Westminster Laboratory Series - Early Example of Audiophile Vinyl

There was a golden period in the early to mid 90s when everyone was busy replacing their LPs with CDs when you could pick up a box of classic rock LPs at a yard sale for a dollar. I even took advantage of a few Freecycle offers to nab entire collections for the price of hauling the boxes out of someone's basement.

Nowadays, because of increasing interest in vinyl, not only are the dollar bins picked over, dealers and thrift shops are carefully checking their stock for jazz and classic rock titles that they can sell for much higher prices. The chance of coming across a mint Blue Note or first edition Pet Sounds for a buck is rapidly approaching zero.

However, one area where it is still possible to find really good deals is used classical records. In the first place, there aren't nearly as many collectors. And more importantly, most used record dealers and thrift shops don't specialize in classical titles and don't have the time to investigate the value of used classical disks.

Among my 3,500 or so LPs, about 500 are classical. I've gone through phases when I listened to a lot of classical music, but must admit that nowadays about 90% of the time I'm spinning jazz or classic rock. Nevertheless, when I stumble on a nice stash of classical titles for cheap, I always grab them.

A couple of years ago at a library book sale in Arlington, VA, I was going through five or six boxes of used LPs, up for grabs at a dollar each. The rock records were mostly the usual worn out copies of Linda Ronstadt, Andy Williams, Barbra Steisand, John Denver, and Loggins and Messina.

But there was one box with 25-30 classical titles all in NM condition. Flipping through them, I found a mix of Angel, Deutsche Grammophon, RCA, London, Philips, and other quality labels. Many were open but still in the shrink wrap. I didn't bother checking the titles, but just carried the box to the cash register. When I got them home and started going through therm, I found something interesting. There were two albums enclosed in thick plastic covers with metal zippers. When I tried to extract the albums, I
discovered that the plastic had fused to the jackets. Not sure what I had, I carefully worked the plastic off and removed the jackets.

Inside were two albums pressed by the Westminster Hi-Fi label. The first (the green one above) was a recording of Prokofieff's Classical Symphony in D major, Op. 29, by Artur Rodzinski and the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of London. The second (the purple one to the right) was Respighi's Feste Romane, performed by Sir Adrian Boult and the Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra of London.

There were several unusual things about the albums (other than the plastic zip covers.) First, the jackets were printed on a very cool metallic foil material (which makes them very hard to photograph.) Next, the jackets didn't have pockets, but were simply hinged boards with a record inside. In addition, each album included a thick, 32-page booklet (in matching colors!)

What the heck? First a quick check of the vinyl. They both appeared to be unplayed. The jackets, except for discolored strips on the right front side where the plastic had adhered, were also nearly mint. I checked one of the booklets and noted that it was written by C.G. McProud, who is identified as the Editor and Publisher of Audio Magazine. The booklet is dated 1955, making the recordings 60 years old. In the booklet, McProud presents a 20-page "Engineering Guide to the Westminster Laboratory Series." He spends the first five or six pages explaining why a high-fidelity recording should only be made with one microphone. As he explains it, multiple microphones will smear the sound of the individual instruments since the recorded sound arrives at each mic a split second apart. Other topics that McProud covers include "Inter-Groove Echo," "Equalization," "Dynamic Range," and "Harmonic Distortion." He makes a compelling case for why Westminster Lab series recordings are superior to any other LPs (at least in 1955.) The last 10 pages of the booklets are detailed track notes by James Lyons. A web search turned up a James Lyons who founded the Monterrey Jazz Festival and was important in promoting West Coast jazz, but his bio doesn't indicate any particular involvement with classical music, so maybe it's another James Lyons.

While I was Googling, I did some digging for info on Westminster Records. Wikipedia says: "The label was founded in 1949 by the owner of the Westminster Record shop in New York City, James Grayson, and conductor Henry Swoboda. Its trademark was Big Ben and its slogan was "Natural Balance," referring to its single microphone technique in recording music, similar to Mercury Records' "Living Presence" series."

Note the futuristic logo of an atom superimposed on an audio wavelength. The Big Ben "Natural Balance" logo is at bottom. It's a little hard to see (click on the photo to get a larger image), but also note that the music band stops about halfway into the side. 

On an online audio forum I found more info: "Westminster put out a "Lab" series of recordings, characterized by pressings which were not allowed to run over 15 or so minutes per side. The main "playing" groove stopped about halfway into the play area of normal LPs, though the runout groove continued to the center of the record. The idea was to eliminate the end-of-side distortions that plagued many records that ran all the way to the label and were the bane of many a hi-fi fanatic. The albums were sold at a premium in spite of offering less music, but the sonic clarity was a significant selling point to their demographic."

I was able to find a price list for LPs in a 1956 copy of Billboard magazine, and it shows that the retail price for the Westminster Laboratory series was $7.50, while standard issues from the big labels like RCA and Mercury were $3.95 or $4.95. In this regard, Westminster was apparently a forerunner of premium labels like MFSL or Analogue Productions. A review of the Prokofieff title in the March, 1956 Billboard magazine notes: "What justifies the heavy price here is the already substantial market for the plastic-zippered Lab packages, and the assurance of finicky and accurate engineering they have come to represent. Of special interest is the orchestral transparency captured, each part clear and in eminent balance."

I can't comment on the quality of the performances, but I do agree with the reviewer that the sound is fantastic. The vinyl is dead quiet except for one or two ticks, and the recordings are detailed and dynamic.

I wasn't able to find a list of all the "Lab" series albums Westminster produced, but did find about 20 different titles on Discogs, Rate Your Music, and Ebay. The first review I can find in the Billboard archives is December, 1954, for the second release in the series, catalog number 7001. The highest catalog number I can find is 7056. And the last Billboard review I can find is in the October, 1957 issue. Assuming they didn't skip catalog numbers, a rough estimate is that Westminster produced 57 titles in a little less than three years. I'm not sure when they stopped selling the Lab series, but the Westminster label shut down when it was sold to ABC in 1961.

As for my one dollar investment, I found one of my two albums listed on Ebay with an asking price of $100. Of course, there is no telling if anyone will pay that, but I certainly got more than my money's worth. And in any case, I'm not interested in selling.

Enjoy the music!

Franklin Mint: "The Greatest Jazz Recordings Of All Time"

Back in the 70s when I was in junior high school, I subscribed to one of the monthly record clubs. I can't remember which one it was -- Columbia House, BMG, and RCA were all popular -- but their advertisements were everywhere, promising deals like: "10 Albums For Only One Cent!" You did indeed get 10 albums for a penny, but the catch was that you were obliged to order another four or five albums at full price over the course of the year.

In addition, each month you received a catalog announcing the "Selection Of The Month."  If you wanted the selection, you did nothing, and the album would be shipped to you at full retail price plus shipping and handling. If you didn't want the selection, you returned an attached post card saying not to ship the album. Naturally, the clubs counted on a lot of their subscribers forgetting to return the post card and paying for the album. I was pretty diligent about returning the card and only ordered the bare minimum required. I'm pretty sure I came out way ahead. I still have a few old LPs in my collection (including a Led Zeppelin IV cut by George Peckham) that have "Record Club" stickers on the jackets.

One of the most enduring of the "subscription" mail order firms is the Franklin Mint Society. Founded back in 1964, The Franklin Mint has sold books, coins, dolls, plates, knives, and diecast classic cars by the millions. From time to time, The Franklin Mint has also offered record sets. Anyone who has spent time rummaging through used records in thrift stores has surely come across sets from their 50-box collection of "The 100 Greatest Recordings Of All Time." Judging from the number of these sets that I find, apparently every home in America had a subscription to the series at one time or another. It may have been required by law. For the casual listener, it wasn't a bad way to assemble a collection of classical music's greatest hits. And since you can find the boxes today for 25 cents or a dollar, they're still a good deal. As a bonus, they are usually in very good condition since people liked the idea of owning a collection of classical music, but no one ever actually played them.

A few months ago at an estate sale, I found a collection of Franklin Mint albums entitled: "The Greatest Jazz Recordings Of All Time." There were 25 handsome box sets, with gold lettering on the covers and leather bindings. Each box contained four LPs, pressed on 160-gram, dark red vinyl, for a total of 100 albums. Many of the sets covered a stylistic theme or time period, such as "Great Jazz Inventors -- Davis, Mingus, Monk" or "Cool Jazz-Third Stream -- Baker, Getz, Brubeck, Mulligan, Konitz, MJQ." The red vinyl was stunning, and every disk I examined looked absolutely mint. They were priced at $12 per set, so I decided to grab five and see if they were any good. I thought I could come back the next day and get the rest if they turned out to be interesting.

Once I got them home and started to do a little research on the Interwebs, I discovered that these sets are quite collectible and much appreciated by jazz fans -- not only for the quality of the pressings, but for the extremely well-done selection of tracks and artists. The collection was curated over a period of several years (1983-85) by the noted jazz critic and music scholar Dan Morgenstern. At the time, Morgenstern was the director of Rutgers University at Newark's Institute of Jazz Studies, one of the world's greatest collections of jazz recordings, memorabilia, and other cool jazz-related stuff.

Morgenstern raided the Institute's collection for rare 78s and other obscure recordings that in some cases have been out of print for decades, Of course, he also includes selections from dozens of seminal albums by jazz greats from Louis Armstrong to Pat Metheny. In all, there are some 1,200 tracks on the 100 albums.

In general, I'm not a fan of collections of any kind of music. As a rule I never buy greatest hits collections by rock or jazz artists. If I like an artist, then I want to have the individual albums so I can appreciate the work as a whole and in context. But in the case of some jazz pioneers or obscure artists from the 40s and 50s, it's not practical or even possible to track down their recordings. So these Franklin Mint sets are a great find. And even though I have many of the individual tracks on the original albums, Morgenstern does a great job of selecting cuts that highlight the development of a particular instrument or style of jazz. In the case of one of the sets I bought (Volume 16) "Cool Jazz - Third Stream," it's fascinating to hear tracks by artists I've never heard of (Cy Touff, Andre Hodeir, Lennie Niehaus - anyone? anyone?) alongside cuts by Miles Davis, Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, and others who came to define the Cool Jazz genre.

Each box set comes with a 20-page glossy booklet by Morgenstern or another noted jazz writer, providing historical context and giving a track-by-track discussion of the music. After spinning a few of the albums, I rushed back over to the estate sale to pick up the rest of the boxes. Naturally they were gone. But I've been able to pick up more online, and now have 20 out of the 25 boxes.

If you ever stumble across any of these sets in good condition at a thrift store or used record sale, don't hesitate to buy them. Complete sets in mint condition go for around $300-400, and individual boxes are usually around $25 on Ebay. The dark red disks look stunning, and the pressings on 160-gram virgin vinyl are stellar - dead flat and quiet.

Enjoy the music!

Anita O'Day & The Three Sounds

Verve Records V-8514

1962 Mono Release

NM/NM

A while back, my wife and I were looking around an antiques store in Pittsboro, NC. We poked around a bit, and in the back I spotted a couple of boxes of albums. Along with the usual 1960s soundtracks, a few forlorn classical titles, and a nearly complete collection of Nancy Sinatra albums, there were a few gems, including this Verve Records original pressing by Anita O'Day.

Anita O'Day got her start singing in clubs in Chicago in the late 1930s. Her big break came when jazz and big band drummer Gene Krupa hired her in 1941. Based on recordings she made with Krupa, Downbeat magazine named her "New Star Of The Year."  After Krupa was

arrested and imprisoned for possession

of marijuana in 1943, O'Day worked with Woody Herman's and Stan Keaton's bands. In 1947, O'Day herself was arrested on a marijuana possession charge and spent 90 days in a Los Angeles jail. Once out of the slammer, O'Day spent the next several years with Herman and Keaton and also performed with Count Basie in New York. O'Day was arrested again in 1953 on another marijuana charge, but the case was dismissed. Unfortunately, at about the same time, she began using heroin and was arrested once again. She served six months in prison before being released in 1954. She would continue to struggle with heroin addiction for many years, nearly dying from an overdose in 1967.  Despite her drug dependency and troubles with the law, O'Day had a very successful recording career. She cut her first solo album in 1952, entitled Anita O'Day Sings Jazz. The album appeared on Norgran Records, the very first 12" LP issued on the legendary Norman Granz' brand new label. O'Day made a second record for Norgran in 1955, and when Granz founded Verve Records in 1956, she followed him there. In all, O'Day would make 15 records for Verve. The last of these was Anita O'Day & The Three Sounds, released in 1962.

Anita O'Day & The Three Sounds is unusual because O'Day only sings on six of the ten songs. The other four tracks are instrumentals that feature The Three Sounds, who also play backup on the vocal tracks. The Three Sounds were formed in 1956 in Benton Harbor, Michigan, and were "discovered" by saxophone great Lou Donaldson while playing in New York a few years later. Though never a block-buster group, they recorded dozens of albums as a solo act and as a backup band before they broke up in 1973.

The overall mood of Anita O'Day & The Three Sounds is light and swinging, with straight-ahead readings by O'Day and tasteful backing by The Three Sounds. There is an excellent and uncredited trumpet solo by Roy Eldridge on "Whisper Not" that makes the cut one of the album's highlights. Even still, the album was not warmly received. Some reviewers criticized O'Day for "phoning in" her performance since her contract with Verve was expiring.

When I bought the record, the vinyl looked very clean, but the jacket was in a dirty plastic outer sleeve that had been stapled to the back opening of the gatefold jacket, which meant I couldn't really examine the jacket without fear of damaging it. When I got it home, I found that the previous owner had not only stapled the outer sleeve to the back of the jacket, he had glued the edges of the dust sleeve to the inside of the LP pocket. I carefully removed the staples and used a box cutter to gently extract the dust sleeve.

Once I got the outer sleeve off, I was delighted to find that the jacket was mint (well, except for the very tiny staple holes in the back.) It literally looks like it was made yesterday with not a touch of ring wear and only very slight edge wear to one corner. It is a gatefold jacket, and appears to have never been opened. On the inside are extensive liner notes by Jack Fuller, who wrote jazz criticism for the Chicago Tribune, where he went on to become editor and win a Pulitzer Prize. The back of the jacket still has the original store sales sticker. The album was purchased from a store called "Del Padre" for $3.79. Which is considerably less than I paid 55 years later. Likewise, the vinyl is flawless and still has the shine of a new record. I gave it a wash on my VPI 16.5 record cleaner and put it on my dedicated mono turntable. The vinyl is flat and dead quiet. Not a tick on the record. The overall sound is excellent, with great dynamics and a nice "3rd row center" feel you get from mono recordings.

Credits:

Anita O'Day - Vocals
Gene Harris - Piano
Bill Dowdy - Drums
Andrew Simpkins - Bass
Roy Eldridge - Trumpet (uncredited)
Creed Taylor - Producer
Engineer - Val Valentin

The deadwax information is:

Side 1: V8514 SIDE 1 62VG244 RE-1 ["S" MGM pressing plant stamp] see below
Side 2: V8514 SIDE 2 62VG245 RE-1 ["S" MGM pressing plant stamp] see below

The dead wax has an MGM pressing plant stamp because Granz sold the Verve label to MGM in December, 1960. MGM continued to use the iconic black and silver "T" label on its Verve releases, adding a line at the bottom of the label that read "MGM Records - A Division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. - Made in U.S.A." The album has a 1.25" (32mm) pressing groove in the center which (along with the S stamp in the deadwax) confirms that it was pressed at MGM's plant in Bloomfield, NJ.  The plant was used until 1972 when MGM was sold to Polygram.




Oh, I bought the Nancy Sinatra albums as well. I'm a sucker for 60s schmaltzy pop. They turned out to be NM German pressings. Another great find. They're so bad, they're good.

Enjoy the music!