Miles Davis - Kind of Blue. How many MIXES of the album exist?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Ale200, Jul 26, 2019.

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  1. nodbor

    nodbor Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Received an email that this is cancelled for now.
     
  2. ARK

    ARK Forum Miscreant

    Location:
    Charlton, MA, USA
    all of them
     
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  3. tug_of_war

    tug_of_war Unable to tolerate bass solos

    And we're talking about an album recorded on three tracks. There's not much to do with it but yes, I need all possible remixes.
     
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  4. Ale200

    Ale200 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I still wonder how many mixes exist...:)
     
  5. Plan9

    Plan9 Mastering Engineer

    Location:
    Toulouse, France
    1959 mono original mix
    1959 stereo original mix
    1994 stereo remix
    2002 surround remix
    2013 mono remix
    2013 stereo remix

    6 different mixes.
     
  6. Ale200

    Ale200 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I think you forgot about three: the 1997 remix included on the SBM remaster of the same year; the multichannel mix of the early 2000s SACD; the "digital remix" of the 80s "Columbia Jazz Masterpieces" CD release by Teo Macero and Larry Keyes.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2019
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  7. bresna

    bresna Senior Member

    Location:
    York, Maine
    The story on the Kind Of Blue tapes from this thread: Miles Davis "Kind of Blue"

    STEREOPHILE article from a couple of months ago re: KOB.

    The Fifth Element #34

    later, chris


    The Fifth Element #34

    John Marks, February, 2006


    Mark Wilder, senior mastering engineer for Sony Music Studios, looked expectantly from John Atkinson to Bob Saglio to me and asked, "Are you ready?" As it had been my inquiry that had resulted in this mind-boggling, once-in-a-lifetime, peak-experience get-together, and as no one else was speaking up, I replied, "As ready as we'll ever be."



    Weeks earlier, I had asked Sony whether I could ask a few questions of the mastering engineer who had made the DSD transfer of the master tapes of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, from which the SACD editions were made.1 In due course, I received a flabbergasting e-mail invitation from Wilder—as low-key, unpretentious, and generous a chap as you could ever hope to meet—to pick a convenient date to drop by to hear the master tapes.

    Out of genuine affection for John Atkinson, and admittedly out of some vestigial sense of political acumen, I responded that I could not imagine accepting such an invitation without asking if my editor-in-chief could tag along. My friend Bob Saglio agreed to share the driving chores. For its part, Sony transferred the priceless master tapes from their secure remote storage facility to their Manhattan mastering labs.

    When Bob and I arrived, we were greeted by Mark Wilder and a fairly agog John Atkinson, who exclaimed that he could not believe that he was looking at the original tape boxes and recording-session log sheets from 1959. I goggled myself. Carefully examining the log sheet for the first session, I told Wilder that he had to understand that for us, this was like being allowed to look around the Vatican Library after closing time. He nodded comprehension, and quietly said, "I have the best job in the world."

    About those tapes
    According to Mark Wilder, Columbia's practice at its 30th Street studios in 1959 was to use four tape decks simultaneously: a prime mono deck and a mono backup, for mono LP release; and a prime three-channel deck and a three-channel backup, for stereo LP release. The mono tapes have since disappeared. The backup three-channel tapes (the ones we heard) were sent to the vault, where they rested untouched from 1959 until 1992.

    The tapes from the prime three-channel deck were edited with razor blades to remove test tones, slatings, and session chatter, and to provide the spacings between tracks. All of the numbers on Kind of Blue are complete takes—there were no edits within pieces. (However, the oft-repeated claim—which appears even in the 2004 documentary Made in Heaven—that the album contained the first complete take of each number, is an overstatement. "Flamenco Sketches" had two complete takes, the second of which was chosen for the original release.) The three-channel edited master tapes were then mixed down to two-track tapes that were used to cut the stereo LP lacquers, with the fadeouts at the ends of tracks applied manually as the lacquers were cut.



    It was not until 1992 that Wilder discovered that the prime three-channel deck had been running slightly slowly during the first session, with the result that on the LPs and CDs made from it, the numbers on side A (the first three tracks) played slightly sharp in musical pitch. By the time of the second recording session, seven weeks later, the prime three-track deck had received some maintenance, so the numbers on the LP's side B were recorded at the proper speed. To get the proper pitch without adjusting the playback deck's speed, and knowing that the backup tapes had never been played, Wilder used them for the 1992 Columbia Mastersound SBM Gold CD remastering. Those tapes have been used ever since, including for the SACD releases.

    Wilder had set up for us an Ampex ATR 102 three-track tape deck to play the simultaneous-safety three-channel masters through a simple mixer, with the center track split right and left for two-channel stereo playback, then to a Spectral stereo amp and two Duntech Princess speakers.

    His mastering room was very carefully set up. In addition to the expected acoustical treatments, the speakers themselves sat on 600-lb concrete blocks, to compensate for being on the third floor of the building. Pennies had not been pinched for his equipment; in addition to brand names from the pro audio world, he had EMM Labs (Ed Meitner) digital and Tim de Paravicini analog equipment. Along the way, Wilder answered my original question that had set things in motion: The SACDs derive directly from analog tape by way of EMM Labs DSD equipment. There was no PCM interstage, and the Kind of Blue SACDs are not repurposed "Red Book" data.

    Wilder pushed Play. We heard session producer Irving Townsend say, "The machine is on . . . here we go." At that point, I realized how glad I was to be in the company of friends. I had suddenly become unsure I could ever convey to someone who had not been there the frisson, the sense of rolling up a window shade and looking out a window at the early afternoon of March 2, 1959.

    To say the least, it sounded extraordinarily immediate. The stereo SACD is, in contrast, two generations removed: first, a three-track to two-track analog tape intermaster (to allow for sequencing the tracks), and second, the SACD itself. You can't get closer on this earth to what happened at the Kind of Blue sessions than we did. But my making you envious about our good fortune does none of us any good. I will just make a few observations about that listening session, then move on to letting you know about resources that can help you deepen your appreciation of Kind of Blue.

    Because Kind of Blue was recorded in multitrack mono, without the use of any real stereophonic microphone techniques, the instruments appear in fairly constricted left, center, and right locations. The microphones were, according to Ashley Kahn's book, Telefunken U-49s—can't complain about that. But the center image, Davis' trumpet plus Paul Chambers' bass, was solid as a rock—so shockingly solid that at first I thought the center speaker was on. It wasn't. (A trap for the unwary: Between the first recording session, which accounts for the album's first three tracks, and the second, which accounts for the last two, the sax players swap track assignments. For the first three numbers, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane is on the left and alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley is on the right; for the last two, Adderley is on the left and Coltrane on the right. The positions of the other musicians in the soundstage are consistent throughout the album.)

    Mark Wilder even let me play with the mixer's faders a bit. Pulling down the outer tracks, I swear I could hear the sonic signature of the surface of the walls of the concrete echo chamber in 30th Street's basement. Although only Davis and Chambers' track had a send and return to and from the echo chamber, there was some degree of leakage from the other instruments. Perhaps that helps account for the recording's naturally ambient sound.



    While we are all conditioned to hearing the tracks in the order of the released LP, track 2, "Freddie Freeloader," was recorded first, because that was the only track on which Wynton Kelly was to play. In similar fashion, "Flamenco Sketches," the album's final track, was the first piece recorded the day of the second session (April 22, 1959). "All Blues," the next-to-last track, was recorded last. Doubtless by coincidence, the recording sessions began and ended with blues.

    Bill Evans' claim in his original liner notes that all the pieces were totally unfamiliar and totally improvised is to some degree fairy dust. Drummer Jimmy Cobb later recalled having played "So What" in live performances before the recording session; "All Blues" had been evolving for at least six months, with input from Gil Evans; the introduction to "So What" was most likely written by Gil Evans rather than improvised by Bill Evans; and "Flamenco Sketches" owes much to Bill Evans' previously released "Peace Piece." Still, the most deeply impressive aspect of this listening session was that it demonstrated that, for the most part, the musicians were feeling their ways, coming up with ideas only seconds before they had to play them.

    To hear "Flamenco Sketches" evolve from the first complete take, through several incomplete attempts, to the final take, which is the one that was used for the original release, was enlightening and humbling. (The first take, the only complete alternate take from the two sessions, was used as the bonus track on releases from 1992 on.)

    Books, etc.
    As the master tapes began playing, I pulled from my briefcase the resource that has most helped me deepen my appreciation of Kind of Blue: a hardbound volume of Kind of Blue scores, with all the solos and horn-ensemble sections transcribed, note for note. I opened it to "Freddie Freeloader," and to say that John Atkinson was engrossed within seconds would be an understatement. The next day he went online and bought a copy. (Be sure to get the Deluxe Edition.)

    In addition to an appendix of the complete Wynton Kelly solo from "Freddie Freeloader" (the score contains just the right-hand part), the book contains the score for the alternate take of "Flamenco Sketches" and an excellent introduction, by Bill Kirchner. Even if your music-reading skills are shaky, it's thrilling to follow along. It also shows how even the most accurate transcription can only suggest what the music really is: tone color, dynamics, inflection, fine points of phrasing. They all don't just jump off the page and play themselves.

    There is only one taxing page-flipping exercise. At 8:30 into "So What," at the conclusion of Paul Chambers' bass solo, you have to flip from p.37, where it says "D.S. al Coda," back to p.21, where a short stretch of the music repeats itself. The repeated section ends at the top of p.23, at 8:54; the music picks up again on p.37 at the Coda sign.



    I know that that is the real sheet-music way of doing things, and it does have the advantage of making obvious that the brief sections where the two-note "So What?" theme modulates up half a step and then back down serve as bookends around the solos. But for a mere 24 seconds of music, I would have written the music straight out as it is played, rather than requiring a flipping back and forth that seems to take almost as long as the repeated section itself.

    Apart from that, the only criticism I could possibly make would be that for the interested reader who is not familiar with score-reading, adding the start times of each solo (or even a time-check every 30 seconds) to the score would make it a lot less likely to get lost. Again, that's not the way scores are usually printed, but in this case I think it would make sense.

    Ashley Kahn, whose volume on John Coltrane's A Love Supreme I profiled in the August 2005 Stereophile (Vol.28 No.8), gives similarly definitive treatment to Kind of Blue in Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece. Kahn's book is the best all-around treatment, and I highly recommend it. But I would still advise getting the scores first, and reading them over until you can see them with your eyes shut.

    Eric Nisenson, a jazz fan who became an occasional companion (and errand- and drug-runner) for Miles Davis, has written his own Kind of Blue–specific book, The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece. There is much worthwhile information in it, and some moments of real insight and empathy. But to get to them, you'll have to grit your teeth through a lot of poorly written, clichÇ-ridden, politically correct twaddle.

    The most worthwhile yet most exasperating aspect of Nisenson's book is his treatment of George Russell, an under-appreciated composer and musical theorist whose "Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization" is generally acknowledged as the impetus for the modal-jazz explorations of Bill Evans, Miles Davis, and those who followed them. The narrative part of Nisenson's text that covers Russell is engrossing. However, the Appendix, which purports to explain the musical mechanics of Russell's system, is incomprehensible.

    Another disappointment in all things Kind of Blues-ian is Made in Heaven, the brief documentary that is the video content of the album's recently released DualDisc edition. What were they thinking? There's a total of perhaps three minutes from Miles Davis' 1959 CBS TV special, which included the live performance of "So What" that is closest to the album version. Instead of more rare footage of Davis actually playing, we are treated to agonizingly extensive monologues by many people who have little significant to say.



    A person who goes by the name of Q-Tip assures us that Kind of Blue is both important and influential. Gee, thanks, Mr. Tip. Bill Cosby tells us that when he was a college student, most mornings, as soon as he got out of bed, he would cue up Kind of Blue. To quote Miles Davis, "So what?" Meshell Ndegeocello, manifesting the affect of clinical schizophrenia, also assures us that Kind of Blue is both important and influential. Ms. Ndegeocello, meet Mr. Tip; you have much in common.

    What would have been much more valuable would have been for someone who really knows what they are talking about (Dr. Billy Taylor, perhaps?) to sit down at a piano and demonstrate the differences between major, minor, and modal scales, and perhaps even show how "Blue in Green" would have sounded with all its tonal ambiguities squared up into F major. Or have a trumpet player show how Davis' first solo in "Flamenco Sketches" would sound with all those accidental flats turned into the naturals or sharps of its nominal key of D major.

    In addition to the shortcomings in content, I found Made in Heaven's production values artsy-fartsy in the extreme: intentionally bad focus, stupid close-ups of the side of someone's nose, etc.

    Miles Davis and American Culture, a collection of essays and interviews edited by Gerald Early, is notable for its complete coverage of Davis' entire career, as well as his antecedents in the St. Louis jazz scene from 1926 on. An excellent chronology places each event in Davis' life in the context not only of larger jazz history, but of African-American history as well.

    The Miles Davis Companion: Four Decades of Commentary and A Miles Davis Reader are well-chosen selections of contemporary source materials and retrospective criticism, with surprisingly little overlap. Both cover the entirety of Davis' career.

    And the fusstification is?
    If I had to explain in one paragraph to a visitor from Mars why Kind of Blue deserves so much attention, it might go something like this:

    In a few hours, on two spring afternoons in 1959, Miles Davis and his colleagues somehow managed to combine several disparate and previously tentative musical innovations, all at once and in confident full strength. They abandoned popular songs, and even song form, as the bases for jazz improvisation. They freed themselves from harmonically organizing their solos by cycling through chord changes, instead letting the internal tension of modal scales provide the driving force. They opted for implied reference rather than outright quotation. They stripped out all fanfares, flourishes, and instrumental virtuosity for its own sake. What was left was pure music, equally capable of reaching the most casual listener and transfixing the most expert.

    However, as Cannonball Adderley later pointed out, modal jazz's internal contradiction was that by getting rid of the discipline of conventional harmonic structure—and, often, making fewer demands on instrumental technique—players who had little of value to say could use modal jazz as a paint-by-numbers technique. But the fact that the coinage was later debased does not mean that it was not once pure.

    Envoi
    Miles Davis was not only a supremely talented player; he fairly deserves the lion's share of the credit for bringing to the point of critical mass three of the most important developments in jazz history: cool jazz, modal jazz, and jazz fusion. But, as critic Stanley Crouch pointed out, Davis' curse was his compulsion to change, constantly. Whether any given change was for the better was less important than the fact that it was change.

    Consciously or not, Davis internalized the lesson of the Orpheus myth: to look back brings only loss and sorrow. One of the most affecting vignettes in Eric Nisenson's book is his recounting of how, toward the end of Davis' life, Nisenson managed to get Davis to listen to some of his work from the Kind of Blue era. Davis listened as though hearing it for the first time, but then turned on Nisenson: "How could you do this to me, Eric? I thought we were friends."

    Davis' preternatural ability to move hearts through his horn was darkly mirrored by his titanic insecurities, and his propensity to dominate and exploit those closest to him. Books have been filled with Davis' manifest and fell betrayals, ranging from his early pimping (he also stole Clark Terry's trumpet and sold it to buy drugs) to, later on, well-documented instances of beating his wives and girlfriends and stealing writing credit from Eddie Vinson and Bill Evans. (The Miles Davis Estate now concedes on its official website, that Bill Evans was the sole author of "Blue in Green.")

    In a famous photograph of Davis, taken in his home in 1971 by Anthony Barboza, he stands before a large walk-in closet. The adjacent walls are book-matched hardwoods. The closet is two steps above the bedroom floor; the risers are carpeted. Davis is dressed in period mod attire. Above him, countless plaster stalactites hang from two crescent-shaped sections of the room's artsy, with-it ceiling. From inside the closet spill onto the floor countless articles of clothing, socks, shoes, and boots. Dozens of belts and scarves hang over a valet. The expression on Davis' face may be in earnest or it may be mocking. Whether mocking himself, the photographer, or the eventual viewer of the image, who is to say?

    Davis was well-read (he hated Hermann Hesse's novels, telling one girlfriend that either they or she had to go), so I think it unlikely that he was unaware of the eerie resonances between the scene he created (or allowed himself to be set in) and the famous scene in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, in which Gatsby attempts to impress on Daisy Buchanan that he is no longer the penniless drifter she had known years before. Gatsby attempts this by opening the massive clothes cabinets in his bedroom and throwing dozens of luxurious tailored shirts onto a table. In his novel, Fitzgerald showed in a quintessentially American way the tragic costs of fixated love and obsessive ambition. One could argue that, but for Mark Twain's Huck Finn, The Great Gatsby is the most American of American novels.

    Miles Davis approached life as though it were a matter of surface sheen—his elegant clothes and deportment, the Mercedeses and Ferraris and all the other Hefneresque elements of conspicuous consumption. Some cultural critics have found in this echoes of Oscar Wilde's aestheticism.

    For me, however, what fits Davis more closely is Jay Gatsby's simultaneous and self-contradictory craving for acceptance by those of more fortunate birth, while hoping to be seen as not giving a damn. In real life, Davis' bulging clothes closets could no more fend off looming tragedy than could Gatsby's.

    Miles Davis once remarked that he considered Kind of Blue a failure, compared to his ambitions for it. He said he had wished to evoke both the haunting sound of the spirituals he heard as a child while walking at night on a back road in rural Arkansas, and the sounds of thumb pianos he heard at a recital of the Ballet Africaine of Guinea. But listening to Davis' solos on "Flamenco Sketches," I do hear lonely laments; and listening to Bill Evans' solos on "Blue in Green," I do hear gently percussive dissonances. My verdict: If Kind of Blue is a failure, it is one of the most glorious failures ever.

    Some people fear that by studying a work of art too much (or even at all), they will lose the ability to appreciate it, or at least, that it will lose its freshness. If that ever is the case, perhaps there was less to the work than first met the eye. For a work of the stature of Kind of Blue, I think that there will always be an element of mystery, no matter how much we read, study, and ponder it. Yes, I clearly see the notes on the printed page. But how the players managed to come up with most of those notes on the spur of the moment remains, for me, a matter of wonder and gratitude.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2019
  8. Plan9

    Plan9 Mastering Engineer

    Location:
    Toulouse, France
    1997 = 1994
    There is only one surround mix to my knowledge so I must have got the date wrong. They might be off by 1/2 years.
    I indeed forgot the 1980s digital remix. I have never heard it, is it any good?
     
  9. Ale200

    Ale200 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    It isn't pretty well received here, a lot of people complain that it sounds lifeless and noise reduction was applied
     
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  10. Ale200

    Ale200 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Sorry, I didn't notice that you included the 2002 multichannel mix on your list, we are talking about the same surround remix:righton:
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2019
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  11. DiabloG

    DiabloG City Pop, Rock, and anything 80s til I die

    Location:
    United States
    Does this mean that the early US and Japanese CDs are the only digital releases with the original LP mix?
     
  12. rxcory

    rxcory proud jazz band/marching band parent

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    Correct. The 1983 CBS/Sony Japan 35DP 62 and it's early 80's US counterpart CK 08163 with the same mastering (and 35DP 62 in the matrix) are the only two digital releases that are known to use the original stereo mix.

    There's a Canadian reissue CD, purportedly from 1984, CK 8163 going for big bucks. However, it appears to just be a repackaging of the slightly later US release with DIDP-50062 in the matrix. Since it does not have 35DP 62 in the matrix and I have not heard it, I cannot confirm which mix it uses. Some of those first made-in-USA Columbia CDs with the "DIDP-500xx" matrices used identical Japanese masterings to the 35DP series, some simply removed the premphasis, while others used entirely different masterings altogether. Does anyone here have the early 80's US or Canadian CDs with DIDP-50062 in the matrix?
     
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  13. Ale200

    Ale200 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Are you sure? I remember a lot of people on the forum saying that the 1992 and 1997 CDs are two different mixes, both by Mark Wilder
     
  14. rxcory

    rxcory proud jazz band/marching band parent

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    [​IMG]

    The first Mark Wilder stereo remix was used on the MasterSound gold CD reissues that came out first with longbox packaging in 1993 (above), and then was reissued in a standard jewel case with slipcase in 1994 (below). This remix and mastering were performed at 20 bits with Columbia/Legacy/Sony's "Super Bit Map" process. This remix and mastering sounds a little bright and sterile to my ears, and is not my personal favorite.

    [​IMG]

    The 1997 reissue was a new Mark Wilder remix – also done at 20 bits, and "remixed from the original three-track tapes at Sony Music Studios, using a Presto all-tube, three-track recorder." This remix was captured both to analogue tape, which MFSL used for their 2015 reissue LP set and hybrid stereo SACD, and to digital, released on CD as CK 64935, as well as several other releases world wide around that same time. To my ears, this remix is an improvement over the 1993 remix.

    [​IMG]

    But they weren't done remixing yet. I just wanted to clear up any confusion with the first Mark Wilder (1993) remix and the second (1997), which were both performed at 20 bit but were different remixes.
     
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  15. danasgoodstuff

    danasgoodstuff Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    Kinda Confusing.
     
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  16. Plan9

    Plan9 Mastering Engineer

    Location:
    Toulouse, France
    Is there an easy way to check the differences between the two? I honestly thought they were the same remix, just mastered differently.
     
  17. hyntsonsvmse

    hyntsonsvmse Nick Beal

    Location:
    northumberland
    Which is definitive version? Would that be the original vinyl release? I have a few versions of the album. They all sound good.
     
  18. rxcory

    rxcory proud jazz band/marching band parent

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    I doubt there will ever be a consensus on this.
     
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  19. rxcory

    rxcory proud jazz band/marching band parent

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    I’ll have to go back and listen for mix differences.
     
  20. bresna

    bresna Senior Member

    Location:
    York, Maine
    Mix differences might be tough on this title as it was only recorded to 3 tracks, not 8 or more like many modern recordings. It's not like Wilder had isolated instruments to mix together, just how much of each of the 3 tracks to put into Left & Right. I was under the impression that Wilder tried to re-mix this to get a new "master" that sounded just like the original but with more fidelity.
     
  21. hyntsonsvmse

    hyntsonsvmse Nick Beal

    Location:
    northumberland
    I do like the double CD release version. Cd1 is original album. Cd2 is a live version. CD1 sounds superb. I also have the first version of the album that was released on Cd way back around 88? This is good but not as good as the 2cd i mentioned.
    Is there a bad version? I somehow doubt it
     
  22. aphexj

    aphexj Sound mind & body

    What about the new 360 Audio (currently streaming on Tidal) and Dolby Atmos mixes that debuted in 2019?
     
  23. captouch

    captouch Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bay Area, CA
    Great info! Do you know which was used on the 2002 SACD (non-hybrid)?
     
  24. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    Mark Wilder created analog mix downs to tape for both mono and stereo while he was working on the HDTracks/Original Mono Recordings stuff. According to Ryan K. Smith, he used the mono analog tape to cut straight to lacquer for that RSD LP. It makes sense to me, too, since Smith's Kind of Blue was the only LP release in that series not cut by Kevin Gray, and Sony does not ship tapes across the country. If they wanted to create a AAA Kind of Blue pressing, they surely would have sent it to Sterling to be cut.
     
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  25. I wonder what mixes were included on The original mono albums collection & The complete columbia albums collection, as those are the ones I have on CD.
     
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