Wes Montgomery - The Complete Full House Recordings + New Resonance Half Note Set

[Eric]

9 hours ago, sonnymax said:

Hi-res digital download. I suppose the vinyl might sound "warmer"?

I bet it sounds like Wes Montgomery 😊

[ghost of miles]

I got an email today advising that the Wes Maximum Swing shipping date has been delayed till mid-January. 

[Eric]

Did anyone pick up the vinyl today?

[LWayne]

I did. But have not given a listen as of yet.

LWayne

[Eric]

Found a sealed copy online for $45 and grabbed it.  Looking forward to this one!!

[Brad]

Matthew Lutthans, who worked on the Maximum Drive recording and is a member at Hoffman, had the following observations on the release. 

****

I got the okay from Zev Feldman (Resonance Records producer) to share a bit about this release.  There are some notes that I wrote months ago about the technical end of things within the printed booklet in the set itself, I think, but I don't recall exactly what I wrote there, so will just share extemporaneously.

This was not just a typical "mastering" job.  I was called in on this job because this set needed a fair amount of restoration work well ahead of any mastering needs across two distinct components:  1.) The 1965 WABC radio broadcast tapes (sides A, B, C, and part of D -- decent-quality radio broadcast recordings, but not without flaws), and the extremely challenging "late 1965" recordings.

WABC broadcast tapes: These cover all of the recordings for which specific dates are listed, i.e., the first 12 tracks.  These were all delivered to me as 24/96 raw-transfer digital files, and they all had wow and/or flutter problems that were just bad enough to be mildly, persistently annoying.  Happily, Resonance okay'd the cost of renting CAPSTAN software (for speed correction), which strongly mitigated the problem, although it's still not 100% rock solid in a couple of fleeting spots.  Some tapes were worse than others in this regard, but it was all largely corrected.  Some tapes were also clearly a generation or more from the originals.

The first set (side A on the LPs) had something technically wrong on the original recording end, with one of the mics being out of phase.  Attempts to correct this resulted in a sound that was different, but not necessarily better, so in the end, the decision was made to just leave it, replete with phase problems.  Just don't push that mono button on these tracks!  This set also had more compression than the other WABC tapes -- but still quite enjoyable.

The second set (side B) had a strange thing going on.  It was broadcast in stereo on WABC, but at some point through the intervening years, it was recorded or transferred in mono, then converted to "fake stereo" on the reel used here.  Luckily, it was not "fake stereo" in the Duophonic style, involving phase shift, but was "fake stereo" that could easily sum back to mono (like on The Beatles' PLEASE PLEASE me album), so this set is presented in true mono, and the sound is actually quite presentable in that pleasant, 1960s "hi-fi mono" style.

The third and fourth WABC sets (side C and much of side D) had worse flutter, and the fourth set had a pronounced dullness to the tapes, i.e, everything was under a blanket, lots of hiss (as I recall), and a fairly buried (but workable) guitar signal.  That said, with some patience and detailed work, I think we got it all to sound basically pretty good, all things considered.

The "late 1965" recordings that conclude the set (end of side D and onward) are of mysterious provenance, and full of technical problems.  I felt very lucky that I was working with Richard Seidel (ex-Verve producer) on this set, because he is very kind and very patient, and I can tell you that we happily spent an obscene amount of time over several months fighting the problems with these set-closing recordings, knowing full well that the best we could ever hope to achieve would be deemed "acceptable."  These sides were never going to sound hi-fi, but the music was so fantastic (with those LOOOOOONG solos) that we knew it had to see the light of day.

These recordings came from a private collector "super fan" in Asia, who graciously snail-mailed the recordings to me in Salina, KS.  I don't know how many generations away from the original these recordings were, but it was multiple, and it's a minor miracle that they exist at all, and that we all get to hear them.  My suspicion is that these began life as 3-3/4 IPS tapes, and were eventually transferred through multiple other formats.  Nobody seems to know!  I view them as being the musical highlight of the set, even though the fidelity is not as good as the other performances presented here.

I'm pretty certain that these recordings were made on amateur gear using two VERY widely spaced omni-directional microphones, about 15 feet apart.  Based on what I heard, one microphone was in front of the open piano lid, and was essentially a "piano mic," with some of the guitar and drums strongly leaking in; the other mic was over near the rest of the combo, but too close to the drums, so the guitar and bass were fighting to be heard, and losing the fight.  The kick drum was especially prominent.

In their raw two-track form, these recordings suffered from a "hole in the middle" you could drive a truck through.  There was zero cohesion left-to-right.  There were also numerous tape dropouts, and one spot in FOUR ON SIX (on side E) where the tape had been broken and spliced, with a second or so flat-out missing.  Everything was addressed, including the missing spot on FOUR ON SIX. (I challenge you to find the spot!)

We tried converting the tracks to mono, but doing that caused the guitar to sink even further into the background (due to the apparent, extreme "spaced omni" recording style, that does not cooperate when summed).  We tossed around the idea of just putting these tracks out "raw," with a disclaimer.  We tried LOTS of approaches, all of which had pros and cons -- and dead ends.

Mind you.....my general approach is "less is more," but this was a case where more was needed.

Through trial and error, Richard Seidel and I figured out that if we left the "piano mic" all by its lonesome, all the way over on the right side, we could move the left track (DRUMS, guitar, bass) about 30 or 35% toward the right before the guitar would start to audibly cancel out, so we lessened the "hole in the middle" somewhat, and when we hit upon that, we felt like we had taken a step toward a solution that brought improvement.....finally!

From there, I worked with JUST that left mic, doing whatever EQ and digital tricks I could to lessen the drums a bit (especially the obtrusive kick drum), bring out the guitar a bit, and raise the bass, listening to JUST that left mic, in mono.  Once the balance on the left side was about as good as we could get it, we then took the step of re-introducing the piano-on-the-right mic to the mix, trying to find an acceptably balanced version for all four instruments (3 left, 1 right).  ("Balance" being not so much "left-right balance," but "musical balance" between the instruments, especially during the key, lengthy solo passages.). It was never going to be perfect, but it's far more listenable now, despite being a pretty low-fi affair.

So, there you go!  That's the story behind this very challenging, very cool set of recordings.  Wes and Wyn really go to town on some of these tracks!

Funny little side story:

I cut the lacquers for this set back in the spring (April I think), and they were the last thing I cut that week at The Mastering Lab (Chad Kassem's mastering studio in Salina, KS -- Doug Sax's former system).  I then hopped on a plane, flew to Los Angeles, showed up Monday morning for work at Cohearent Audio (Kevin Gray's mastering studio), and what was the first thing I cut that week?  Wes Montgomery's COMPLETE FULL HOUSE set.  In other words, by sheer coincidence, I consecutively cut lacquers for two different 3-LP Wes Montgomery sets -- six lacquers in Kansas for Resonance, then six lacquers in California for Craft -- with nothing else in-between.  What are the odds?

[sidewinder]

Not one to bother about with the LP audiophile version then. CD it is for me !

[jlhoots]

1 hour ago, sidewinder said:

Not one to bother about with the LP audiophile version then. CD it is for me !

Me too.

[kh1958]

At my local record store, the LP version was $75, so definitely going for the CD version.

[Eric]

Found a sealed copy for $45 on Discogs, so went that route.  I sometimes have a hard time reading the liner notes on the CD booklet.  I will probably download the tracks from Bandcamp as well.  A little pricey all in, but I love Wes and this looks special.

[hbbfam]

Anxious to hear reviews of the sound quality of the Half Note. 

[Eric]

1 hour ago, hbbfam said:

Anxious to hear reviews of the sound quality of the Half Note. 

I think the CD/Digital version comes out this Friday if not the 9th.  There is currently one cut on Bandcamp that sounds pretty good to me.

[jazzbo]

29 minutes ago, Eric said:

I think the CD/Digital version comes out this Friday if not the 9th.  There is currently one cut on Bandcamp that sounds pretty good to me.

I think the Resonance set comes out December 5.

[Brad]

20 hours ago, Eric said:

Found a sealed copy for $45 on Discogs, so went that route.  I sometimes have a hard time reading the liner notes on the CD booklet.  I will probably download the tracks from Bandcamp as well.  A little pricey all in, but I love Wes and this looks special.

$45 is a terrific price. I also find that for reading liner notes, the LP is better. 

[sidewinder]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

$45 is a terrific price. I also find that for reading liner notes, the LP is better. 

Yes, the large booklet would be an argument for me going for an LP version too. The latest Bill Evans LP certainly benefits with the nice booklet.

Edited November 28, 2023 by sidewinder