Music In The Time Of Cholera

Well, not really cholera (or the plague for that matter), but a pandemic all the same.  For the past several months while we've been staying home to avoid the virus, I've spent most of my time listening to albums.  It is relaxing and helps distract from the never-ending stream of bad news.  Although to be honest, before the virus hit I already spent most of my time sitting at home listening to music.  So not much has changed, except that now I get to feel slightly virtuous for doing my part to flatten the curve.

But I haven't just been sitting and listening to music.  I've also been working to clean and catalog albums from my intake pile.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I stumble on a bunch of interesting looking albums in the $1 box at a record store or buy a box of miscellaneous LPs at an estate sale, I often end up bringing home 30 or 40 albums at a pop.  So there are usually 100 or so albums waiting to be cataloged at any given time.  I have albums that I bought months (years?) ago that are still languishing in the pile, and I've been able to add dozens of them to the permanent collection over the last few months.

The only problem is that since I have so much free time on my hands, I've been ordering records faster than I can catalog them.  With so many record stores closed and their owners struggling to stay afloat through online sales, it feels like my civic duty to buy as many albums as possible.  I know, I know, but that's just the kind of guy I am.  The good news is that I've discovered lots of interesting new bands and music that I (mostly) had never heard of before.  Let's have a look.

First up is an intriguing release that has been in the pile so long I forgot where I found it.  It's called Wackering Heights, released in 1971 by a group called - you guessed it - The Wackers.  This album would have fit right in with a blog I wrote a few years ago entitled "How Did I Miss These Guys?," about performers from the 60s and 70s who I somehow was never aware of back in the day.

Cribbing from Wikipedia: "The Wackers were formed in 1970 out of another band called Roxy, by singer and songwriter Bob Segarini and multi-instrumentalist Randy Bishop. They joined with singer-guitarist-keyboardist Michael Stull to form the new group. Bassist Bill 'Kootch' Trochim and drummer Spencer Earnshaw completed The Wackers lineup to record their debut album Wackering Heights.

Allmusic reviewer Steven McDonald calls Wackering Heights "A charming, sunny debut disc from a group that somehow managed to blend the Byrds and the Monkees into a pop sound that was as intelligent as it was catchy."  Alas, The Whackers never really caught on, and after a couple of years and two more albums (including their wonderfully titled third and final LP, Hot Wacks), the Wackers ceased to be.  Leader Sagarini tried his luck with a couple of other bands and had a brief solo career before becoming a successful disc jockey/radio personality in Toronto.

My 49 year old copy of Wackering Heights is in NM condition and looks like it was never played (which may tell you all you need to know about why the band didn't do so well commercially).  The gatefold jacket has only very light wear and rates a solid VG+.  The album was released on Elektra Records, which must have had high hopes for The Wackers since they went to the trouble of creating a special logo showing The Wackers' name spanning the globe.  It is printed on the label and also embossed in gold on the front of the jacket cover (above).

The next goodie I dug out of the pile was Bossa Nova Plus, a 1963 release by tenor sax man Willis Jackson.  Jackson was a prolific recording artist, releasing dozens of albums - almost all on the Prestige label - beginning in 1959.  Though his early influences were Lester Young and Illinois Jacquet, Jackson later became a part of the soul jazz movement.  Along with tenor players Gene Ammons, Stanley Turrentine, Eddie Harris, and others, Jackson helped create a more gritty, funkier (and more commercial) sound.  Reflecting this shift, Jackson's later albums had titles such as Grease 'N Gravy and Soul Grabber.

However, Bossa Nova Plus captures Jackson in a mellow mood, playing a lineup of current hits and Latin melodies in a lightly swinging bossa nova style.  The interesting thing about the album is that it was originally issued with the title Shuckin', featuring a photo of Willis on the cover (left).  But it was reissued almost immediately with a new title and a more colorful cover (above) in order to cash in on the bossa nova craze which was sweeping the U.S. after the release of Stan Getz' 1962 albums Big Band Bossa Nova and Jazz Samba.  I'm a big fan of bossa nova and would have bought the album anyway, but what really sold me was reading the liner notes and seeing that the sidemen include Kenny Burrell on guitar, Roy Haynes on drums, and Tommy Flanagan on piano.  A super lineup.  Unfortunately, none of the musicians really stretches out, but it's a balm in these troubled times.  And the samba version of "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" is a gas.

The next album I pulled out was a copy of Lee Morgan's 1971 release, Live at the Lighthouse.  It's a fairly obscure Blue Note/United Artists release, a double live album recorded at the famous West Coast jazz club in Hermosa Beach, CA in July of 1970.  The Lighthouse, owned by bass player Howard Rumsey, was the launching pad for a host of West Coast jazz artists, including Bud Shank, Max Roach, Sonny Criss, Hampton Hawes, Shelly Manne, Russ Freeman, and Chet Baker.

As reviewer Scott Yanow notes: "By the time of this LP, Morgan's music had become much more modal, heavily influenced by John Coltrane."  A kind of sheets of sound on trumpet if you will.  I'm not crazy about Coltrane's later albums, and not surprisingly, "sheets of sound" on trumpet doesn't do much for me either. 

Apparently the general public felt the same way since the album sold poorly and as a result it is pretty hard to find today.

Blue Note released a three-CD box set in 1996 that expanded the original album to include all of the music from Morgan's three-night stand at The Lighthouse. 

If you look online for the album, you are likely to get a lot of hits for a CD called Live At The Lighthouse '70.  Be aware that this is a different album entirely from the Blue Note release.  Lighthouse '70 was issued as a two-CD set in 1991 by a Spanish label called Fresh Sounds Records (the same group responsible for a lot of the public domain jazz LP pressings coming out of Europe).  The notes on the Fresh Sounds CD, which (just to confuse things even more) has an expanded image of the head shot of Morgan from the original Blue Note cover (right and above), says it was recorded in July, 1970 at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach.  It was not.  According to several online sleuths, the Fresh Sounds release was recorded live at a place called "The Both/And Club" in San Francisco, probably in June of 1970.  Apparently Morgan and the band played some gigs in San Francisco to tune up before heading down to Hermosa Beach (near L.A.) for their appearance at the Lighthouse.  The San Francisco shows were taped to air on a local radio station, (though it's not clear if they ever did) and those tapes are what is on the Fresh Sounds CD.  I've heard the CD, and while you could argue that the music is actually better -- the band is loose and the music is more straight-ahead bop -- the recording quality is poor and the sound is marred by a drunk/stoned guy sitting (seemingly) right beside the microphone screaming "Yeah, man!" about every 10 seconds for long periods of the recording.  That said, there is a version of Ceora, a song originally released on Morgan's album "Cornbread," that is fabulous.

Last up is the 1969 release, Truly Fine Citizen, by San Francisco's own Moby Grape.  I didn't actually miss Moby Grape, I just wasn't a fan and didn't buy their albums.  On the other hand, I was a big fan of Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Grateful Dead, and a lot of the other groups that exploded out of San Francisco's psychedelic scene in the 1960s.  [Fun fact: Skip Spence, founding member of the Grape, played drums on the Airplane's first LP.]

Truly Fine Citizen was Moby Grape's fifth album in three years (the third release in 1969 alone!).  Since their 1967 debut, the band had become locked in a contentious legal battle with their manager and was beset with drug abuse and mental health issues, which led to the departure of founding members Skip Spence and Bob Mosley.  By 1969, the three remaining members of the band decided to get away from it all and decamped to Nashville to record their next album with Bob Johnson, the white-hot producer who had already made Blonde On Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited with Bob Dylan, the Sound Of Silence with Simon and Garfunkel, Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison, as well as a slew of other seminal rock albums.

Since they no longer had a bass player (Bob Mosley left the group and joined the Marines -- no, really), producer Johnson brought in ace session player Bob Moore, who played on many of Elvis's albums and was one of the crack musicians who made up the famous Nashville "A Team."  [Fun fact: Moore's official web site says that "With more than 17,000 recording sessions to his credit, he may well have played on more recordings than any other musician in the world."  Almost inconceivably, that works out to at least one session every day for 46 years, including Sundays and holidays.  Wow.]  But despite the presence of ringers Bob Johnson and Bob Moore, Truly Fine Citizen is generally considered to be a middlin' effort.  Music critic Mark Deming gives it three stars and notes that (given all their legal and personal issues) "It's a pleasant surprise that Truly Fine Citizen isn't a disaster -- it's a loose but amiable set of sunny psychedelic pop-rock with a decided country influence."  I find it well played but unmemorable, except for the fabulous, jazzy cut called "Love Song, Part Two" that closes the album.  The copy of the album that I found is a minty original Columbia two-eye that sounds very fine.  

Moby Grape's 1967 self-titled debut album

For whatever reason, Moby Grape albums have become quite collectible in recent years, and copies in good condition sell for more than you'd expect.  Near mint copies of Truly Fine Citizen are going for $25-30 on Discogs.  The most collectible of their LPs is the first pressing of their debut album, 1967's self-titled Moby Grape.  [Fun fact: The band's name is the answer to a bad riddle: What's big and purple and lives in the ocean?  Answer: Moby Grape.  Drugs may or may not have been involved in the decision.]  The cover of the album is a photo of the band members in front of a second-hand store holding various props from the store.  Drummer Don Stevenson, who is smack dab in the middle, is giving the finger on top of an old washboard he's holding.  Apparently the suits at Columbia Records were not amused, and the press run was stopped while the cover (and included poster) were swapped out with an airbrushed image without the middle finger (below).  As always seems to be the case, a number of the original covers made it into stores anyway.  I have a VG+ copy of the original which shows the middle finger, and even if it's not my favorite album, it's still a nice bit of rock memorabilia.  NM copies of the unexpurgated Moby Grape will set you back in the neighborhood of $75-100.  So keep your eyes pealed.

Last fun fact: The flag at the back right of the photo in the original cover is an American flag that was air-brushed to make it red/orange so as not to offend the anti-war fervor of the youth of 1969.  But wait!  When they airbrushed out the middle finger, they changed the flag from red to black, presumably to avoid any possible association with communism.  It all seems kind of quaint now.

Enjoy the music!

Frank Sinatra And Me (Really)

I once had dinner with Frank Sinatra.  Well, sort of. 
I mention that (details below) because I've just finished reading the massive two-volume biography of Sinatra by James Kaplan.  All together it's about 2,000 pages (including footnotes and sources), but Kaplan's prose is breezy and the many stories and anecdotes from Sinatra's friends and acquaintances make the pages fly by.  If you are a fan of "The Voice," (and if not, why not?) it's well worth your time.  If you're not up for all 2,000 pages, I'll give you a one-line summary: Frank was a world-class S.O.B., but also one of the greatest entertainers in the history of popular music.  While reading the bio, I played Frank's records -- matching up the LPs to the timeline in the biography, beginning with the  early hits on Columbia, the pivotal years with Tommy Dorsey's band, his long heyday on Capitol and Reprise, and ending with his last two studio albums, Duets and Duets II, released in 1993 and 1994 respectively.  He died in 1998.

During his lifetime, Sinatra released 78 LPs: 59 studio albums, five live albums, and 14 compilation albums.  In addition, he released 297 singles, many of them 78s from the days of the screaming bobbysoxers in the 1940s and 50s.  Checking my collection, I find I have 68 Sinatra LPs.  However, I have duplicates and triplicates of numerous titles, as well as a couple of posthumous compilations and foreign releases, so I actually only have 44 of the 78 albums released while Sinatra was alive.  Clearly I've got to pick up the pace.  (If you really want to go crazy, the official Sinatra family website has a list of 10,066 Sinatra albums that have been released all time worldwide.)

To mark what would have been Sinatra's 100th birthday in 2015 (Frank was born in 1915), Universal Music (UMe) remastered and reissued a bunch of Sinatra's best-selling and most-loved albums.  Listening again to my Sinatra albums as I read the bio, I realized that some of the original copies I have are not in great shape and decided to order a few of the new pressings to see how they sound.  I bought Come Fly With Me, Come Dance With Me, Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim, Nice 'N' Easy, Ring-A-Ding-Ding, and In The Wee Small Hours.  All are classic, must-have Sinatra albums.

 After comparing the new versions to my original pressings (the only one I didn't already have was Ring-A-Ding-Ding), I am happy to report that the new releases sound terrific.  I couldn't find any information about who did the remasters or whether the sources used were the original tapes or digital copies.  But to my ear, they sound ring-a-ding-ding: The strings are lush, the brass is fat and sassy, and Sinatra's baritone is rich and beautifully burnished.  The disks are extremely well pressed on quiet 180-gram vinyl by Record Industry in the Netherlands.  All the records come with poly-lined dust sleeves, and the replica jackets look swell.  If you have some holes in your Sinatra collection, my advice is don't bother trying to find originals, which, though widely available, have often been played to death.  For $20 a pop (some even less), you can have new copies complete with that new record smell.  Ahhh.

My Dinner With Frank

OK, now my Sinatra story.  My wife and I were working at the U.S. Embassy in Rome in September of 1991 when Frank came to town to perform a concert as part of his Diamond Jubilee World Tour.  The U.S. Ambassador hosted a gala dinner for Frank and his fourth wife Barbara (the former Mrs. Zeppo Marx) at the Villa Taverna, the official residence of the U.S. Ambassador in Rome.  Since my wife and I were fairly junior officers, we were nowhere near being on the guest list for the soiree.  However, late in the afternoon on the day of the dinner, we got a call from the Ambassador's staff to say that one of the invited couples had cancelled at the last minute, and they needed us to get dressed and get over to the residence to fill the empty seats right now.  Well, sure.  And on the way, we should stop at the Hotel Excelsior to pick up TV personality John McLoughlin and give him a ride.  OK. 

The Villa Taverna in Rome

We quickly got ready, raced across town to fetch McLoughlin, and got to the Villa Taverna just before the other guests began to arrive.  As my wife was taking McLoughlin inside to meet the Ambassador, the Ambassador's secretary frantically pulled me aside and said, "There's nobody here to greet the guests.  You speak Italian, so stay here and welcome everyone and make sure they all sign the guest book."  OK.  (Foreign Service Officers are nothing if not adaptable.)  I took up my post under the portico of the main door (above) and greeted everyone as they arrived, including Gina Lollobrigida, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme (who were the opening act for Sinatra), and actor/funnyman George Segal who was in Rome filming a TV show.  There were a number of other well-known Italian personalities and business moguls who I can't remember.  Almost everyone was somebody since dinner with Frank was the hottest ticket in town. [Fun facts: Gina Lollobrigida co-starred with Sinatra in the 1959 movie Never So Few, a film set in wartime Burma.  Contrary to some malicious wags, Kaplan says that Frank and Gina did not hook up during filming.  The film also features a young Steve McQueen.]

Frank and Barbara were two of the last to arrive for the dinner.  As they got out of the limo, I welcomed them to the residence and asked if they would please sign the Ambassador's guest book.  Frank gave me a look like he had just stepped in dog poop and muttered, "I ain't signing the goddamn guest book."  Barbara smiled at me and whispered to Frank, "Be nice."  She quickly signed for the two of them, and I ushered them inside. 

George Segal

Dinner was outside in the magnificent gardens behind the Villa.  I don't recall precisely, but believe there were 6-8 round tables set out for about 50 guests.  I was seated next to George Segal, who was a very nice guy and a lot of fun to talk to.  Out of the blue he asked me if I knew where he could get a banjo, because he thought he might play it on his TV appearance the next evening.  (Segal is a fine banjo player.)  He was delighted when I told him that I played a little banjo myself and would be happy to loan him mine.  (In the end, the studio found a banjo for him, so my five-string missed its moment in the spotlight.) 

Steve and Eydie

Frank and Barbara were seated at the head table with the Ambassador and his wife, along with Steve and Eydie and Gina Lollobrigida.  It was a gorgeous September evening in Rome, with twinkly lights strung overhead in the garden.  I don't remember much else about the dinner except that after coffee and desert the Ambassador made brief remarks and then asked if Frank could possibly favor us with a song (the staff had moved the residence's baby grand onto a nearby side patio and had hired a pianist to be on standby just in case.)  I couldn't hear Frank, but he had the same look as when I asked him to sign the guest book earlier.  After a brief, awkward pause, Steve and Eydie got up and graciously agreed to do a couple of numbers.  The Sinatras left soon afterward, but the party moved inside and continued for some time afterward.

It was a pretty memorable evening for my wife and me, and all these years later I'm sorry to note that we didn't even get a mention in Kaplan's book.  

Enjoy the music!

Was Your Favorite Music Released When You Were 14 Years Old?

A couple of years ago, the New York Times ran an interesting piece by an economist who used data from Spotify to work out at what age we form our closest attachment to popular music.  By comparing the year of release for the songs to the age of the user, he determined that men most frequently play songs that were released when they were 13-16 years old.  For women, it was 11-14. 

The author concluded that we form our deepest and longest-lasting attachments to music when we are in our early teens, which is to say the age when most people go through puberty.  Makes sense to me.

I grew up in the 1970s.  I went to junior high, high school, and college all in the 70s.  According to the article in the Times, the years when I would have been forming my closest attachments to music were 1970-1973, when I was 13-16 years old.  If, before I read the Times study, you had asked me to pick my favorite period for popular music, I would have guessed roughly 1965-1975, which seems to be the time frame for the albums I have listened to the most over the last 45-50 years.  My guess would overlap and be consistent with the results of the Times study.

However, I don't stream songs, I listen to records.  And I think about my favorite music in terms of albums and groups rather than individual songs.  So it might be more instructive to look at my LP collection and see what it says about my favorite years for music.  

The database that I use to catalog my LPs (Orange CD) allows me to search by year of release.  If the Times article is correct, we might predict that I would have more albums that came out in the years 1970-1973 than any others.  Based on the number of records by year of release, here are the top 12 years in my collection and the number of albums I have for each year:

1977 - 260
1973 - 251
1971 - 247
1972 - 245
1970 - 230
1976 - 223
1967 - 209
1969 - 209
1978 - 209
1966 - 204
1974 - 191
1975 - 190

As it turns out, my guess of 1965-1975 was pretty close, even though my collection seems to skew a little more toward 1966-1976 or 1967-1977.  In any case, 1970-1973, which the Times article suggested would be my favorite years, are four of the top five years in my collection.  As they used to say on the TV show Mythbusters, the Times's theory is "confirmed."

While I was reading about how and when we form attachments to music, I came across some other studies that say that even though the early teen years are most crucial in forming our musical preferences, people generally continue following and discovering new music until their early 30s.  After that, most people pretty much just listen to whatever they liked before then for the rest of their lives.  If that is accurate, it would suggest that for me, I wouldn't be very interested in music released after about 1990, when I turned 33.  As it happens, that's just when the LP essentially disappeared from the market, replaced by cassettes and CDs.  So it's hard to draw any real conclusions by counting albums in my collection from those years.  However, a bunch of music from the 90s and later has now been reissued on vinyl, and it's telling that out of the 6,000 plus albums I own, only about 200 are albums of new music released after 1990.  And most of those are albums by artists I have been following since the 70s, such as Tom Waits' Mule Variations from 1999, Joni Mitchell's Shine from 2007, or Bruce Springsteen's Western Stars, released in 2019.  Which is to say that I'm not discovering many new artists, just enjoying new music by the same artists that I have followed for decades.  I believe that the theory about when we stop discovering new music is also "confirmed," at least for me.


I hasten to add that it's not that I actively dislike music from the last three decades (well, some of it), it's rather that I just don't know much about it and don't have much interest in it.  A case in point is Nirvana's Nevermind, released in 1991 and listed as the 17th best album of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine.  I've listened to it a number of times trying to understand what the fuss is about, and I just don't get it.  I don't dislike it, it just does nothing for me.  But since so many people who know music think so highly of it, I believe it's just the case that I heard it too late to appreciate it.  Likewise with other top groups from the 90s and the 00s.  Some of the music is pleasant and well-crafted, but it doesn't resonate with me.

In fact, I can count on one hand the pop artists who debuted after 1990 that I listen to with any regularity.  Without looking, I can think of Diana Krall, Hiss Golden Messenger, The Explorers Club, Madeleine Peyreux, and um, let's see here, there must be another one.  Um, nope.

At the same time, my appreciation for music of the 50s and 60s -- all kinds of jazz and singers like Johnny Hartman, Sarah Vaughn, Sammy Davis Jr., and Anita O'Day -- has grown exponentially over the past 20 years, well past the age when I should be discovering and enjoying "new" music.  Maybe it's like when younger people today say that they love the Stones or the Dead; there is some kind of a loophole for developing an attachment to music that was created before our early teens.  Discuss.

At any rate, the various articles I found online have answered a lot of questions for me.  I think it's true that most of us form our closest emotional bonds with music during our early teen years.  Beyond that, we have about a 15 year window when our brains are still receptive to new music.  After that, I would say it's still possible to develop an appreciation for new music, but perhaps not the kind of emotional attachment that we have for the music of our youth.  Which explains why nearly everyone believes that "music was so much better when I was a kid."  Turns out it's true.

Enjoy the music!

DOL, Doxy, Vinyl Passion, Jazz Wax, PanAm, Wax Time - Listening Test Part 2

My blog from January 2019 about the many European public domain labels reissuing classic jazz albums was one of the most popular pieces I have posted.  It continues to get numerous hits, as apparently lots of people still have questions about the quality of these reissues.

Over the past year I have added quite a few more public domain titles to my collection.  So I thought it might be useful to do another round of listening tests to see if my initial impressions are still accurate.  

In my previous post I went into quite a bit of detail about the legality and morality of public domain recordings, so I won't repeat any of that here.  However, I will note that since I last checked, I've found five more public domain labels: Spellbound, Wax Love, Matchball Records, Spiral Records and Del Ray Records.  The latter two are both spin-offs of the Barcelona-based WaxTime Records.  WaxTime's stable now includes the lion's share of the public domain labels, including, in addition to Spiral and Del Ray, Jazz Classics, Jazz Wax, Pan Am, Vinyl Lovers, and WaxTime.  I don't know why they keep creating more labels -- there must be some marketing or legal reasons.  I would note that Del Ray Records is not a jazz label per se, but is reissuing vintage vocal records by artists such as Ray Charles, Connie Francis, and Nat King Cole.  Several of the other public domain jazz labels have also added some early rock, blues, and vocal titles.

The Shootout, Part 2

I have selected ten more reissues and compared them to licensed digital copies of the same album.  It would be really interesting to compare the public domain reissues to original vinyl releases, but the whole point of buying public domain releases (at least for me) is that they allow me to own mint vinyl copies of rare and expensive jazz albums that would be extremely hard to find and nearly impossible to afford.

As before, I list the public domain label, catalog number, artist, and title.  Following that in parentheses are the label, catalog number, year, and country (if not the US) for each of the CDs I used for comparison.  

Matchball 29015, Billie Holiday, Lady In Satin (mono);
(Columbia CK 65144, 1997)

Like the Jazz Images label, Matchbox uses alternative cover art.  The CD has more air, more separation, and more high-end definition, particularly in the strings.  The top end is smoothed off on the vinyl, and the strings sound like they are glued together. Holiday's voice is clearer and more natural-sounding on the CD.  Holiday's wispy phrasing is a bit too burnished on the vinyl.  I'll take the CD.

WaxTime 500 408735, Wynton Kelly, Someday My Prince Will Come; (Vee Jay - NVJ2-902, 1992)

This is released on the WaxTime 500 sublabel, which claims to be "strictly limited" to only 500 copies.  This is a great-sounding LP. It has wonderful tone and texture. The piano sounds natural and analog. The soundstage is superb, the rhythm section is tight and in the pocket.  It sounds like a high-end US audiophile repressing.  The CD, by comparison, is tinny and etched.  The vinyl is a no brainer.

Pan Am Records 9152290, Jim Hall Trio, The Complete "Jazz Guitar"; (Pacific Jazz TOCJ-9318, 2001 Japan)

Interestingly, there at least three public domain versions of this on Pan Am, WaxTime, and Jazz Images.  Level-matched and switching back and forth with the CD in my listening chair, I couldn't reliable say which version was which. Jim Hall's guitar sounds extremely natural and vibrant, with excellent definition and separation. Oddly enough, the LP has just a hair more high-end.  Vinyl me, please.

Spiral Records 8105260, Oscar Peterson Trio, On The Town (mono); (Verve 314 543 834-2, 2001)

This is another A/B comparison where I really can't hear any difference.  Peterson's piano sounds natural and has great dynamics from the whispered trills to the solid bass notes.  Peterson's humming accompaniment and the light background tinkling of glasses in this live recording from Toronto's Town Tavern makes you feel like you're sitting right down front.  Get the LP since it has a bonus track,   


Jazz Wax JWR 4591, Nat King Cole, Welcome To The Club;
(Audio Fidelity AFZ-153, 2013)

The hybrid SACD was remastered by Steve Hoffman, and the stereo layer is fabulous.  But, wow,  so is the sound on the LP.  On both, the soundstage is wide and deep and the horns are just perfect, alternatively sweet and brassy.  The bass on the CD is a little tighter and more defined, but Nat's voice on the LP seems to have the slightest bit more texture.  A toss-up, but the vinyl has a bonus track.

DOL 810, Clifford Brown Memorial Album;
(Blue Note RVG Edition 7243 5 32141 2 8, 2001)

Compared to the CD, the vinyl sounds anemic -- thin with no bottom end.  Switching back and forth on the cut Hymn Of The Orient, Art Blakey's kick drum just about disappears on the LP, and Brown's trumpet loses its luster.  No contest.  The Blue Note RVG CD remasters were not universally well received, but this one sounds very fine to me.  Plus the CD has extensive new liner notes and a bunch of bonus tracks and alternate takes. No contest.

Jazz Workshop JW-069, Blue Mitchell, Blue's Moods;
(Riverside Records - VICJ-61057, 2003, Japan)

These both sound outstanding, with realistic texture and a great analog feel. The CD is a Japanese XRCD copy and sounds as close to analog as any CD I have.  Still, the feel of Roy Brooks's stick on the snare and Sam Jones's finger on the bass strings seems the slightest bit more "right in front of you" on the vinyl.  No bonus tracks, but you do get the fabulous 12" photo of Mitchell on the cover. 

Vinyl Passion VP-80803, The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson, Vols 1 & 2; (Blue Note RVG Edition 7243 5 32143 2 6, 2001)

If these two aren't mastered from the same source, I'll eat my hat.  I literally cannot tell these apart.  OK, the vinyl sounds a bit more analog -- because it is!  And honestly, what it really sounds like is a digital file that's been cut to vinyl.  Once again this RVG Edition CD sounds fine to me.  However, the Vinyl Passion release is a double LP with both volumes for the same price.  Fugetaboutit, get the vinyl.

DOL 978HG, Muddy Waters, Folk Singer;
(HD Tracks 24-192 digital download, 2016)

This acoustic Muddy Waters set is so intimate that if you close your eyes it feels like you're in the studio. It doesn't seem like a fair fight to compare a public domain reissue to the stunningly good HD Tracks 24-192 digital download.  And yet, the vinyl only loses by a hair, with ever so slightly less air.  On the other hand, the vinyl has a "Deluxe Gatefold" jacket (the original did not) with extra studio photos. There are five bonus tracks. My recommendation: get both.

Vinyl Lovers 6785432, Chet Baker, Quartet: Russ Freeman Chet Baker; (Mosaic Records, MD3-122, 1987)

Wow, what a great band!  Leroy Vinnegar on bass and Shelly Manne on drums round out the quartet.  The digital copy I have is the 1987 Mosaic Records 3-CD set of The Complete Pacific Jazz Studio Recordings with Russ Freeman.  This session dates from November 6, 1956.  I would wager that the 1987 Mosaic remaster is the digital source for the LP.  The two sound identical to me.  If you are a Chet fan, the Mosaic box set's extensive notes and session information are a goldmine, but you don't get the great original cover. 

Conclusions

I now have about 50 public domain titles.  With a couple of exceptions, they are all pressed by GZ Media (formerly gzvinyl) in the Czech Republic on 180-gram vinyl.  Not one of the titles is warped, off-center, or has any surface noise to speak of.  In terms of quality control, GZ is head and shoulders above all but the top few audiophile pressing plants in the U.S.  Whatever sources the public domain labels are using, almost all of them are clean, quiet, and well-mastered.  (There are a few clunkers that are compressed and just plain bad-sounding, but only a few.)  The album art (or alternative art) on all of them is nicely reproduced on quality stock.  Many of the albums have bonus tracks which are not on the original pressings.  Nearly all of the albums include a nice poly-lined dust sleeve.  Copies are readily available at many retailers and from Discogs and Ebay sellers.  I am paying anywhere from $12-16 per LP (2021 update -- more like $20-25 now).  

The vast majority of the public domain titles that I have purchased are produced using Direct Metal Mastering (DMM).  DMM (as the name suggests) cuts the source directly to a copper disk, eliminating a couple of the steps needed to turn a lacquer disk into a stamper.  You can read more about the process and lots of discussion of the pros and cons of DMM online.  I'm almost certain I could not reliably guess which process was used by listening to a random record.  In my experience, DMM records tend to have a slightly more pronounced and detailed high end.  Purists would say that DMM sacrifices some of the warmth of vinyl, making LPs sound somewhat more digital.  Like most people over 60, I can't hear much above 12-14kHz anyway, so I find a little high-end boost to be a good thing.  To my ears, even LPs created with Direct Metal Mastering sound warmer and more pleasing than digital copies. 

The bottom line is that I continue to believe that public domain reissues are a good value.  And while it's instructive to compare these reissues to digital files, the real test for me is that when I'm listening to a public domain LP, I almost never find myself wishing I had a better-sounding copy.

Enjoy the music!

The Treasures of Xanadu - Hidden Gems On Small Jazz Labels

Once you have a modest collection of albums -- let's say five or six thousand -- including nearly every essential work by nearly every essential jazz and rock artist (at least the ones you like), what do you buy next?  

As my collection has grown, I have reached a point where there aren't many gaps left to fill in my core collection.  For my favorite groups, like the Beatles or The Beach Boys, that means I have just about every note they ever recorded, including obscure outtakes and live recordings, home demos, and newly-issued remasters.  For other rock and jazz artists like The Rolling Stones and Miles Davis, I have copies of all the albums that I like.  I am never going to buy a copy of Dirty Work or Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, because even if I owned them I'd never listen to them.  (Ditto for Dylan's Knocked Out Loaded and Down In The Groove.)  Of course, your mileage may vary.

Let's see: got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, and got it.

 

Since there aren't a lot of essential recordings I'm still looking for, I've spent a lot of time in the last few years upgrading my collection: swapping out VG albums for Near Mint, buying newly-remastered audiophile releases to go with my original copies, or maybe picking up a first pressing to replace a latter reissue.  But there is a limit to this as well, since continually buying the same album in the hopes of finding a slightly better sounding version is why I have eight (count 'em) copies of Steely Dan's Aja. 

A more rewarding option is finding new artists that I somehow overlooked or missed the first time around.  I've written about some of these in previous blogs - including singer songwriters like Jim Sullivan, John Stewart, and Tom Jans, all of whom I have really enjoyed listening to and learning more about.

When it comes to jazz artists, there are exponentially more talented and inventive musicians who I haven't really explored properly.  For every Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, or Stan Getz (who between them probably sold 25% of all the jazz albums in the 50s and 60s) there are countless other brilliant players who toiled away in relative obscurity, gigging in clubs, hopping in and out of big bands, sitting in on other artists' sessions, or recording background music for TV shows and advertising jingles in Los Angeles and New York studios to make ends meet.  

But thanks to a few discerning producers and a handful of intrepid record labels (who, let's face it, couldn't afford the big names anyway), some of these lesser know musicians occasionally got a chance to step into the spotlight and lead a session or two.  And the resulting music is often every bit as compelling as anything the big names put out.

Lately I've been buying a lot of albums by these lesser-known artists on labels like Pablo, Concord Jazz, Pacific Jazz, Palo Alto Records, Chiaroscuro, Milestone, Muse, and Inner City.  Some of the artists include Hampton Hawes, Joe Venuti, Frank Foster, Barry Harris, Al Cohn, Jimmy Raney, Zoot Sims, Ray Bryant, Red Rodney, Frank Wess, Ira Sullivan, Kenny Barron, Terry Gibbs, and Dolo Coker.  And while they are far from unknown, none of these artists would be high on the list of top-selling or best-loved jazz musicians.

With that in mind, a few weeks ago I got an email from a record dealer in New York state saying that he had found a stash of new old stock (NOS) Xanadu Records from the 1970s and 80s, and did I want some?  I had heard of Xanadu, but a quick check of my database showed that I didn't own any albums on the label.  So I did a little research on the Interwebs.

Don Schlitten

Xanadu Records was founded by record executive/producer Don Schlitten.  According to his Wikipedia bio, Schlitten was born in 1932.  By 1955, at the tender age of 23, he co-founded his first record label, Signal, which recorded artists such as Duke Jordan, Gigi Gryce, and Red Rodney.  When Savoy Records bought out Signal in the late 1950s, Schlitten spent most of the next decade working as a freelance producer, including leading a number of sessions for Prestige Records.  Prestige eventually hired him as Vice President and Art Director in the late 60s.  In 1972, he and fellow Prestige executive Joe Fields left the label to found Cobblestone Records, a small jazz imprint that released some quality Sonny Stitt LPs among its otherwise rather limited output.  In the next few years, Schlitten and Fields went on to found Muse Records and Onyx Records.

In 1975, after Fields bought him out, Schlitten started his own label, Xanadu Records (inspired apparently by the name of the fictional mansion in Orsen Wells' film Citizen Kane, itself loosely based on newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst's palatial estate, Hearst Castle, in San Simeon, CA.)  Over the next decade, Schlitten released more than 200 albums on the Xanadu label.  The list of artists is a who's who of musicians that sound sort of familiar, but who you really can't place, including Al Cohn, Barry Harris, Charles McPherson, Mickey Tucker, Sam Most, Frank Butler, Ronnie Cuber, and Sam Noto.

Schlitten seems to have taken inspiration from Norman Granz's Pablo label (founded two years earlier, in 1973), in that he focused on straight ahead bebop, using a stable of in-house musicians who often played on each others' sessions and toured together.  Just like Granz did for his Pablo releases, Schlitten took the pictures and designed the covers for his Xanadu albums.  Both labels featured stark black and white cover photos taken in the studio during the recording sessions.  And not to get too carried away, but also like Granz, Schlitten wrote many of the liner notes for his albums.

After some research, I picked out 10 Xanadu titles that looked promising and sent in my order.  I received the records a few days ago, and while I haven't listened to all of them yet, so far I can say that these are extremely well recorded albums with great performances.  And since they are original stock from the 70s and 80s, they are all-analog pressings.  Of the ones I've opened, all but one were cut by Joe Brescio at The Master Cutting Room in NYC.  (The other was mastered by John Matousek at Bell Sound Studios, NYC.)  The sound on all of them is superb.

It's always a treat to discover great music by previously unfamiliar artists.  I've still got a few albums to go, but so far the releases by trumpeter Sam Noto have been by a huge revelation for me.  Based on some enthusiastic online reviews, I took a flyer and bought all four of his Xanadu albums, released between 1975-78.  I am pretty sure I had never heard of Noto before buying these albums.  Talk about your journeyman jazz players.  The excellent liner notes on Noto's debut album, Entrance! (Xanadu 103), tell the story of a trumpet prodigy from Buffalo, NY, who at 14 years of age had his mind blown by recordings of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.  He dropped out of high school and spent most of the 50s and 60s picking up gigs and traveling with a succession of big bands, including stints with Louis Belson, Stan Kenton, and Count Basie.  In 1969, he moved to Las Vegas where he played in show bands so he could earn a steady pay check to support his family.  It wasn't until 1975, when Noto was 45 years old, that he finally got his big break:  After years of cajoling, the great trumpeter Red Rodney, who had heard Noto play in Vegas, finally convinced his old friend Don Schlitten, who just happened to have a brand new record label, to get Noto in the studio to record his first album.

The rest of course is history, as Noto went on to become the biggest-selling trumpeter in jazz history.  Yeah, right.  I don't know how many albums Noto sold, but I know it wasn't nearly as many as he deserved to.  Which is a crying shame, because as music writer Phil Nyhuis points out in this excellent portrait of Noto: "Like Clifford Brown, one of his inspirations, Noto's jazz solos possess effortless technical mastery, a flawless sense of time, an endless supply of musical ideas, and a haunting, burnished sound."  As of this writing, Noto is happily still with us and living in Buffalo. 

The moral of the story is that no matter how many records you have, there is almost no end of wonderful music left to discover.  If you're looking for some compelling hard bop played with style and substance, check out Sam Noto and Xanadu Records.

Enjoy the music!

The Great American Songbook, Produced By Norman Granz

I suspect that most music fans (at least of a certain age) are familiar with the classic "Song Book" series that Ella Fitzgerald recorded with producer Norman Granz on the Verve label in the late 1950s and early 1960s. 

These are without question the definitive interpretations of the standard American song catalog.  As Ira Gershwin guipped, "I didn't know how good our songs were until I heard Ella sing them." 

The eight albums that Granz and Ella released are:

-Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book (1956)
-Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers & Hart Song Book (1956)
-Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book (1957)
-Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book (1958)
-Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George And Ira Gershwin Song Book (1959)
-Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Song Book (1961)
-Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jerome Kern Song Book (1964)
-Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Johnny Mercer Song Book (1964)

Ella's recordings of the works of these great songwriters did more than any other performer to define what would become known as "The Great American Songbook."  If that seems obvious today, it was extraordinary in the context of race relations in America in the 1950s and 60s.  As Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote in his 1996 obituary of Ella Fitzgerald, she "performed a cultural transaction as extraordinary as Elvis's integration of white and African-American soul.  Here was a black woman popularizing urban songs often written by immigrant Jews to a national audience of predominantly white Christians." 

As extraordinary as Ella's songbook series was, it was at best the third songbook series.  The first appears to have been recorded by Lee Wiley, a popular, sultry-voiced singer, who, in 1939, released an album of four 78s with eight songs by George and Ira Gershwin.  She followed up with collections of 78s by Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Harold Arlen, Vincent Youmans, and Irving Berlin.  The last two, which appeared in the early 50s, were issued on 10" LPs.  

I have no idea if legendary producer, jazz impresario, label owner, and civil-rights pioneer Norman Granz was inspired by Lee Wiley.  But in 1952, he began to produce and record a series of "songbook" albums with the Oscar Peterson Trio.  Backed by Barney Kessel or Herb Ellis on guitar and Ray Brown on bass, Peterson's interpretations of the works of the giants of American song are a tour de force.  From 1952-1955, Granz released 10 "Peterson Plays" LPs on his Clef label.  Original copies of the albums tend to be expensive and/or hard to find in good condition. However, a few of the titles are available as reissues. 

Fun fact: Canadian Oscar Peterson was "discovered" by Norman Granz in the summer of 1949 during Granz's visit to Montreal to set up a concert by his group of traveling jazz all-stars, known as "Jazz At The Philharmonic" (JATP).  Grantz was so impressed by the young pianist that he arranged to bring him to New York to be a "surprise" guest at a JATP concert at Carnegie Hall in September.  Peterson was an immediate hit, and within a few months, he was one of the stars of the JATP show.  

Another fun fact: JATP stalwart and Oscar Peterson Trio bassist Ray Brown was married to Ella Fitzgerald from 1947-1953.

Barely a year after the last LP in the Clef Records "Peterson Plays" series hit the stores in early 1955, Granz was back in the studio to start what would turn out to be by far the most important of the songbook series releases -- Ella Fitzgerald's eight-album masterpiece.  With this series, not only did Granz cement Ella's reputation as the greatest singer in the history of American popular music, he also created what would turn out to be the definitive account of the golden era of of American song.  Fun fact: By 1956, when the first of Ella's songbook albums was released, Granz had created a new label called Verve Records.  Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book (MG V-4001-2) was the first album released on the new Verve label.

Astonishingly, Granz wasn't yet done with the American songbook.  In 1957, he took the Oscar Peterson Trio back into the studio to start another series!  To change things up a bit, Granz replaced the guitar in Peterson's trio with drummer Ed Thigpen.  (If you hear a selection from one of the Peterson songbook albums and don't know which series it's from, listen to whether it has a guitar or drums.)

From 1957 to 1961, Granz released nine albums in the second "Oscar Peterson Plays" song book collection.  If you're counting, that's 19 Oscar Peterson LPs of the American songbook.  All of Ella Fitzgerald's song book releases were double albums except for Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer.  Her Gershwin songbook ultimately totaled five LPs.  I'm no good at math, but between Fitzgerald and Peterson, Granz produced nearly 40 albums of music from the American songbook.

But wait, there's more!  In 1952 Granz convinced Fred Astaire to record a four-album career retrospective, including many of the classic songs Astaire had introduced on Broadway or in his hit movies.  The set was titled The Astaire Story, and while it wasn't billed as a songbook album per se, the vast majority of the songs are by Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Jerome Kern.  The collection was released as a signed, limited edition box set by Mercury Records in 1953.  Fun fact: Granz already had the Oscar Peterson Trio (Peterson, Barney Kessel and Ray Brown) in the studio recording Peterson's first songbook series.  So Granz used them as the backing band for Astaire's sessions, adding Alvin Stoller on drums, Flip Phillips on tenor sax, and Charlie Shavers on trumpet.

Bottom line: While Ella deservedly gets credit for her definitive interpretation of the songbook, if anyone ever asks you who invented "The Great American Songbook," the answer is Norman Granz.

Postscript: By the mid 60s, rock 'n' roll had just about killed off jazz, but the American songbook was alive and well.  In addition to nearly every popular vocalist of the 60s and 70s -- from Sinatra to Streisand -- a number of rock 'n' roll stars have had a go at the standards.  The growing list includes Ringo Star, Harry Nilsson, Carly Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Brian Ferry, Boz Scaggs, Willie Nelson, Paul McCartney, and Rod Stewart.

Enjoy the music!