Kevin Bresnahan

I have enjoyed quite a few of these Tone Poet LP releases. I think a large majority of them sound great and look even better than the originals. I have no problem buying them... after I find out that there aren't any mastering problems. I've been burned and I'm not doing it any more. What bothers me over on the Hoffman boards is this weird attitude that you can't say anything bad about them. It's almost as if they're afraid that they might stop releasing them if people complain. Theses people will tell you to clean your record, swap your cartridge, swap your turntable, swap your phono preamp, or the worst case "I don't hear the problem so it must be you". They will literally say anything except the obvious, "Boy, Blue Note really screwed this one up". I think back to Blue Note's CD reissue programs. I remember getting corrected CDs sent to me for Wayne Shorter's "The Soothsayer" and the RVG CD of Bobby Hutcherson's "Dialogue" because there were mastering defects. Blue Note (Michael Cuscuna) heard about a problem and they fixed it. They even offered corrected CDs to those affected. What a novel idea - customer service. Blue Note no longer seems to care about this.

Yup. I can only take the idiocy for so long over there before I call one of them out. The latest one is a guy telling me that I need to respect the opinion of an "industry professional". Sure, me, a guy with a BSEE and 37 years of working in the high tech industry needs to bow down to a guy because he claims he sat in once when a record was cut. I told him we don't need to taking out tape measures.

I never did get around to picking this up. I love Kamuca's work so it should've been a no-brainer. The biggest problem with picking it up now is that VSOP only sells CD-Rs these days.

To update those of you who care... I recently sent my LP of Hill's "Passing Ships" to Lon and he says that his playback is clean - no distortion during the track "Plantation Bag". I was able to get a clean payback with my backup cartridge, so this didn't shock me. FWIW, I am filling you all in over here on this forum because I get the feeling I'm close to getting the boot from the Hoffman forums. A poster over there who claims to be an industry professional is saying that the distortion I heard on the "Passing Ships" LP is in his "copy of the master tape". I pointed out to him that some people can play the record without hearing the distortion, therefore, the distortion cannot be from the tape. He just refuses to acknowledge this basic fact. He claims that they can "master" the distortion away. I said that is more likely that whoever made his tape copy did so with the recording levels set too high. Depending on the gort (moderator) on duty, I may be in purgatory over there. I should just put the idiot on ignore at this point.

Still no signs of reissued SHM-CDs of Lou Donaldson's "Here 'Tis" with the extra track "Blues #4" or John Patton's "Blue John" with the extra 5 tracks though. I've been hoping to see them reissued.

The thing that bothers me about that Tone Poet thread is that they talk like every Tone Poet LP is the greatest Jazz recording ever made. You can't really even argue with them about it or you get shut down, particularly if Scotti likes it. They're over there raving about fringe Blue Note dates that didn't sell back in Blue Note's heyday and didn't sell on CD, like sessions from George Braith or Don Wilkerson (to name a couple). Now they are suddenly classic Blue Note records that must be in everyone's collection.

I can't stand Bitches Brew either but I wouldn't create a whole video diatribe on it,

I haven't spun this in a while. I'll try to get it onto the turntable later today. Thanks for reminding me.

There are posters over in that thread that should be called for their asinine statements about "hearing digital" but you just can't do that over there. Over there, "I hear this" is irrefutable, even if you can point out that they said differently in the past. It gets so tiring over there, especially now that many of the posters on that thread bashing MoFi and digital audio in general are the same ones who were raving about these pressings for years - YEARS.

So this is one of those "almost embarrassed to say" posts. I was reading a review of one of Art Tatum's group sessions recordings - the one with DeFranco - when I realized that I never got around to buying those group sessions. I've onwed and enjoyed the one with Ben Webster for years (on the XRCD) and I always planned to pick up the box set but never got around to it. So yesterday, I finally grabbed 4 or 5 of the group sessions. I'm actually looking forward to finally hearing them.

An even better pastor joke... The Reverend John Fuzz was a pastor of a small congregation in a little Pennsylvania town. One day, walking down Main St., he noticed a female member of his congregation sitting in the town bar, drinking beer. The reverend thought this was sinful and not something a member of his congregation should do. He walked through the open door of the bar and sat down next to the woman. "Mrs. Fitzgerald," the reverend said sternly. "This is no place for a member of my congregation. Why don't you let me take you home?" "Sure," she said with a slur, obviously very drunk. When Mrs. Fitzgerald stood up from the bar, she began to weave back and forth. The reverend realized that she had had too much to drink grabbed her arms to steady her. When he did, they both lost their balance and tumbled to the floor. After rolling around for a few seconds, the reverend wound up laying on top of Mrs. Fitzgerald, her skirt hiked up to her waist. The bartender looked over the bar and said, "Here, here buddy, we won't have any of that in this bar!" The reverend looked up at the bartender and said, "No, no, you don't understand, I'm Pastor Fuzz." The bartender nodded and said, "Well then, if you're that far in, you might as well finish up." BTW - this is a very old joke with many variations.

I actually tried to make edits to several Jazz musicians' pages many years ago and every one I made got rejected by the Wiki gatekeeper of the article. I even cited several online articles & interviews to no avail. If the Wiki guardian doesn't like you, you aren't editing anything. I gave up after that.

The word on the street is that the Japanese SACDs were mastered from the master tapes by Kevin Gray when he had the master tapes queued up for the Tone Poet LP cuts. Since I've had such crappy luck with Gray's LPs these days, I'm going to forego the LPs and go straight for the SACD this time. This is one of the few times when this is the cheaper route too.

There is a lot of good music in that set. Nothing earth-shattering, just good hard bop dates. On top of the Brignola's sessions, I do like Sal Nisitco's dates (one under his own name and another on Curtis Fuller's LP) but don't sleep on the group led "Hyde Park After Dark" with Clifford Jordan, Von Freeman & Cy Touff in the front line.

I've been reading about this over on the Hoffman forums and I've tried to hold back on posting about it because I'm afraid my attitude might upset a few posters. I think this is awesome. It finally shut up all of the golden eared music listeners who claimed that only AAA can sound good and that they can "hear" analog. I've been saying for years that analog in and of itself does not guarantee great sound but nothing I've said has had any effect on most of them and the Hoffman forums' rules preclude anyone from calling them out on it. Mobile Fidelity finally showed them that the emperor has no clothes.

The owner of the Bee Hive label only licensed out the Johnny Hartman date for release on CD (released as part of the "Bridges of Madison County" soundtrack). The rest of the catalog was never on CD until Mosaic licensed it. I pestered Michael Cuscuna for this release for decades and I'm very grateful that he was finally able to do it. There is some great music in that set. As far as I know, no one else has licensed any of the Bee Hive catalog and I've never seen any single CD releases. I do have "Baritone Madeness" & "Burn Brigade" on CD-Rs that I burned from my LPs back in the day.

If you feel like further supporting Charles, he sells a couple of CDs and a tee shirt at his website. There's even an option to get an autographed publicity shot if you so choose. I bought both CDs from him many years ago. https://charlesmcpherson.com/store/

I have or have had: Music Matters Jazz Mono LP Japanese first issue CD (called a "Black triangle") Original US CD Mobile Fidelity gold CD The Ultimate Blue Train RVG SACD Japanese UCCU CD with the extra take of "Blue Train" ... and yet I still ordered "Blue Train - The Complete Masters" SACD from Japan.

Great news that it wasn't cancerous. I hope you mend quickly.

I might order the SACD of the stereo deluxe set from CD Japan. I just wish it was a hybrid disc.

I saw that too. It's funny that Discogs stops the sale of many bootlegs (like this one) but then allows the listings for some releases like this Muse date, even though it is obviously not legit.

I am thinking about buying the deluxe 2-LP set, but not until I hear that Kevin Gray didn't cut it too hot. He's done it several times and Blue Note doesn't acknowledge the problem at all so if it is cut too hot - say bye-bye to your money. Quite frankly, this new Blue Note team is not that great when it comes to customer service. Nothing like the old days when we would point out a mastering problem with a CD and it almost always got fixed pretty quickly. This group just ignores the problem and hopes that their apologists rise up, which they always do over on the Hoffman forums. Kevin Gray is like a god over there, even though he sometimes cuts too hot and often cuts the grooves too tight, resulting in far too much dead wax, which I have been told by Ron McMaster can result in tracking problems for some turntables.

That's an obvious boot since this session was recorded well after the 1962 cutoff for public domain in the EU. I would not pay $30 for that.

Unless she ran out and doesn't know it, Laurie Pepper is still selling these CDs on her Bandcamp website. FWIW, the Croydon concert is excellent.

I still listen to George Winston's solo piano CDs. I saw him live about 2 years ago. I wouldn't call them Jazz but they are very good dinner music and my wife enjoys them so they get played every now & then.