How Did I Miss These Guys?

While I collect and listen to just about every kind of music, more than half of the 4,500 albums in my collection are classic rock from the 60s and 70s. It's the music I grew up with, and the music that still resonates must strongly with me. I have at least one copy (and sometimes four or five) of every album made by the Beatles, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, The Allman Brothers, CSNY, Steely Dan, The Band, The Who, and so on. I also have an extensive collection of albums by great niche artists from the same era, like Tim Buckley, Ry Cooder, Bert Jansch, Judee Sill, Delaney and Bonnie, Roy Buchanan, Captain Beefheart, Nick Drake, Fotheringay, Arlo Guthrie, Tim Harden, Leo Kottke, Love, Tim Moore, Fred Neil, Laura Nyro, Shawn Phillips, Stan Rogers, Valdy, Paul Siebel, Bobby Whitlock, and Claudia Schmidt, just to name a few.

I mention all this because it's not all that often that I run across a terrific singer from the 60s or 70s that I've never heard of. And when I do, I always think, "How the heck did I miss this guy?" In the last few weeks I picked up about 50 $1 albums from a couple of different stores. When I'm looking through $1 albums, I'll grab just about anything that isn't beat to crap and looks halfway interesting. Included in this latest haul were a couple of jewels by two singers I don't think I've ever heard of. The first was the 1975 release The Eyes Of An Only Child by Tom Jans.

The copy I found is a promo copy with a DJ strip on the front that lists the tracks. The vinyl is NM, while the jacket is only VG. The cover photo was interesting enough that I would have bought it anyway, but what sold me was seeing in the credits on the back that the great Lowell George wrote one song and produced and played guitar on a couple of others. Among the session musicians on the album are Jeff Porcaro and Jim Keltner on drums, David Lindley and Jesse Ed Davis on guitar, and Bill Paine (of Little Feat) on piano, and Valerie Carter on backing vocals. Good grief, talk about an all-star band! These folks couldn't make a bad album if they tried. 

And clearly they didn't. This is a terrific album, Jans' second, recorded at L.A.'s Sunset Sound Studios. I'd classify it as folk/rock or California rock. It has amazing lyrics, great tunes, and incredible playing. Back to the cover photo: It was taken by noted photographer Ethan Russell who also shot the covers for the Beatles' Let It Be and The Who's Quadrophenia, among many others.

According to Discogs, Eyes Of An Only Child has not been reissued on vinyl, and was only issued on CD in Japan. My copy is on a white Columbia promo label with the CBS "eyes" around the rim in black. It was mastered by Artisan Sounds in Hollywood and pressed at Columbia's Santa Maria, CA plant. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for other albums by Jans.

Behind Door Number 2

The other great find in my $1 album haul is the 1969 release California Bloodlines by singer/songwriter John Stewart. Once again, the style is folk/rock, shading toward country/rock. 

If the name John Stewart rings a bell (it didn't with me), it may be because from 1961-67 he was a member of the second iteration of the Kingston Trio. When the Trio disbanded in 1967, Stewart pursued a career as a singer/songwriter. He hit pay dirt almost immediately with his song "Daydream Believer," which The Monkees took to number one on the charts in December of 1967. (No, I did not remember that.) In 1968, while working on Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign, Stewart met and married folk singer Buffy Ford. They put out one album as a duet before Stewart turned to recording as a solo artist. California Bloodlines was his first solo album. 

The album was produced by the legendary Nick Venet, a credit that once again was enough to convince to invest a dollar. Venet was the 21-year-old A&R wunderkind at Capital Records who signed and later produced The Beach Boys, among many other great artists. For California Bloodlines, Venet took Stewart to Nashville to record with some of the city's hottest pickers. In fact, many of the Nashville cats who play on California Bloodlines also show up on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album. In his review of California Bloodlines, music critic Thom Jurek writes that "The songs are romantic visions of people and places that come out of a present which is already in the past and a past inhabited by ghosts. His portraits of spirits are made nearly flesh in his songs, which are ambitious lyrically if not musically." 

Yeah, whatever. This is a great, great album. My copy is a genuine NM/NM. It looks like it was never played. It's on the Capitol rainbow label (like the early Beatles albums) and was pressed at Capitol's Los Angeles plant. Once again, I'll be looking for more John Stewart albums in the future.

My advice is to keep your eyes peeled when you're looking through the $1 bins -- and enjoy the music!

Leo Meiersdorff - Jazz Painter

A few years ago I picked up a collaboration by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis called Consummation. The album was recorded in January and May of 1970 at A&R Studios in New York. Scott Yanow in his AllMusic review calls it the best of the Jones/Lewis collaborations: "The all-star cast (which includes flugelhornist Jones, drummer Lewis, trumpeter Marvin Stamm, trombonist Jimmy Knepper, tenor great Billy Harper, the reeds of Jerome Richardson, Jerry Dodgion and Eddie Daniels, keyboardist Roland Hanna, and bassist Richard Davis, among others) is well served by Thad Jones' inventive and swinging arrangements. A classic." The album was released on Blue Note, catalog number BST 84346. My copy is a clean VG+.

And while the music is fine -- straight ahead, ensemble jazz with nice orchestrations -- what really attracted me to the album was the cover. I love the wonderful watercolor painting of Thad and Mel. It seems to capture the essence of jazz in its bright colors and angular lines. The art on the gatefold jacket actually wraps around, and the back side (at left) includes more of the band. The credits on the inside of the jacket indicate that the illustrations are by "Meiersdorff." I was curious about the artist and jumped on the Interwebs to find out more.  

Leo Meiersdorff was born in Germany in 1934. After the war, his family moved to Berlin, where he finished high school. Although his family objected, Leo decided to pursue a career in art. He financed his studies by working on fishing trawlers in the North Sea and as a merchant seaman. In the 1950s, back in Berlin, Meiersdorff began to follow the many American jazz bands that were playing in Europe. At some point, he entered a contest to design the cover for a jazz album being recorded in Berlin by the famed American record producer Norman Granz. Meiersdorff won the contest, and the rest is history. 

Well, not quite. In the late 50s and early 60s, Meiersdorff traveled to the U.S. where he met fellow artists and became more immersed in the jazz scene in New York and L.A. In 1966, Meiersdorff moved permanently to New York to seek his fortune as an artist. While experimenting with expressionistic canvases and large mixed-media works, Meiersdorff hung out at jazz clubs and began to make friends with some of the musicians. He began sketching the artists and painting pictures of jazz groups. The musicians liked his work, and his reputation spread. Soon, Meiersdorff was making a name for himself as a "jazz" painter, designing backdrops for TV programs and album covers for various labels.

Over the last couple of years, I have found two more albums with covers by Meiersdorff, both on the Chiaroscuro label.

Chiaroscuro Records was founded by producer Hank O'Neal and former jazz musician Edwin Ashcraft III. In a fascinating bit of musical history, O'Neal and Ashcraft met in the 1950s when they both worked at the CIA. Ashcraft, who had been a fairly well-known jazz musician in the 20s and 30s, was by now the Director of the Office of Operations and was heavily involved in the CIA's investigations of UFOs! At the time they first met, O'Neal was apparently a junior recruit. Years later, in 1964, the two would team up to begin the Chiarosucro record company, a budget outfit with the aim of recording older jazz musicians who had fallen off the radar in the era of hard bop.

The top cover is a 1972 release by an all-star lineup including Eddie Condon on guitar, Wild Bill Davison on cornet, and Gene Krupa on drums. It's a one-off jam session put on for students at the New School in New York City. Hank O'Neal is the producer.

The second album is a 1970 release by cornetist Bobby Hackett. It was recorded during a two-month residence at the Roosevelt Grill in New York in April and May of 1970. Once again, the producer is Hank O'Neal.

Anyway, back to Meiersdorff. In 1970, he moved to New Orleans and opened his own gallery. Once there, his style became brighter and much more commercial (see the example below). After all, he was trying to catch the eye of the tourists who wanted to take home a nice souvenir of the Big Easy. As a chronicler of the food and music scene in New Orleans, he was a huge success. Before he died in 1994, Meiersdorff had become enormously popular and had sold thousands and thousands of prints of his work.

About a year ago I got the idea that it would be nice to own an original Meiersdorff painting. While his New Orleans work is colorful and fun, I prefer his paintings from the 60s in New York, when he was immersed in the jazz scene there, sketching musicians. I did some research online, and soon found a number of his paintings for sale at galleries, Ebay, and on an official website that markets some of his work. Meiersdorff originals are not cheap, and much of what is available is from his New Orleans period. However, after some months of searching, I found a New York painting available at an online auction site. I made a successful offer, and am now the proud owner of this 1967 original watercolor by Leo Meiersdorff (below). It would be fun to know if the musicians are based on any particular artists. But a trademark of his New York style is that the musicians' faces are never clearly visible. I like to think that he sketched my painting while sitting in a smoky club listening to a hot jam session. 

Enjoy the music (and the art)!

50 Year Old Sealed Copy Of Stan Getz's "Sweet Rain" LP

Sweet Rain

Stan Getz

1967, mono

Verve V-8693

Wow, it doesn't get any better than this. A couple of days ago, while going through some LPs at an antiques store not too far from my home, I came across a sealed copy of the 1967 Verve release Sweet Rain by tenor sax great Stan Getz. Think about that. This record has been sitting somewhere for 50 years, perfectly preserved in its original shrink wrap. The price was a steal at $30 (a sealed copy sold for $239 on Ebay in 2013), so I brought it home. I know that some people like to leave the open shrink wrap on their records, but since I store all my albums in poly outer sleeves, I always remove the shrink. Plus it's a gatefold album, and there would be no way to read the liner notes and other info inside if I didn't remove the plastic. But before I did, I took a picture of the price sticker that was still on the back, which shows that the album had been marked down from its original release price of $4.79, to $1.98. Talk about a steal!

Wikipedia tells us that Getz was born in Philadelphia on February 2, 1927 (which makes it the 90th anniversary of his birth in just a couple of weeks). He was the grandson of Ukrainian immigrants who came to America in 1913. His parents moved the family to New York City to find work during the depression. While still a young boy, Getz showed great promise musically, and when he was 13, his father bought him a saxophone. He practiced eight hours a day, and showed such promise that he was accepted into the All City High School Orchestra.

In 1943, at the age of 16, Getz joined Jack Teagarden's band, and because of his youth, he became Teagarden's ward. Getz also played with Nat King Cole and Lionel Hampton. After playing for Stan Kenton, Jimmy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman, Getz was a soloist with Woody Herman's band  from 1947-1948. He gained wide attention as part of the band's saxophone section, which was collectively known as the "four brothers." One of the other "brothers" was Zoot Sims. Owing to his reputation with Herman's band, Getz was able to launch his solo career, and by 1950, he was leading his own recording sessions.  

Getz spent most of the second half of the 50s in Europe, honing his chops playing and recording with countless jazz greats, including Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith and Oscar Peterson. 

Back in the U.S. in 1961, Getz teamed up with Charlie Byrd and became a central figure in introducing Brazilian bossa nova music to the American audience. He recorded Jazz Samba in 1962, which won a Grammy for Best Jazz Performance and sold more than one million copies. He quickly followed up that album with Big Band Bossa Nova, and then Jazz Samba Encore! In 1963, Getz recorded the seminal album Getz/Gilberto with Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto and Gilberto's wife, singer Astrud Gilberto. The hit single from that album, "The Girl From Ipanema," won a Grammy and became one of the most popular Latin jazz tracks of all time. Two live albums, Getz/Gilberto Vol. 2 and Getz Au Go Go came out in 1964. Unfortunately, during this time Getz and Astrud Gilberto began having an affair, which put an end to his collaboration with Joao.

By the mid 60s, bossa nova was losing steam, so Getz moved back toward more traditional jazz. Which set the stage for his 1967 recording, Sweet Rain. In his review on AllMusic, Steve Huey says that Sweet Rain is "one of Getz's all-time greatest albums. Sweet Rain was his first major artistic coup after he closed the book on his bossa nova period. The album features an adventurous young group that pushed him to new heights in his solo statements." The all-star band was made up of pianist Chick Corea, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Grady Tate. Huey goes on to say that "Getz plays with a searching, aching passion throughout the date. . . The quartet's level of musicianship remains high on every selection, and the marvelously consistent atmosphere the album evokes places it among Getz's very best. A surefire classic." 

I couldn't have said it better myself, so I didn't even try. And to top it off, the sound of the Verve LP is stunning. But what would you expect from an album produced by the great Creed Taylor and mastered by Rudy Van Gelder? The session was recorded at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. on March 30, 1967. The engineer was the legendary Val Valentin. The labels have the classic Verve black and silver design which I call the "thumbtack" logo for obvious reasons. 

As you may recall if you read my earlier post about the Verve release of Anita O'Day, Verve Records was founded by Norman Granz in 1956. He sold the label to MGM Records in December of 1960, which is why the rim text at the bottom of the labels above reads: "MGM Records-A Division of Metro-Goldwin-Mayer, Inc. - Made in U.S.A." The vinyl is absolutely flawless, not a tick on either side. And the mono sound is fabulous. 

The inside left panel has credits and recording information.

The matrix info for the album is:

Side 1: V-8693 MG-944 32 VAN GELDER 1-8693
Side 2: V-8693 MG-945 15 VAN GELDER "S" (MGM stamp)

This is truly one of those holy grail finds that every record collector dreams of and that makes collecting so rewarding. Sure, I could have bought the CD online. But how can you compare a digital file to the experience of opening a 50-year-old record, seeing the inner sleeve with ads for contemporary LPs, reading the liner notes and credits, and then enjoying the amazing sound of vinyl. 

Enjoy the music! 

Joni Mitchell Retrospective - Part II

Next up on my look at the Joni Mitchell albums in my collection is her fourth album, and arguably her masterpiece, Blue, which was released in June, 1971. 

Blue, 1971

Blue is one of the most raw and revealing albums ever made, as Joni pours out her sorrow over lost love in the album's 10 songs. You can read the backstory on the internet, but the short version is that after breaking up with Graham Nash, Joni began a brief affair with James Taylor. After they broke up, Joni went to Europe to get away from it all. She fetched up on the Spanish island of Formentera, which in the 60s had become a hippy hangout. (There is an ongoing debate about whether Bob Dylan lived there for a time in a lighthouse (or maybe a windmill), occasionally showing up to play guitar in local bars.) Anyhoo, alone on the island with her guitar and a broken heart, Joni wrote most of the soul-baring songs that make up Blue. 

Blue, 1971 original pressing

Blue, 2009 remaster

Although it is clearly a brilliant album, every time I listen to it I feel like I'm eavesdropping on a painful conversation or reading a private entry in a diary. The music and lyrics are incredible, but it also makes me cringe a little. And the only song on the album that isn't about lost love is "Little Green," which Joni wrote several years earlier and is about the pain of giving up her daughter for adoption when she was a 21-year-old unwed mother in Canada. Oddly, "Little Green" has somehow become a modern Christmas classic, even though it is anything but uplifting. But I digress.


I own two copies of Blue. The first is an original 1971 release, which is still in VG++ condition, which is remarkable considering the state of my equipment back then. I suspect that my not playing it all that often is what saved it. My copy has the initials BG on the deadwax, indicating that the lacquer was cut by the great Bernie Grundman. Needless to say, the sound is fabulous. 

My second copy of Blue is the 2009 Rhino Vinyl remaster. Like the Rhino remaster of Ladies of the Canyon, they did a wonderful job. It is pressed on dead flat 180-gram vinyl with a heavyweight replica jacket and blue dust sleeve. The Rhino reissue was remastered by Kevin Gray and Steve Hoffman, two more audio legends, so once again the sound is fantastic. 

Here are the matrix numbers on the two releases:

-Original 1971 release:

Side 1: MS-2038 31218 (RE-2) - 2 BG A5 P
Side 2: MS-2038 31219 (RE-2) BG C P

Mastered by Bernie Grundman
Pressed by Columbia Records, Pittman, NJ

-2009 Rhino Vinyl remaster:

Side 1: MS-2038-A KPG&SH@ATM 14569.1(3)
Side 2: RHI-1-74842B KPG&SH@ATM 14569.2(3)

Remastered by Kevin Gray and Steve Hoffman at AcousTech Mastering
Pressed by Record Technology Incorporated, Camarillo, CA

Blue is the last of Joni's naval-gazing, confessional albums. And even though there is still plenty of soul searching on For The Roses, she also begins to turn her attention more to social and political issues. The shift is evident on the opening song on the album, "Banquet," which looks at the alienation of young people and the problem of poverty and income inequality. She poignantly writes: "Some get the gravy, and some get the gristle, some get the marrow bone, and some get nothing, though there's plenty to spare."

For the Roses, 1972

For The Roses, which was released in October, 1972, also marks a shift from the lean sound of Joni's solo guitar, dulcimer, or piano, toward fuller arrangements with more bass, drums, and supporting musicians. I still get a little thrill when I hear the tom-tom intro to the break in "Blonde In The Bleachers," and Joni sings: "You can't hold the hand of a rock 'n' roll man, very long, or count on your plans with a rock 'n' roll man, very long . . . "  Wow, Joni Mitchell rocking out!

For The Roses also marked one more change in Joni's career: She left Reprise and signed with Asylum Records, a label founded by her friend David Geffen in 1971. [Just an aside, "Free Man In Paris" from Court And Spark is about the workaholic Geffen and refers to a trip the two of them made to Paris along with Robbie Robertson and his wife. A Platonic trip presumably, since Geffen is gay.] 

I have three copies of For the Roses. Two are original 1972 releases, one of which I bought when it came out, and one that I picked up at a used record store about ten years ago, which is to say 35 years after I bought my first copy. Both are in VG++ condition. And the really weird thing is that both of them have the exact same matrix information. What are the odds? The third copy I have is a 1976 repressing, which I grade at VG+. The white Asylum label was only used for about a year, so it makes it easy to to date the release. The blue sky label was used from 1973 - 1984. 

1972 original pressing

1976 repressing

Here is the deadwax information:

-1972 original pressing #1:

Side 1: ST-AS-722647A  11T  PR
Side 2: ST-AS-722648A PR

Pressed by Presswell Records, Ancora, NJ

-1972 original pressing #2:

Side 1: ST-AS-722647A 11T  PR
Side 2: ST-AS-722648A PR

Pressed by Presswell Records, Ancora, NJ

-1976 repressing:

Side 1: SD 5057-A 0-1
Side 2: SD 5057-B 0-1

There is no indication in the matrix of who pressed the record, but from the size of the pressing rings on the label, I'm almost certain it was Specialty Records Company, Olyphant, PA


Which brings us to Joni's most commercially successful album, Court And Spark, which peaked at #2 on the Billboard chart. It's easily Joni's most upbeat album. And even if it's not all sunshine, there is at least a nice balance of hopefulness and angst. After five albums of introspection, unrequited love and melancholy, Court And Spark had a hopeful spirit and a welcome touch of whimsy.

Court And Spark, 1974

It's also a more mature, sophisticated album, both musically and lyrically. Engineer Henry Lewy recruited some of L.A.'s best session musicians to play on the disk, including Tom Scott's L.A. Express, The Jazz Crusaders, as well as old friends like Robbie Robertson, David Crosby and Graham Nash. There is even a cameo appearance by Cheech and Chong, for goodness sakes. 

I have two copies of Court And Spark. The first is an original 1974 copy, bought when it came out.  I played the heck out of it for years, so it's not in great shape, probably a VG at best. Interestingly, the labels on the first pressings all say 1973, though the official release date was January, 1974.  My second copy is the 2009 Rhino Vinyl remaster. And once again its a terrific reissue, with mastering by Chris Bellman. It is a beautiful sounding disk with warmth and amazing detail.

1974 Original pressing

2009 Rhino Vinyl reissue

-1974 original pressing:

Side 1: 7E 1001 A2  B  2
Side 2: 7E 1001 B  SX  0-1 S-M 1-2  A

Pressed by Columbia Records, Santa Maria, CA.

-2009 Rhino Vinyl reissue:

Side 1: R1-1001-A 18364.1(3) CB
Side 2: R1-1001-B 18364.2(3) CB

Remastered by Chris Bellman
Pressed by Record Technology Incorporated, Carmarillo, CA


Enjoy the music!

Joni Mitchell Retrospective - Part I

A young Roberta Joan Anderson

I've been a big fan of Joni Mitchell for just about as long as I can remember. The first album of hers that I bought was Ladies of the Canyon, which came out in 1970 when I was 13. My brother, who was two years older, had bought Clouds when it came out in 1969, so I was already familiar with her music. For a long time, Ladies of the Canyon remained my favorite Joni album. 

The reason I mention this is because we had a snowstorm a few days ago. And although it was only a few inches, it was enough to strand us indoors for a couple of days since we live on a very steep hill that never gets plowed. So I thought it would be a great time to take a look and listen to all the Joni Mitchell albums in my collection, which turns out to be exactly 30.

Song To A Seagull, 1968

Joni's debut album is titled Song To A Seagull, released in March, 1968. The album is usually just called Joni Mitchell since some of the seagulls spelling out Song To A Seagull in Joni's psychedelic cover painting were cut off in early pressings and are kind of hard to make out in any case. (In addition, Song To A Seagull is not printed on the spine or on the labels.) The album was released on Reprise Records, which was founded by Frank Sinatra in 1959 in order to give himself more artistic freedom. (Since he promptly sold the label to Warner Brothers in 1960, it must not have been as much fun as it sounded.) My copy of Song To A Seagull is a second pressing from 1970. The first pressing is on a two-toned orange/tan label which Reprise used from 1968-1970. In addition to the different colors, it is also distinguishable from their other label variations because it has the Warner Seven Arts logo (W7) in a small box beside the round Reprise Records logo at the top.

1968 first pressing

2nd pressing, 1970

In 1969, Warner Seven Arts was bought by the Kinney National Company, and the label was changed in 1970 to reflect that the parent company was now called Warner Brothers Records. The new label, used from 1970 to 1974, was changed to all orange (it looks more pumpkin-colored to me) and the W7 logo was dropped. The Reprise ":r" logo, which had been a tan circle, became an orange square without the word "reprise."  My copy is evidently an early reissue since it has the same matrix numbers as the original pressing:

Side 1: T 0 30753 RS6293A-1B  AB 13
Side 2: T 1 30754 RS6293B-1L  A

Pressed by Columbia Records at their Terre Haute, IN plant.

While my copy looks very clean, it has a number of ticks and some groove noise, no doubt caused by the cheap record player my brother and I used to listen to our albums. I would grade it a solid VG/VG. However, even if it were in better shape, this is just not a great-sounding album. Producer David Crosby had the bright idea of having Joni sing into an open grand piano, resulting in a rich, resonate sound, but also causing some high-level sympathetic string vibration that had to be filtered out later, along with most of the top end. (Which may be why the album has never been remastered.) That said, Stephen Still's bass on "Night In The City" is deep and punchy and the songs are terrific. I'll be looking for a cleaner copy at some point.

Clouds, 1969

Joni's second album is Clouds, released on Reprise Records in May, 1969. Like her first album, original pressings of Clouds are on the two-toned Reprise Records / Warner Seven Arts label. I have three copies of Clouds. One is an original 1969 pressing on the Warner Seven Arts label, one is a 1970 repressing on the solid pumpkin-colored label, and the third is a 1976 repressing. The 1976 label is identical to the 1970 label except it for the rim text at bottom. The 1970 label reads: Reprise Records, a Division of Warner Brothers Records, Inc., Made in U.S.A. The new label reads: Reprise Records, a division of Warner Brothers Records, Inc., 3300 Warner Blvd., Burbank, Calif. 91505, a Warner Communications Company, "W" logo, Made in U.S.A." The new "W" logo is commonly referred to as the sausage logo. This new rim text was first used in 1974 after a reorganization of Warner Brothers. The only other small change was the addition of an "R" in a circle beside the logo at the top to indicate that the orange Reprise ":r" logo was a registered trademark. 

Clouds, 1976 repressing

Post-1974 Reprise Records label with sausage logo.

My original 1969 copy is graded VG, while the repressings are both VG++. The original pressing has more surface noise, but the sound on all of them is great, with no significant differences in sound quality that I can hear. After the screw up with the sound on her first album, Joni produced Clouds herself with an assist from the great sound engineer Henry Lewy, who would go on to work on Joni's next 12 albums. Clouds has a wonderful natural tone and sounds excellent.

Here are the matrix numbers for my three copies:

-1969 original pressing:

Side 1: 30885 1S I
Side 2: 30886 1S I

Pressed by RCA Records, Indianapolis, IN

-1970 repressing:

Side 1: 30885 RS 6341 A RE1-1L (S) C17 1Ƨ
Side 2: 30885 RS 6341 B RE-1 1-C (S) F T1

Side 1 stamper was made for Columbia Records' Santa Maria, CA pressing plant, while the side 2 stamper was made for Columbia's plant in Terre Haute, IN. For some reason, one of the stampers was sent to the other plant.

-1976 repressing:

Side 1: RS-6341 30885 RE1 A2 P
Side 2: RS-6341 30886 C P

Pressed by Columbia Records, Pittman, NJ

Ladies of the Canyon, 1970

As I mentioned at the top, Joni's third album, Ladies of the Canyon has long been my favorite of her albums. (Although lately I've been leaning a little more toward The Hissing Of Summer Lawn.) But I have a confession to make. The first song on Ladies of the Canyon is "Morning Morgantown," which is rose-colored memory of the brief time that Joni spent studying in the city that houses the University of West Virginia back in 1966 or 67. From that song, I somehow got the idea that the "Canyon" in the title referred to the mountains of West Virginia, and that the whole album was a kind of reverie to Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia. I was an East Coast kid, so how was I to know that the West Hollywood suburb of Laurel Canyon had become the center of the musical universe in the late 60s? It was only many years later that I had a big "DUH" moment and realized the title referred to Laurel Canyon where Joni lived at the time with her boyfriend Graham Nash (inspiring Nash's song "Our House"), while hanging out and making music with neighbors Stephen Stills, David Crosby, Mama Cass, Peter Tork, Frank Zappa, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Jim Morrison, Roger McGuinn, and many others. I feel a little sheepish every time I play the record.

I have two copies of Ladies Of The Canyon. The first is my 1970 original pressing on the pumpkin-colored Reprise label. The album also appeared on the two-toned Reprise / Warner Seven Arts label, but since it came out the year that Reprise changed their labels, it was available on both labels from the start. The matrixes are the same.

1970 original pressing

2009 Rhino Vinyl remastering

My second copy is the 2009 remastering by Chris Bellman which was issued by Rhino Vinyl. It was beautifully pressed by Record Technologies Incorporated in Camarillo, CA on 180-gram vinyl. My original 1970 pressing is VG++ (almost NM) and sounds excellent. But the 2009 remastering is a whole other level of amazing -- hyper-real, but not in a clinical way, in a "Holy crap, Joni is sitting right there" kind of way. The timbre of every plucked guitar string, the texture of Milt Holland's brushed drums, every subtle expression in Joni's voice comes through. It's a stunner. Listening to this new version recently got me thinking that Ladies Of The Canyon might still be my favorite Joni album after all. It's certainly my favorite jacket, with a wonderful self-portrait line drawing combined with a watercolor (or colored marker?) drawing of the Canyon. On the back are a row of colorful geese. Rhino's re-issue comes in a heavyweight replica gatefold jacket. The vinyl has the 1970 pumpkin-colored Reprise label.

-1970 original pressing:

Side 1: RS-6376 30992 C3 P
Side 2: RS-6376 30993 B3 P

Pressed by Columbia Records, Pittman, NJ

-2009 Rhino Vinyl remastering:

Side 1: R1-6376-A CB 18397.1(3)
Side 2: R1-6376-B CB 18397.2(3)

Remastered by Chris Bellman
Pressed by Record Technology Incorporated, Camarillo, CA

More to come.

Enjoy the music!

First Pressings, Label Variations, and Scribblings in the Dead Wax

Part of the fun of collecting LPs is learning more about the history of each album, including information about the musicians who played on the session, the name of the producer(s) and engineer(s), who cut the master, which company pressed the vinyl, and whether the album is an original pressing or a re-issue. More often than not, you can find basic information on the back of the album cover or on the dust sleeve. But in order to get the full story, you usually have to dig a little deeper.

The first thing I generally want to know is whether the album is a first pressing or a re-issue. Collectors will pay huge sums to get their hands on an original Lexington Ave. Blue Note or a Beatles first Parlophone pressing. (An original stereo copy of the Beatles' Please Please Me, in decent condition, will easily fetch $5,000.) These albums are often valuable because they didn't press many copies of the first edition. And most are so old that's it's very difficult to find a copy in top condition. Many collectors and audiophiles also believe that earlier pressings sound better, since they are closer to the original master tape. You can find plenty of discussion of these topics on the internet.

I'm not usually interested in having a first edition just for its own sake. I collect music, not albums. And given the prices that original pressings command, I'd much rather have 10 or 20 later pressings for the same price as one original copy. In the case of the Beatles, for the cost of one original Please Please Me, you could buy both the recent stereo and mono remastered box sets, and have enough money left over to fly to London and take a photo of yourself in the crosswalk at Abbey Road. 

Bop Till You Drop

I'm also not a stickler for analog-only LPs. There are vinyl collectors who refuse to purchase an LP if there was a digital conversion anywhere in the processing chain. If a digitally-sourced album is well mastered and well pressed, it still sounds better than the original digital source to my ears. That said, I have a number of digital albums from the late 70s and early 80s (when the labels proudly promoted the fact that their LPs were "Digital") that sound terrible. I remember buying Ry Cooder's Bop Till You Drop LP when it came out in 1979. It was the first digitally-recorded LP released by a major label. At first, I thought it sounded amazing. It had a clarity and sharpness that was very different from normal LPs. Very quickly, however, that sharpness became tinny and incredibly annoying. Digital has come a long way since then, and well-produced LPs from digital sources can sound fine. 

In order to find out whether you have a first pressing or later release, the first place to check is Discogs. Though it is crowd-sourced and has some errors, it is still the biggest and best on-line database of recorded music. When you search for your LP, Discogs will show a list of releases and re-releases by year. For popular albums, it's not unusual to find more than 100 different versions, including different formats, re-pressings, and international pressings. For our purposes - vinyl - the differences in the releases can be very minor, such as a different pressing plant. Or the changes can be major, including a different title, different art on the label or jacket, the addition of bonus tracks, or a remastered version.

Because of all the different releases, it is often difficult to tell exactly which pressing you have. Helpfully, most Discogs entries have photos of the jackets and labels, which can narrow things down considerably. Changes in label design are a pretty reliable way to date your album. For example, Warner Brothers used a green label with an orange and blue WB shield logo from about 1970-1973, and then switched to what's known as the "Burbank" or "palm tree" label from 1973-1978. Lots of popular albums by the Doobie Brothers and Grateful Dead (just to name a couple of bands) came out originally on the green label, and were repressed on the Burbank label. However, it's not always so simple. There are entire books written about the minute label changes for Blue Note Records. 

One of the best sources of information about label design is the blog 
LondonJazzCollector. They guy who runs the site has posted great guides that document the changes in label design over the decades for most of the important labels. (LJC is also a gold mine of information about jazz LPs in general. The forums feature contributions from people who are extremely knowledgeable and passionate about jazz recordings.) Still, even after you've identified your particular release, you'll often need to examine subtle changes to the label and check the information in the dead wax to find out more. 

Bell Sound Mastering Lab, New York.
The f at right indicates that the engineer
was Sam Feldman.

When I first began to look at the information in the dead wax at the end of the album sides, the stampings, symbols, initials, numbers, letters, and scratchings seemed like a foreign language. Or maybe better, a kind of code. After years spent trying to read and decipher these markings with a magnifying glass, I started to keep a list. I also scoured the internet for clues. Discogs has an active and lengthy list. There are also dozens of topics about deadwax notations on the Steve Hoffman forum. I copied every source I could find, added dozens that I was able to figure out by checking the album credits, corresponded with a few mastering engineers to ask questions (in my experience, they are extremely kind and willing to respond) and now have a list of deadwax abbreviations and symbols that is 18 pages long. Some of the stamps and markings show up fairly regularly and are easy to identify. Others are initials or little drawings inscribed as a signature by the mastering engineer who cut the lacquer or as identifying marks for the mastering house or pressing plant. Even with 18 pages of notes, I still find new markings all the time.

Allen Zentz Mastering
 Lacquer by Brian Gardner

Until recently at least, mastering engineers tended to work mostly in the background, cutting lacquers for LPs in quiet anonymity. These unsung heroes often carved their initials or other markings to indicate who was responsible for cutting the lacquer -- that is, transferring the sound from the tape (or digital file) by cutting the groove in a lacquer disk. (Which is not nearly as easy as it sounds. If you're interested in the process, there are some fascinating videos online about how LPs are produced.) And while the listening public was usually completely oblivious, producers and artists often insisted on using favorite mastering engineers who could make their music come alive. One of my favorite signatures are the bird wings used by Brian Gardner (above right.) Gardner, who worked at Alan Zent mastering (hence the AZ) also sometimes scribed a small flower instead of the bird wings. Chris Bellman, who remains active today and is one of the most sought-after mastering engineers in the business, uses a simple CB (below right). However, the tricky thing is that the markings are tiny, and if you didn't know that the initials below were CB, you might easily see a number of other different possibilites. 

Mastered by Chris Bellman

David Turner

Another one of my favorite signatures are the eyebrows used by David Turner (above, and not to be confused with Gardner's bird wings.) Many of the most active and well-known mastering engineers used their initials, and if you go through a stack of albums you're almost sure to find some with signatures by RKS - Ryan Smith; RL - Robert Ludwig; LH - Lee Hulko; KG - Kevin Grey; BK - Bill Kipper; GK - Gilbert Kong; GP or Porky - George Peckham; RJ - Ray Janos; or Wally - Wally Traugott. If you're really lucky, you might find a classic jazz album cut by RVG or the great Rudy Van Gelder. If you do, by the way, buy it!

Mastered by Robert Ludwig,
Pressed by Allied Records,
Hollywood, CA

Mastered by Ryan K. Smith
 at Sterling Sound, NYC

Artisan Mastering

Of course, there are lots of other squiggles in the deadwax besides the initials of the mastering engineers. Nearly all mastering houses and record pressing plants used markings to indicate who cut the lacquer and where the album was produced. Above, next to Robert Ludwig's initials, is the Q-shaped stamp used 

Specialty

by Allied Records, which pressed albums in Hollywood, CA. In the middle above is the very common stamp used by the mastering house Artisan Sound in California. There are a lot of different descriptions of what the symbol is, but the correct answer is a drafting compass on top of a record. The compass makes an "A" for Artisan. Further down below left is the U in a circle which is the mark used by United Record Pressing of Nashville, TN. And also further down you can see a triangle stamp with the letters IAM inside, which indicates that the album was pressed by Capitol Records at their Scranton, PA plant between 1963-1973. IAM stood for the International Association of Machinists, the union representing the workers at that particular plant. The big record producers like Columbia and Capitol had pressing plants in different parts of the country to facilitate distribution. If you live on the East Coast, as I do, the vast majority of LPs that you run across will have been pressed in Columbia's Pittman, NJ plant (indicated by a small stamped P which is often very faint and is usually on one side of the catalog number) or in their Terre Haute, IN plant (represented by a T on one side of the catalog number.) Most of the Capitol releases I find are from their Winchester, Virginia plant which used an etching that was meant  

Monarch Record

to look like a Winchester rifle like this:  ----<. In addition, there were dozens of independent record producers like Specialty Record Company in Olyphant, PA (a large S with a small R and C in the curves, above left) and Monarch Record Manufacturing Company in Los Angeles (an MR inside a circle at right) that pressed for nearly every label. And of course this barely scratches the surface (get it?) of the hundreds of different markings that appear on records. 

At this point you may well be thinking, who cares who mastered the album or where it was pressed? The answer is that knowing that an album was mastered by Robert Ludwig or pressed by Quality Record Pressing in Salinas, KS (for example) almost guarantees that the disk is going to sound great. So all things being equal, if you can snag a pressing by a well-known and respected engineer, that's half the battle. I'll sometimes buy an album that I'm not all that interested in or that I may already have a copy of if I see that it was mastered by one of the greats. If I'm going through the $1 bin and see a copy of Donald Fagen's The Nightfly mastered by Robert Ludwig or a Led Zeppelin IV mastered by George Peckham (AT/GP in the deadwax), I'll buy it even though I already have five copies of both these albums.

Mastered by Rudy Van Gelder, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Mastered by Wally Traugott

United Record Pressing,
Nashville, TN

Pressed by Capitol Records, Scranton, PA

Another interesting way to identify which plant pressed the record is to check the size of the pressing rings on the label. The pressing rings are the indentations made by the particular pressing machines when they flatten the vinyl disk and apply the label. Even if you can't find a letter or other identifier for a pressing plant, if you know that Specialty Record Company's pressing ring is 70mm, or that Monarch Record has double 35/72 mm rings, it can help you figure out by whom and where the LP was pressed. I've got a two-page list of pressing ring diameters that I consult regularly.

And finally, knowing how to decipher the deadwax information or gauge pressing rings will mark you as a knowledgeable collector, which is certain to impress your friends and your local record store dealer.

Enjoy the music!