Kevin Bresnahan

The Classic DAD of "Lou Takes Off" is one of the few Classics DAD discs that I liked more than the TOCJ CD. BTW, these DAD discs will play in any modern DVD player. The only DVD players that balk at it are first-generation players without 24 bit/96 kHz DACs.

Just finished: Tommy Flanagan - Nights At The Vanguard (Uptown). Boy, I wish that there was a "Complete Nights At The Vanguard". Two nights of recording should have resulted in some more great stuff. Now spinning: Mulgrew Miller - The Countdown (Landmark). Looks like a promo that someone got, opened and never played. Joe Henderson, Miller, Ron Carter and Tony Williams - what more needs to be said about this one?

Wait a minute. There are only about 150 titles on the first two lists combined. Are you saying there will be another 150 or so in early 2009? I don't know what time frame the 300 titles came from, it's just a number that Michael Cuscuna told me yesterday. It may include stuff that has already been deleted. I'm sure that if more titles get deleted, True Blue will let us know. Kevin

The other side of the deletion binge is the one we all want to avoid - what about future reissues? My guess is we may soon see the end of the CD reissue program. I wonder if these deletions are why Blue Note suddenly decided to license a whole bunch of classic titles to Analogue Productions for release on hybrid SACD?

In case anyone's interested in how these titles were chosen, I was told that some outside accounting firm was called in to choose the titles for deletion. The Jazz people were not consulted which is why some of the cuts seem so odd. I imagine the reason the latest RVG releases are meeting an early death is because they were released during the CD sales decline and at a time when the EU releases had copy control, making a lot of buyers opt out. With no sales history going back to the "good ol' days", they must look like anemic sellers. All told it look like they're dropping almost 300 titles, but there will still be almost 700 titles in print. On the bright side , at least Jazz isn't suffering as much as Classical. The cuts there are in the thousands. Kevin

I knew this was coming but it's still a shock to see it. All those Lee Morgan titles? Ouch. When all this is done, what *is* in print will likely be a very small list. I wonder if Amazon's "on demand" program is about to expand? Kevin

Ditto! I was psyched to open this thread and see "Roulette". These Columbia dates are easy to find on vinyl. Bobby Watson's Roulette dates are also MIA (and much harder to find on vinyl).

This story just proves that French men are the biggest *liars*.

Tweeter is going out of business and I stopped into the Salem, NH store yesterday to say goodbye to a few of the salesmen I've dealt with over the years. On my way out, I saw a Pro-Ject Debut III sitting all alone just begging to be looked at. It was missing a power supply and the anti-skate weight so I asked them how low they would go. I got it for $150. Once I get it going, it's going to replace my Denon DP-29F on my 3rd system. I might take the Denon into work and set it up on a PC in the lab.

A fool and his (or her) money are soon parted. If it sounds too good to be true, it isn't. A sucker is born every minute. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. All of these sayings and many more, all with the same general theme, are drilled into our psyche from a very young age. Clearly, this woman is an absolute idiot.

Wrong. These were cut from the masters by Ron McMaster at Capitol Mastering a few months back. It sure seems like people just like to bitch. "Blue Note stopped making LPs! Waah." "Blue Note is making LPs again! Bah." Make up your minds. These are Blue Note's best selling titles. If they want to find out what the LP market's like, these are the titles to use. If these can't sell, there's no way they're cutting a Tyrone Washington date. Kevin

A few years back, I picked up a sealed LP of Jerry Bergonzi's "Front End" on Bruce Gertz's Not Fat Records label. It's trio date with Jerry Bergonzi, Bruce Gertz and Bob Gulloti. Great stuff. Last week, I saw Bergonzi and Gertz at a local club and I asked Bruce if he had any more stock of the Not Fat Records LPs since there were 5 other titles I was interested in. He got back to me yesterday. He had all 5! So I ordered: Con Brio - Con Brio (Not Fat Records 01-22) Gonz - Uranian Undertow (Not Fat Records 02-22) Jerry Bergonzi Quartet - Featuring Bruce Gertz (Not Fat Records 03-22) Con Brio - The Ray (Not Fat Records 04-22) Gonz - Caught in the Act! (Not Fat Records 06-22) All delivered new to my door for under $90. I can't wait to hear them. BTW, I would E-mail Bruce through his "Contact" E-mail rather than use those PayPal links. The PayPal links don't discount shipping for multiple LPs and if you click on a title with LP & cassette, it defaults to cassette.

I left years ago, don't miss and never going back as long as Mike Ricci is running the place. The guy's a jerk.

Just spinning Gonz's "Front End" on Not Fat Records. Gonz is Jerry Bergonzi, Bruce Gertz and Bob Gullotti. The only bad thing about this record is that it has me wishing I had the other Not Fat Records recordings by Gonz.

I just got an E-mail from AUM Fidelity that they are offering William Parker's latest recording "Petit Oiseau" in a 2 LP set. Only 500 copies will be pressed. After about 10 minutes ago, there are only 499. BTW, the band on this date: William Parker - bass, cedar flute; Hamid Drake - drums, balafon & frame drum; Rob Brown - alto saxophone, B-flat clarinet and Lewis Barnes - trumpet, is the group that made "O'Neal's Porch" one of my favorite recordings of 2001. The link: http://www.aumfidelity.com/aum050-LP.html Kevin

The only person who might know is Cuscuna. "Blue Note" the company, just went through a rather large workforce reduction. I don't know if anyone is even technically working for Blue Note any more.

I thought I read somewhere that Hank's speech was on the 45 rpm record included on the original "One Night At Blue Note" LP set? Dan Gould picked it up a few years back. Kevin

I once asked Michael Cuscuna about this and he says that he tried like hell to find Mobley for that Town Hall Blue Note concert and no one knew his whereabouts. Michael was bummed out that Hank wasn't going to be there. He said it was almost a shock to turn around that night and see Hank standing there. They didn't know what to do - the whole night was planned out - so they had him just walk out and say a few things. Kevin

Well, considering it's 2008 and Milt still hasn't commanded my hard-earned $$, I'd say Savoy knew what they were talking about then too. If you ask me, most of this letter reads like a polite rejection letter. These days, you don't even get that courtesy.

I don't know that Savoy was totally misguided at the time. Check that date: July 30, 1951. Organ was not popularized for many more years and Milt Buckner was not the one to do it - JOS was. I imagine Savoy did their research and determined a Milt organ date wouldn't sell. Given that year, I'd think they were right. Now as for that "sell records to colored people and not white people"? No clue what the heck they were thinking there. I never knew that the "colored people" had all the money in 1951.

There was a while when Mosaic sold Francis Wolff prints. Their website had a link to bring up a large-sized web pic of each one. I went through and saved all of them, including the uncropped "Soul Station" and "No Room For Squares" pictures.

Chewy - I see you're over at the SH forums trying to get Steve to talk to you. Good luck. Beware the gorts. They won't hesitate to boot you outta there. Whenever you post, imagine you're talking to a judge and you'll be all set... well, you can drop "Your Honor", but you get the drift, right? As for your inquiry to Hoffman about his work in the tape vaults, FYI, in the past, Hoffman has had some unkind words to say about RVG's recording techniques. In this thread, he had this to say: Steve Hoffman - When I work with a Rudy Van Gelder master I have to spend a lot of time coaxing the breath of life out of there. It's lost in a maze of echo plate and high-end limiter distortion that drives me bonkers. If a mastering engineer just ignores that stuff the end result is less than wonderful in my opinion. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Later on, he elaborated with: Steve Hoffman - Well, it's like a constant high-pitched grating sound. Ever stick your head around the back of your TV? That 15k carrier sound can drive one to drink. Something in RVG's system was dumping a lot of high-frequency overload distortion on everything, especially when the cymbals were hit. Kevin Gray and I figured that it was RVG's limiter that was causing the overload since it was better when the drums were not being aggressively played. Do you have an LP that was engineered by Rudy Van Gelder? Turn up the volume and lightly run your finger over the vinyl, so you slow it down a bit (making the ultra high end distortion come down to a more audible range). Hear it now? YEOW!!!!!!!! I worked up a "system" for combating this in my mastering, naming it my "Van Gelder Anti-matter Generator" (a play on Van De Graff Generator) and if you hear any DCC Gold Rudy Van Gelder CD ( Coltrane LUSH LIFE, Rollins SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS, Miles Davis COOKIN', RELAXIN', STEAMIN', POOPIN', etc.) that I've remastered, you'll notice the absence of any high end oscillation distortion. Just one of those little nifty bits of musical history that a mastering engineer MUST deal with for the sake of your ears. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I've been trying to get him to tell me if he had to use his "Van Gelder Anti-matter Generator" on these Blue Note reissues for months. He ignores me. It leads me to wonder if he overstated this effect. It sounds like all he has to do is hit "Play" and "Stop" with these Blue Note masters. I'd be interested to know if that was true. Kevin

For "True Blue", the TOCJ CD sounds very nice. Much better than the Ron McMaster Connoisseur. On "A Night In Tunisia", I really like the MFSL CD. I no longer have the McMaster version, but I remember the MFSL blowing it away. For "Bluesnik", surprisingly, I like the JRVG CD. It's one of the better ones from Japan. "Soul Station"? Well, I've grown so accustomed to the original Ron McMaster CD that it's become my favorite version. I'm sure that could be improved upon. The JRVG is not an improvement. I never found a TOCJ CD of this one. I think I'm going to pick up Ron McMaster's LP version that's coming out November 11th.

I don't think saying that the 45RPM LPs sound very close to or only slightly better than the "Blue Note Works" TOCJs would go down very well with Hoffman and some of the forum members over on his site I agree with Hans. Not only would it not go over well, one of his high-handed gorts would delete your post and ban you without even a thought. They ban first and ignore questions later over there. If you want to stay posting over there, keep any hint of negativity to yourself.

I think Kevin means the early ones from the 90's, using the original blue Note album numbers (TOCJ-4219 etc). I have the same experience, comparing a few CD versions with the Music Matters LPs. The TOCJs sound closest to the LPs. Claude - Dare you to say that over on the SH forums! To be honest, I was actually expecting more differences. If I were to rank them, I think Morgan's "Lee-way" is the least improved and Blakey's "Moanin'" probably a bit better - but neither was a "Wow" moment. And since they all sounded good, if you have the cash and don't mind getting up every 8-10 minutes, go for it. I have better things to spend my money on. Like that new Victory Kingpin I'm planning to buy someday. I am so glad I decided to buy up as many of those TOCJ-4XXX CDs when I did. I probably have a little less than half of that catalog by now. BTW, over on Hoffman's forum, he started a thread titled "New dual-layer SACDs from vintage BLUE NOTE Analogue Prods, questions answered here.." and - he doesn't... well, at least not my question. I have asked him three or four times if he had to use his special de-RVG box on the Blue Note tapes and he seems to just ignores the question. Well, maybe I'm just "ignore-worthy". Kevin