Jazz at the Pawnshop - what's the big deal?

If you're going to get a Winston Ma recording, I would recommend River of Sorrow over Jazz at the Pawnshop. Both have excellent sound, really reference quality. But there is more authenticity to the RoS music, if traditional Chinese instruments are of interest.

 

This is the recording u get to show off, or to sell your system/component. Otherwise. Non essential.

 

A man in Italy paid over $200 in an eBay auction for my perfect, original pre-Audio Resource foulups copy, and that was more than 10 years ago. Seeing as I had a spare copy, I was willing to let it go.

 

You can check it out on Spotify. General view is great recording but not an essential jazz album. I bought the vinyl and enjoy it as a reference.

 

Nice recording, nice music. Kind of sounds like they swallowed those old rca double lp sets of benny goodman small group records just before though, that's not a bad thing!
Later I think I'll listen to some live late Goodman and see how it stands up...

 

Agree, except that Goodman was too much of a showman at times.

 

I downloaded the 2xHD remaster out of curiosity - the music is a death bore. As for the sound, I really don't get the hype. Maybe because the music is so unremarkable and there are so much ambient noises, one gets tempted (or rather pushed out of despair) to hunt for claps, clicks, voices, squeaks, cutlery, farts, sneezes etc. The audiophiles are such a sad crowd.

 

I just found the single-LP version, released by ATR in Germany in 1980. It was $12 and I couldn't resist buying it, if only to see what the fuss is all about.

The performances are competent and enjoyable, if unremarkable, but the recording is indeed outstanding. It's worth the $12 to have for a reference recording.