good pick. I have the LP, but the alternate takes sound intriguing, so there may be another Nessa CD in my future....

I'd be interested to hear what you think of them. I hope you'll share your thoughts when you get them. As I'm always willing to buy jazz LPs, I may have to try some too

I was just at Red Trumpet and saw that Classic Records has put out Moanin' in mono.

I didn't know that. Wow. She rocks. I haven't ever heard anything by her that I haven't enjoyed. Off the subject, but this week I bought the RVG CD "Hustlin'" by Stanley Turrentine and she is on the organ. Nice set. I also love her album she did on Strata East with harold Vick. She also did an album for Prestige of Horace Silver tunes that kills too.

Quite a few good titles on this list. Have you found any info on what the source material is (analog or digital, etc)? This link doesn't seem to say anything about that. I also have not been a great fan of the way my older atlantic original LPs sound. Too many of them have sounded muddy to me. The one that bugs me the most (and isn't on this list) is My Favorite Things, where I think the horn sounds distant or muzzled or something. I have early mono and stereo copies and the same problem occurs. I haven't noticed this with the Ornette Coleman LPs I have, but I'd be interested if others have this same opinion. Great music though.

This is a must have. I'll echo the comments on the Cecil Taylor and Mingus ones too.

The line up for the evening: Sonny Rollins 'The Bridge" Arthur Blythe "Lennox Avenue Breakdown" Ornette Coleman "Friends and Neighbors live at Prince Street" Archie Shepp "Yasmina, A Black Woman"

Classic Records mono re-issue of "Blue Train"

I meant to vote for all the above plus gunfire, but by mistake I clicked on view results instead of voting. In DC we have tons of fireworks and tons of people coming to see the fireworks, although I never go or look at them anymore. I got trapped on the George Washington parkway one year and now I try to be wherever I need to be fairly early before the rucus starts. It rained like crazy this year so I don't even know if the official ones went off as scheduled. In my girlfriend's neighborhood in Columbia Heights it was all the above and gunfire. This morning we had the police violent rime unit truck parked down the street, although that's been common lately so I don't know if it was July 4th related. .

I have the mono Classic Records issue, but not the stereo. I do have a Liberty pressing of the stereo version (without an RVG in the deadwax), and the Classic Records copy is significantly better. The horns sound much more clear, with a great soundstage. I don't have the RVG CD of this, so haven't done any comparisons there. Blue Train isn't a Coltrane that I listen to a lot, so this was a welcome chance to break it out and put it on.

Me too. I have quite a few of these Classic Records re-issues and am pleased with all of them. While I am generally suspicious of many of the LP re-issues that are out there these days, Classic Records isn't one I'm suspicious of, quality-wise. They are analog masters, often in mono and sound great. They are a good way to get these when the originals are super high priced on E-Bay. They have issued some items targeted at collectors, such as blue vinyl editions of Kind of Blue that people have gotten upset about, but I avoid those kind of items anyway so it hasn't affected my experience of them.

Man, I went away for a few days and this thread got interesting! Sorry I missed it. Thanks for the mastering post, Wolff, and to Chuck for your comments also. My two cents, as a listener and someone who knows VERY little about the process of making records: First, I expressed preference for the monos purely because I like the soundstage and the placement of the instruments when I'm listening. To me, it sounds more like a real band in front of me. With stereo, I sometimes find the separation distracting, with drums all the way on one side and the horns coming out of the other. This isn't really a "sound quality" preference, I realize. More of a presentation preference. Second, the thing I look for on Blue Notes is the RVG or Van Gelder in the dead wax. I think the later pressings with RVG in the dead wax all sound really good, even blue label ones that you can pick up cheap. My main comparisons have been to the CD issues I own though, so I can't say if there is much of a sound quality difference between the original issues, first re-issues (NY, USA label) or the later ones. In each case they have beaten the CD re-issues sound-wise. I don't have enough of the same LPs in both W 63rd and NY to make a comparison between the original issue and the first re-issue. Plus, I don't have enough to compare the differences in the dead wax. The one comparison I can make is a copy of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers "A Night In Tunisia." I have a W 63rd deep groove stereo and a NY USA stereo. Both have the same hand-written BST 84049 in the dead wax with RVG STEREO stamped in. The one difference is that the deep groove also has what I have seen referred to as the "ear" -- a little squibbly thing for lack of a better description -- also in the dead wax. I'm listening to the NY copy right now after listening to the W 63rd, and they sound the same to me. This is hardly a scientific comparision, I realize. My system is OK: Music hall MMF-5 turntable, through my Sony receiver's phono soundstage to a pair of old, good sounding Burhoe Accoustics two-way speakers (music-buying keeps getting in the way of equipment upgrades!). Both LPs are in nice shape (if I were to put them on E-Bay I would call them VG+), with no marks, pops or distortion. Just for fun I'll stick in the CD version after this, but I'm guessing it won't go back in the player for a long time! In my LP buying, I have looked mostly for NY USAs, because they aren't as expensive as the W 63rds and I have liked the way they sounded (again, I'm mostly comparing them to the CD re-issues). Anyway, my two cents.

Thanks for the info Dmitry.

Sweet. Haven't heard that one.

I have a bunch of monos (not many W 63rds though) and I think I prefer them in every instance. It seems a shame that just about all the CD, RVG-CD and Mosaic re-issues use the stereo mixes. Classic Records has put out some outstanding-sounding monos, but that's about it. guess the mono masters will just rot in the vaults.

I don't have enough to make a solid comparison either. Sounds like fun though.

I wouldn't update because of this, but I agree it just adds confusion. It was easy to tell the RVGs before, now some of them will be one way and some of them another. Same for the big, red EMI logo. Nobody thinks of these as "EMIs."

I have a few odd ones: "Somethin' Else" W 63rd on one side, New York on the other. Stereo, with the gold sticker on the front. Plus two one-sided deep grooves: "One Flight Up" New York label. "Orgy in Rhythm" W. 63rd

From Chuck: From Claude: If we are going to fix this issue, we are going to have to convince people here that these tapes are more than a piece of property, and that they are parts of our cultural heritage. But, the companies that own them (and probably smaller owners too) are going to resist any added burdens being put on their ownership of master tapes. Plus, with these recordings under private ownership, there is no way to assure their proper treatment. One solution might be to find some way for the owners to want to give them over to an organization whose role it is to watch over these recordings. Recognizing that the current owners are not likely to simply turn tapes over without some compensation, what about creating a foundation to review tapes and recommend their purchase and inclusion in a national music archive? Don't know how this would be created, funded, run, or anything, but I thought it might be something to raise as an idea. Perhaps a group of musiscians that have some public clout could be convinced to advocate for this cause.

Hey Brandon, I just saw this thread or I would have added my two cents sooner. You've gotten good advice from the folks above. I've lived here for 15 years, and in that time the town has changed a TON. A lot of areas, like the outskirts of Capitol Hill where it sounds like you're going, have changed a lot in terms of safety. I think you'll really like it. It's a cool town. There are some good used LP shops. The first I would recommend is Orpheus Records in Arlington. It's right by the Clarendon metro station on the Blue line. Things there are usually in great shape. The prices are a little higher than other stores. Doesn't have much collectible stuff, but tons of titles and a lot of more obscure stuff. Second Story Books in Dupont Circle (20th and P, right near the metro) has some jazz records. Its more hit or miss, but I have made some great purchases there. Their prices are cheaper, and they do get old copies of things, but their overall selection is pretty low. It's mostly a used book store, but their LP focus has been growing. If you have access to a car, check out Joe's Record paradise in Rockville. Big store with great prices. He has all kinds of things there in every genre. Shoot me an email if you have any questions about anything. I'm glad to help a fellow jazz fan. Drew

Chuck, you hit the nail on the head, and I keep coming back to this thread because this is very troubling. I don't know the answer but there has to be one if we want these things to survive, because without a profit motive corporations won't bother.

What kind of a God lets something like this happen...

BruceH Posted on Jun 27 2004, 04:24 PM Oh I disagree. I think the Basie band really swings and Sinatra is in good voice and energized by the crowd. I think the fact that it's a live performance adds extra spark to the tunes. They're sort of "extra-Sinatra-ized" The jokes help too of course...

No kidding. I thought much of the point of these new releases were the unreleased tunes. The other key point being sound of course. Were they tunes from some other sessions that shouldn't have been on the first CD?