Music Matters Definitive Blue Note 45 RPM and 33 & 1/3 RPM vinyl series (pt7)

+1

 

+1. I have the King pressing, but would love to hear an MM 2x45rpm.

 

Thoroughly enjoying The Magnificent Thad Jones on Apple Music today. Thought I was done but this and whistle stop and workout may be my next buy. I keep toying with the idea of Speak No Evil but the $75 makes me balk a little since it’s not my favorite Wayne, but I keep thinking I’ll warm to it a little more

 

Speak no evil is my favourite Shorter.
Astonishing record. Sorry to do this to you.

 

I like it, just not sure I $80 like it. Night Dreamer and Ju Ju are much more up my alley. Not sure why SNE hasn't fully clicked for me. The bigger fear is it'll click when its Out of Stock!

 

No, you're biggest fear is when it states "Out of PRINT". Out of Stock means that they haven't reached their allotment to press and they could resume pressing more at another time. Out of Print means that they have exhausted their allotment to press and sell, and there'll be no more.

 

Ha,ha,I'm the other way...I like SNE but don't connect with Ju Ju as much. But, hey, when it comes to Night Dreamer

 

At first, I was not really digging the whole organ jazz thing. Then I got some jimmy smith on old BN/liberty pressings and thought them pretty cool, though the sound was somewhat lacking. Figured what the heck and got the Larry young into somethin MM after listening on Apple Music.

I'm converted Larry young is in a whole other realm of organ than jimmy. This album hits super hard in the chest, Sam rivers and Larry bring out a very hard edged side of grant greens playing that rocks. Elvin ain't too shabby either. The sonics on this are fantastic, very cohesive soundstage.

 

This is the story of my life...

 

Same here. I've not had any issues with the Classics, and find them a tremendous value.

 

Having just about read every page of the 7 threads, this is probably the most pertinent post. Right on.

 

Same here. In general, I find Shorter to be just the right flavor b/w bop and model. And the songwriting is just out of this world. You really get your money's worth with every record.

 

Argh trying to cut my want list down to what I can afford my next order. I really should only get 2 but may have to eat beans and rice and get three

Pretty sure I’m getting Magnificent Thad Jones (really enjoying this recently, and what a great cover, and though it’s early for the series, this monocis supposed to sound great) and Adam’s Apple 45 (checking the web it seems Speak No Evil and Juju weren’t RVG’s best days, and Adam’s Apple sounds great streaming, I really like the drum sound on it)

But Whistle Stop keeps calling my name too. Great players, sounds good. Procrastinator 45 and Grant Green Solid 45 are nagging at me but at those prices, plus I have Green Street AP on the way....

 

Speak no speak no evil sounds fabulous to my ears.

 

Just get all the titles you really want, brother. We only live once. If you have to eat rice and beans a little longer, then so be it. It's good, natural food anyway. Beans are high in protein and are a great source of fiber. Perhaps you can eat different kinds of rice and beans for variety, or you can add different seasonings to spice things up. I stopped my daily Starbucks habit many years ago, and directed it towards Music Matters titles. I honestly don't miss it. Looking back in hindsight, it was the best decision I ever made. Especially now that the prices of some of these titles are starting to climb. I can rest easy and not kick myself for skipping out on any title, or waiting until it got too expensive. You want to rest easy.

 

+1 and he should definitely go for that copy of Speak No Evil that he's been talking about for so long.

 

That sounds correct, per the drawing on the previous page (by me! ).

Note that the panning diagram isn't intended to suggest that every single "experimental phase" two-track Blue Note recordings uses the first panning scheme (Blue Train is one example of an exception).

 

FWIW, "narrow" stereo would only be made narrow for classic two-track Van Gelder recordings by the mastering engineer choosing to pull in the left and right channels upon mastering. If the two-track master tape is left alone, panned hard left and hard right, Blue Train should sound pretty wide, with the center virtually empty with the exception of Van Gelder's mono EMT reverb plate. (The fact that the center was essentially empty for Blue Train was a stereo rarity for Blue Note and Van Gelder, with most titles from 57-59 having the piano center.)

 

Note that Van Gelder was in both Hackensack and EC in '59.

Well Rudy Van Gelder was there.

Van Gelder has mentioned the mono versions of his classic Blue Note recordings with praise dozens of times in interviews, and virtually never if ever has he acknowledged let alone expressed preference for the stereo versions, only the opposite. But, of course, that doesn't mean the stereo versions don't sound good to many if not most people, as they clearly do. Also, while Van Gelder does seem pretty clear on the fact that there was no stereo monitoring at Hackensack, evidenced by the number of times he has mentioned it, there is still the possibility that he had heard some of his two-track tapes through headphones or some other sort of stereo setup elsewhere in his home or another studio--remember, he was mastering for stereo in the Hackensack era. So while they probably didn't record with stereo in mind at Hackensack, I wouldn't say it's necessarily true that they never heard the stereo--I mean clearly they did at some point for the earliest stereo albums that came out before the move to Englewood.

Hoffman seems to believe that because the later Hackensack/early EC two-track recordings are very balanced that he must have been monitoring in stereo at least part of the time. I don't see any reason why this has to necessarily be true, that he must have been listening in stereo to get such a good balance. If he was listening in mono and had a good balance in mono, and from there sent all channel signals either hard left, center, or hard right, I don't see why that would necessarily throw the balance off in stereo.

 

Which ones say "out of print" currently? The only one I saw was Soothsayer.

 

I believe that further listening to recordings from the “experimental” period as mastered by the Hoffman/Gray team will reveal that the approach was similar also with AP releases. The hard panning has been dialed back significantly compared to Classic stereo reissues of recordings from the same period. Somehow this does not particularly present itself as having a sound that is less wide, but the detail of bass does seem to take a bit of a hit at the expense of a more coherent stereo mix.

One interesting album is Lou Donaldson's Blues Walk. LJC seems convinced that since his original is stamped 'Van Gelder Stereo' that a dedicated stereo mix was done and the Mono should be a unique mix, but if you convert the AP 45RM version 50/50 to Mono, it sounds very similar to the Classic Mono in every way, except the Classic is a little more forward and a bit brighter. I am really not sure this recording does not fall under the typical "50/50" Mono mix category.

 

If only two, then I'd get Speak No Evil and Adam's Apple, no question. But that's just me.

 

Agreed, but the fact remains only certain tapes have the Left - Trumpet, Right - Sax split that Hoffman identified as 'balanced'.
That positioning started in May 1959. So according to the discography, there are only 4 potential recordings made at Hackensack
that could fit the conditions for "balanced stereo recordings".

1574 Hank Mobley & Lee Morgan Peckin' Time Hackensack 1959-11
4009 Bud Powell The Scene Changes (Vol. 5) Hackensack 1959-07
4012 Lou Donaldson w/The Three Sounds LD+3 Hackensack 1959-08
4013 Jackie McLean New Soil Hackensack 1959-07

Ultimately, let's not lose sight of the bigger picture, Blue Note made about 100 titles from Hackensack or Manhattan Towers.
Their full transition to Stereo coincided with the move to Englewood Cliffs.

In the period where there was experimentation, some two-track arrangements were better than others,
but mono was their focus in the studio, and with LP sales, as most of their titles were released first in
mono, and only later did some of the stereo editions get released.

But I also agree that a listener can compare for themselves, and prefer whatever they want!

 

It makes sense to me that there isn't much of a difference when you sum the Blues Walk stereo LP to mono. Those sides should have been recorded to both full-track and two-track, but that doesn't mean the two tapes represent different i.e. 'dedicated' mixes. Since that album was made at Hackensack, my best guess is Van Gelder took the levels on the channels for the full-track mono mix as they were and sent them to their respective busses for the two-track tape without changing the balance at all. As I stated in a recent post here (and Hoffman has also said), summing a stereo Van Gelder LP to mono--be it from the two-tape-machine era (May '57 to October '59) or the 50/50 era (November '59 on)--shouldn't sound much different if in fact Van Gelder took the exact same channel levels for the mono mix and sent them to the busses for the two-track tape at the same relative volumes. So in the case of Blues Walk, dedicated full-track and two-track tape to create the respective mono and stereo master lacquers yes, but 'dedicated mixes', probably not. This is why I feel it's more appropriate to say that the stereo versions of these LPs were 'unfolded from the mono mixes' than to say that the mono versions are 'fold downs of the stereo (two-track) tapes' (the latter in the case of the 50/50 system only).

 

You bring up a good point about two-track Hackensack recordings made with the updated panning scheme, but I think you're looking at release dates instead of recording dates (a shortcoming of my Blue Note guide is that it doesn't list the recording dates for the LPs). If we take recording dates into consideration, it looks like Byrd in Hand (BLP 4019), recorded May 31, 1959, is the only Blue Note album recorded at Hackensack in its entirety that sports the updated 'balanced' panning scheme. There are two other albums in my database that say they were recorded (at least in part) at Hackensack with the updated panning scheme. Home Cookin' (BLP 4050) was recorded over three sessions between July '58 and June '59, but the arrangement is so far from the typical bop quintet that I don't think it's even worth analyzing in this case (I have Home Cookin' listed as brandishing the updated panning scheme simply because the last recording date is after the recording date for Byrd in Hand...doesn't really apply I guess). Recording for Jackie's Bag (BLP 4051) began in January '59 at Hackensack and finished in September 1960 at Englewood Cliffs. Here I probably labeled it as having the updated panning scheme simply because recording was finished in the Englewood Cliffs era, but indeed, the tracks from the January '59 Hackensack date have the updated balance.

So it would appear that the earliest Hackensack recording to use the updated panning scheme is Jackie's Bag from January '59. But there's a few LPs after it that don't (4008 Finger Poppin, 4014 Bottoms Up, 4012 LD+3, 4015/6 At the Jazz Corner of the World, 4013 New Soil, and 4020 Good Deal). At the Jazz Corner of the World, a live recording, was recorded after Jackie's Bag but it's a mashup of the techniques. The horns are panned left and right but the bass sounds panned right to me, so I guess it makes sense that I have it listed under the 'experimental' panning scheme.

Anyway, you make an interesting point that I hadn't considered, that the updated panning scheme more or less begin with Englewood Cliffs, as all EC recordings sport it, and that the only Hackensack recordings to sport that scheme really are Jackie'sBag and Byrd in Hand.