Jazz's Transition to CDs

[Milestones]

I was intrigued by CD’s from the start, and I was the first in my immediate environment who brought a CD player.  This was in 1986 or 1987.  I had initially been a big Rock guy, but had already shifted into being a huge jazz fan.  Still, I waited until the Beatles’ records started coming out on the new format.  My first CD was the first Beatles British CD: Please Please Me. I think my first jazz CD was Way Out West; Kind of Blue was among the earliest purchases.  I also happened to be deeply into Classical at that time, so there were a lot of those CD’s in the early days—especially Mozart. 

 

The early CDs were expensive, so at first I built slowly.  I used to do rather well on them at Christmas!  My collection did become very large, especially once there was a lot to choose from at bargain prices.  I rarely buy them nowadays, relying more on downloading and streamlining.  I sometimes get them sat Half Price Books, but they’re not carrying much jazz anymore (actually, you have a better selection of jazz on vinyl at these stores: some old, some new). 

 

To be sure, I like the old LPs—probably for the cover art more than anything.  I still like CDs.  Digital is fine by me, but there are so many contrast to the old days. 

 

[Don Brown]

4 hours ago, sidewinder said:

That was the very store I bought my first CDs - a bunch of Blue Notes (including one of the Elvin Jones ‘Lighthouse’ CDs, when they were released in two volumes - plus a Hilton Ruiz RCA Novus). Hedging my bets, I also bought an Ollie Nelson vinyl that day too - the store still had a vinyl section, sort of like a Custers last stand baracade of racks. 

Those CDs, even with PST, were at the time around half the price they were fetching in Europe. Those days now long gone but during the 1990s it was ‘fill your boots’ time.

That ‘Sam’ store on Yonge was great. When you had finished you could pop next door too to binge at that other store (A&M Sound?).

 

The store two doors north of Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street was called  A & A Records. Actually, A & A had been there first. When Sam's moved from 714 College Street to 333 Yonge Street it was a pretty daring move. There was only Steele's Tavern between Sam's and A & A, which at that time was the biggest record store in Toronto. The competition between the two stores was fierce which certainly benefitted record buyers.

[jeffcrom]

I was a fairly early CD adopter - I bought a CD player after the second major price drop - from $1000 US to $500 to around $250. I think that was about 1986. There was still not many CDs in the stores that interested me. The first two I remember buying were "Sweet Rain" by Stan Getz (made in Germany) and a Japanese "Moanin'" by Blakey - I think the label was JVC rather than Blue Note. But CDs had been around long enough for me to take advantage of the first wave of cutouts - I remember buying some of the early classical Telarcs from the discount racks.

I used that first CD player (a Magnavox?) until it started getting unreliable. Then one day I was playing disc two of the complete Verve Bird set when the disc stopped playing, as had started to happen periodically. Only this time, the motor stopped, but the laser didn't. After about a minute, I smelled something burning. I ran over and ejected the disc, which now had a nice, clean hole burned through it. Back then, you could still actually get people on the phone, even at big corporations. I called Polygram; the person I talked to was horrified, and sent me a replacement disc at no charge.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

heres an early jazz cd that replaces the lp-

 

i have that one too dawg

20 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

I was very, very, VERY reluctant to make the transition and held out for a long time well into the 1990s, spurred both by the fact that early CDs often used to be more expensive here than comparable LPs and offering not that much more music to offset the higher cost and that this coincided with secondhand LPs dropping in price (noticed particularly during my trips to London and its record shops in the 90s) as many seemed to unload their vinyl in favor of CDs. I knew I could not hold out forever and did in fact buy the Bear Family box below as one of my very, very first CD buys long before I got a CD player as this was right up my alley and I KNEW I'd never get this music in any other form, originals being rare and pricy and much of the contents never having been released before. So I decided to grab it while it was available, postponing listening until some time later (little did I imagine that this item remained in print for  very long time):

https://www.discogs.com/de/Various-Deutsches-Jazz-Festival-19541955/release/3829499

I got myself a CD player 2 or 3 years later (1993 or so), finally makng the plunge because the LP racks in the shops kept shrinking fast and more and more reissues in niche fields such as R&B, Jump Blues and Western Swing made their FIRST appearances ever on CD. So it was CDs or none at all. (This also was the time when the Chronological Classics CD series were in full bloom and they were very tempting too.) To this day I still prefer vinyl if I have the choice, though.

 

 

 

more expensive?  that sucks, considering they were making them in Hanover.  

Edited October 27, 2018 by chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez

[sidewinder]

9 hours ago, Don Brown said:

 

The store two doors north of Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street was called  A & A Records. Actually, A & A had been there first. When Sam's moved from 714 College Street to 333 Yonge Street it was a pretty daring move. There was only Steele's Tavern between Sam's and A & A, which at that time was the biggest record store in Toronto. The competition between the two stores was fierce which certainly benefitted record buyers.

Thanks Don - yes that’s the one, A & A Records (A & M Sound stores more of a Western Canadian thing I think, a bit more of a chain). The jazz section in A & A was down steps to a sort of basement level I recall, As you say, intense competition and impossible to pass that stretch of Yonge without emptying the pockets rapidly.

I remember reading an interview with Wayne Shorter in one of those free Toronto music papers which had a photo of him peering into the window of one of those stores.

 

 

Edited October 27, 2018 by sidewinder

[Kevin Bresnahan]

5 hours ago, chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez said:

more expensive?  that sucks, considering they were making them in Hanover.  

Making them in Hanover meant that they had to import them, so yes, they were more expensive. The prices didn't really drop until quite a few pressing plants came on line - supply and demand at work. Also, in those early days, the buyers were mostly audiophiles and the prices reflected that.

It's funny, but the record store I mentioned in that link above, the Capitol Record Shop in Hartford, Connecticut, became a sort of mecca for hard-to-find CDs. I was lucky in that I lived only about an hour from there. I vividly recall one trip there where I bought the first Beatles CD made, "Abbey Road", as well as Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" & "The Wall", Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and quite a few more. I paid big bucks for these discs, as they were only available in Japan at the time. I went there about once a month when they got in their latest shipment. I never understood why they closed as they were always packed when I went there.

[Teasing the Korean]

On October 26, 2018 at 2:50 AM, GA Russell said:

Joe, I had the same experience regarding RCA.  A double LP album of Shorty Rogers recordings called Short Stops was released.  Unfortunately, the CD version did not include the tracks from Side B of Disc 2!

That CD omitted all 12 tunes that had comprised Shorty Courts the Count, and RCA released that title separately.  So at least there was a method to the madness. 

On October 26, 2018 at 9:11 AM, felser said:

TTK, you are correct that the "Compact Jazz" CD series came out before many of the album represented on them had come to CD reissue.  Those "Compact Jazz" CD's were taken from the "Walkman Jazz" cassette series. 

That would make sense.  They would have recently been compiled and re-mastered, so much of the work for the CD had already been done.

20 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

I never really "made the switch" so much as by the time my tastes moved so strongly towards jazz (circa 1989-1994) -- by that point it became *infinitely* easier to find the music I was into on CD, than it would have been to track down on LP. 

I never stopped buying LPs.  CDs were more of a way to complement the LPs.  And because LPS were so incredibly cheap and ubiquitous in the 1990s, vinyl was my main focus.  But I would still buy the occasional CD if the price was right and I could not find it on LP. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

As an LP buyer in the late 70's and through the 80's, I welcomed CDs with open arms. No more paper thin LPs, off center spindle holes, chunks of paper embedded in the vinyl, warble, skips in brand new records, crackles in brand new records... the list went on & on. In the beginning of CD, a lot of people jumped in with both feet. And while I still prefer CD for my listening, I find myself buying more vinyl because many modern CDs have been digitally manipulated to sound like crap.

[John Tapscott]

11 hours ago, sidewinder said:

Thanks Don - yes that’s the one, A & A Records (A & M Sound stores more of a Western Canadian thing I think, a bit more of a chain). The jazz section in A & A was down steps to a sort of basement level I recall, As you say, intense competition and impossible to pass that stretch of Yonge without emptying the pockets rapidly.

I remember reading an interview with Wayne Shorter in one of those free Toronto music papers which had a photo of him peering into the window of one of those stores.

 

 

I remember them both very well. The jazz section was upstairs in Sam's. They generally had rock music playing quite loudly as you came through the door at Sam's (I don't know how the cashiers stood it, actually). If you were a fan of another type of music you quickly made your way to another section of the store. But one day, to my complete surprise, they were playing Bill Evans over the store's main sound system. It sounded so beautiful, not just because it was good, but because it was so unexpected. I just luxuriated in it for a minute or two before hiking upstairs. I can't remember the exact date, but I would guess it would have been in 1980 just after Evans died. 

[medjuck]

16 minutes ago, John Tapscott said:

I remember them both very well. The jazz section was upstairs in Sam's. They generally had rock music playing quite loudly as you came through the door at Sam's (I don't know how the cashiers stood it, actually). If you were a fan of another type of music you quickly made your way to another section of the store. But one day, to my complete surprise, they were playing Bill Evans over the store's main sound system. It sounded so beautiful, not just because it was good, but because it was so unexpected. I just luxuriated in it for a minute or two before hiking upstairs. I can't remember the exact date, but I would guess it would have been in 1980 just after Evans died. 

When I moved to Toronto in 1965 John Norris was in charge of the Jazz Section of Sam's.  That was how I met him. 

[gmonahan]

On 10/26/2018 at 10:25 AM, Rooster_Ties said:

I never really "made the switch" so much as by the time my tastes moved so strongly towards jazz (circa 1989-1994) -- by that point it became *infinitely* easier to find the music I was into on CD, than it would have been to track down on LP.  And especially when I first was getting into jazz in college, because I was limited to occasional weekend trips to St. Louis (or Chicago) - both 3-4 hours away.  The college town I was in was a population of 30,000, and they only sporadically had even one CD or record store (off and on), maybe 2-3 years out of the total of 7 years I lived in that town -- and almost no jazz (no surprise).  Davenport and Peoria were a little better (45 minutes away each), but not lots.

So I went on big spending binges at Tower in Chicago, and Euclid or Vintage Vinyl (for CD's) in St. Louis.  And even Best Buy(!) back then (early 90's) had a surprisingly decent selection of stuff - even a surprising number of Japanese imports even (for big names like Miles, mostly, but some others too).

I can still see the LONG shelf of CD's I had in college and shortly after (maybe 8 feel long?) -- as it turned into two 8-foot rows of CD's, then 3, then 4 -- all in the space of about a year or two.

Yeah, then one entire case, then two, three, now four. Friends say "you should move those onto your computer." I say, just having celebrated my 65th birthday, "that would take me the rest of my life!"

 

 

gregmo

[ghost of miles]

Does anybody else remember the advice that running a green marker around the rim of the CD would enhance its playing quality and/or ensure its longevity?  I never did this, but I could almost swear said advice was printed in the notes for some CDs that I saw early on.

First CD I bought was in late 1992, GRP's 3-CD Complete Count Basie On Decca, because I had just gotten hooked on Basie--in particular, his late-1930s material--and that was the easiest way to acquire a big chunk of it all at once.  

[paul secor]

I bought a CD player in 1986, partly out of curiosity. I think that the first CD I bought was Duke Ellington: All Star Road Band. Around the same time, I picked up some Japanese Riverside and Prestige reissues - The Unique Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners, Sonny Rollins Plus 4. All of these sounded good back then and still do.
That said, there were some terrible sounding CD issues back then. I've gotten rid of those.

[GA Russell]

1) Kevin, years ago I was in the Real Estate department of a retail chain.  It was very common for a store to close at the end of its lease because the location was much more valuable to a business in a different industry (and thus willing to pay much higher rent).  A store closing may have no relation to its sales and profits.

That said, I remember when Atlanta CD closed its stores.  The story I heard was that they decided they could not compete with Walmart.

2) David, I remember well reading about running the green marker around the CD's rim.  It was a hi-fi mag, maybe Stereophile.  The author was apologetic about it, saying that it made no sense, but claimed that "the golden ears" could always correctly tell the difference.

[rdavenport]

I got into jazz in 1993, which coincidentally was when I got my first CD player.

I loved CDs from the start - easier to store and so much more choice if listening to jazz. The only problem was that they were expensive in the UK.

I ditched my turntable in 1996 (since replaced), and gave all my vinyl to my sister (she still has it)

Edited October 28, 2018 by rdavenport

[mikeweil]

10 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

Does anybody else remember the advice that running a green marker around the rim of the CD would enhance its playing quality and/or ensure its longevity?  I never did this, but I could almost swear said advice was printed in the notes for some CDs that I saw early on.

Yes, I do remember, and tried it. The method I stuck with was a cleaning spray. All these methods optimize the optical part of the laser tracking and result in a cleaner signal. But it also depends on your playback equipment and your ears .... my high frequency hearing loss has a greater impact. 

[felser]

2 hours ago, mikeweil said:

 All these methods optimize the optical part of the laser tracking and result in a cleaner signal. But it also depends on your playback equipment and your ears 

So there really was something to the green marker thing?  Always thought it was just a hoax.  I have acquired a few very old used CD's through the years which have green felt/rubbery attachments stuck on them.  An annoyance, but I live with it for those few titles.  Anyways, the 20/24-bit remastering advances seemed to help a lot more than magic markers.  Though some of those early OJC CD's still sound pretty good.  I have a lot of CD titles I have purchased two or three times or even four (Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew) times.

[Scott Dolan]

43 minutes ago, felser said:

So there really was something to the green marker thing?  Always thought it was just a hoax.  I have acquired a few very old used CD's through the years which have green felt/rubbery attachments stuck on them.  An annoyance, but I live with it for those few titles.  Anyways, the 20/24-bit remastering advances seemed to help a lot more than magic markers.  Though some of those early OJC CD's still sound pretty good.  I have a lot of CD titles I have purchased two or three times or even four (Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew) times.

No, there is absolutely nothing to the green marker thing. Grade A snake oil. 

My first experience with CD was the brother of a buddy buying an Onkyo model, and the freshly released Foreignor album, Agent Provocateur. He cranked it up on his Boston Acoustics loudspeakers, and even though I didn’t care much for Foreignor, I was absolutely blown away by the sound! 

It would be another five years before I could afford one for myself, but like gregmo, once I got it I never looked back.

[Teasing the Korean]

A lot of people swear by those early-model CD players.  They show up in thrift stores for next to nothing. 

[mikeweil]

2 hours ago, felser said:

I have acquired a few very old used CD's through the years which have green felt/rubbery attachments stuck on them. 

Some manufacturers put small foam sheets in CD boxes to keep the discs from falling off the jewels. Over the years the foam degrades and sticks to the discs like hell. I have a few opera box sets that fell victim to this. Extremely hard to remove. 

I'd never glue anything to the printed side of a CD!

19 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

A lot of people swear by those early-model CD players.  They show up in thrift stores for next to nothing. 

I think of getting one as an emergency spare. My first Philips DVD player still works flawlessly, and CDs sound great on it, too. The better the hardware is, they longer they will last, and the less reading error correction software they have. A clean digital signal is the main thing about CD playback.

[Teasing the Korean]

30 minutes ago, mikeweil said:

I think of getting one as an emergency spare. My first Philips DVD player still works flawlessly, and CDs sound great on it, too. The better the hardware is, they longer they will last, and the less reading error correction software they have. A clean digital signal is the main thing about CD playback.

My CD player died a few years back, and I ended up using a Blu-Ray player.  It works great, but there is no track readout, so it is practical only for playing CDs top to bottom.  I have to use my laptop if I'm searching for tunes or adding up track lengths.  

[Scott Dolan]

51 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

A lot of people swear by those early-model CD players.  They show up in thrift stores for next to nothing. 

At the time I had nothing significant to compare it to, since I was still listening to “boom boxes” at that point in my life. But it sounded like the cleanest, purest playback I’d ever heard. 

 

2 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

My CD player died a few years back, and I ended up using a Blu-Ray player.  It works great, but there is no track readout, so it is practical only for playing CDs top to bottom.  I have to use my laptop if I'm searching for tunes or adding up track lengths.  

Have you considered setting up something over wi-fi so that you don’t have to use your Blu-ray player? 

[Teasing the Korean]

30 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

Have you considered setting up something over wi-fi so that you don’t have to use your Blu-ray player? 

Not sure how this would work, as I have an old-skool stereo system with cables.  The Blu-Ray player I am using is hooked up to the stereo and not being used for video.  

[Scott Dolan]

7 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Not sure how this would work, as I have an old-skool stereo system with cables.  The Blu-Ray player I am using is hooked up to the stereo and not being used for video.  

 Yeah, I still have cables, too! 

The way mine is setup is that I rip my CDs to my computer in the bedroom using iTunes. That computer is hooked up to the wi-fi router. I have an Apple TV unit in the living room attached to my stereo. I have a remote app on my iPad that then allows me to access my entire library so I can see artists, album art, track numbers and names, etc...

It’s ultra slick, and very convenient. 

[Stonewall15]

To me the greatest invention after the CD is the CD recorder. I have digitized about 500 LPs to CDR. I have worn out 3 CD recorders, 1 Philips and 2 Sonys. Most of these LPs have never been released on CD so my collection includes some rare jazz music.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Stonewall15
correction