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Super Hot StamperMiles Davis
Basic Miles
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Product DetailTrack ListingKind of Blue on the Red Label
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SONIC GRADE: (?) |
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| Side one: |
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| Side two: |
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VINYL PLAYGRADE:(?) |
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| Side one: |
Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus |
| Side two: |
Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus |
Want to know how good our Hot Stamper Kind of Blue pressings sound? Listen to this very record. If you play the tracks that were recorded in 1958, the year before Kind of Blue, you will hear practically the same lineup of musicians.
That means Stella By Starlight and Little Melonae on side one, and Green Dolphin Street and Fran-Dance (Put Your Little Foot Right Out) on side two. We're talking Bill Evans, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley in their prime, 1958, with top 1958 sound to match.
The nine minute plus Green Dolphin Street that opens side two is nothing short of amazing, some of the coolest jazz you will ever hear, on any record, at any price. With Fran Dance on the same side, that gives you about 17 minutes of great sounding jazz by Miles' classic Kind of Blue lineup.
Side one has the same cats playing for more than 12 minutes. By my calculation that's close to another album's worth of material from the group. The rest of the material on this compilation is best seen as gravy; maybe not essential, but never less than interesting.
What superb sides on Basic Miles have to offer is not hard to hear:
The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1973
Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
What do the better Hot Stamper pressings like this one give you?
Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks for the horns and drums, not the smear and thickness so common to most LPs.
Tight, note-like bass with clear fingering -- which ties in with good transient information, as well as the issue of frequency extension further down.
Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the players.
Then: presence and immediacy. The musicians aren't "back there" somewhere, way behind the speakers. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would have put them.
Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
The Players
Alto Saxophone – Julian "Cannonball" Adderley* (tracks: B1, B3), Lee Konitz (tracks: A5)
Bass – Paul Chambers (3)
Bass Clarinet – Danny Bank (tracks: A5)
Drums – "Philly" Joe Jones (tracks: A1, A3, A4, B2), Art Taylor (tracks: A5), Jimmy Cobb (tracks: A2, B1, B3, B4)
Flugelhorn – Miles Davis (tracks: B5)
Piano – Bill Evans (tracks: A2, B1), Red Garland (tracks: A1, A4, B2), Wynton Kelly (tracks: B3)
Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane (tracks: A1 to A4, B1 to B3), Wayne Shorter (tracks: B4)
Trombone – Frank Rehak (tracks: A5, B4), Jimmy Cleveland (tracks: A5), Joe Bennett* (tracks: A5)
Trombone [Bass] – Tom Mitchell* (tracks: A5)
Trumpet – Bernie Glow (tracks: A5), Ernie Royal (tracks: A5), John Carisi (tracks: A5), Louis R. Mucci (tracks: A5), Miles Davis (Taft Jordan (tracks: A5)
Tuba – Bill Barber (tracks: A5)
Vinyl Condition
Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)
Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of later pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful originals.
If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
A1 Budo
Bass – Paul Chambers
Drums – "Philly" Joe Jones
Piano – Red Garland
Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane
A2 Stella By Starlight
Bass – Paul Chambers
Drums – Jimmy Cobb
Piano – Bill Evans
Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane
A3 Sweet Sue, Just You
Arranged By – Teo Macero
Bass – Paul Chambers
Drums – "Philly" Joe Jones
Piano – Red Garland
Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane
A4 Little Melonae
Bass – Paul Chambers
Drums – "Philly" Joe Jones
Piano – Red Garland
Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane
A5 Miles Ahead
Orchestra – Gil Evans
Side Two
B1 On Green Dolphin Street
Alto Saxophone – Cannonball Adderley
Bass – Paul Chambers
Drums – Jimmy Cobb
Piano – Bill Evans
Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane
B2 ´Round Midnight
Bass – Paul Chambers
Drums – "Philly" Joe Jones
Piano – Red Garland
Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane
B3 Fran-Dance (Put Your Little Foot Right Out)
Alto Saxophone – Cannonball Adderley
Bass – Paul Chambers
Drums – Jimmy Cobb
Piano – Wynton Kelly
Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane
B4 Devil May Care
Bass – Paul Chambers
Drums – Jimmy Cobb
Percussion – William Correa
Tenor Saxophone – Wayne Shorter
Trombone – Frank Rehak
It is our considered opinion that many of the best sounding copies are pressed on the rather common domestic plain Red Label from the '70s. We're fully aware of just how outrageous a statement that may be to you jazz collectors out there, and even more outrageous to the audiophiles reading this, the ones who are still holding on to the idea that Originals Have the Best Sound.
But we've known about these amazing sounding Kind Of Blue reissues for more than two decades, and in all of those years, played back on many different stereo systems, we have yet to hear any early pressing that would make us change our minds.
What About The Early Pressings?
Having played scores of different copies of this record over the years, close to a hundred by now I would guess, we think we know Kind of Blue as a recording about as well as anyone can know it. The tube mastered original Six Eye Stereo copies have wonderfully lush, smooth sound. We've heard many of them. The 360s from the '60s often (but not always) split the difference -- less Tubey Magical, but cleaner and more true to the sound of live music. The Red Labels are all over the map, ranging from smeary and dull to out of this world.
If you cut the album with tubes it will bring out some qualities not as evident on this pressing. But there will be drawbacks as well. It's a matter of trade-offs. There is no copy that will satisfy everyone, just as there is no speaker or amplifier that will satisfy everyone.
Now don't get us wrong. We love tubey colorations as much as the next person. We say so all over this site. But there is no way that many of the specific qualities of this record exist on those early, tube cuttings. They simply didn't have the technology. The technology they did have is wonderful in its own way. And this record is wonderful in its own, very different, way. This is the sound we prefer.
Unimpeachable Audiophile Credentials
We know we're asking a lot of money for a record that any jazz record dealer would be embarrassed to charge more than $25 for. (Actually, these are starting to sell for $40+ pretty regularly on eBay and elsewhere. Apparently the word got out that these can sound incredible. Blame us!)
However, with all due respect, jazz record dealers don't know anything about sound. They know about collectibility. They know about price guides. They know their market -- jazz collectors -- and I know mine: audiophiles. This record has unimpeachable audiophile credentials. It has the sound in the grooves like you have never heard before. And who else but your friends at Better Records are going to be able to tell you that?
Quick Listening Test for Side One
This is an easy one. Just listen to the trumpet at the start of Freddie Freeloader. Most copies do not fully convey the transient information of Miles' horn, causing it to have an easily recognizable quality we talk about all the time on the site: smear. No two pressings will have precisely the same amount of smear on his trumpet, so look for the least smeary copy that does everything else right too. (Meaning simply that smear is important, but not all-important.)
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