Jazz Vinyl Countdown: Lee Morgan, The Cooker
Like the compulsive nut that I am, I spent yesterday going through the records I purchased the other night. Not just going through the records, but doing a major record reorganization so I could welcome these records to their new home. however transient it may be. Anyway, I was hoping to get some upgrades out of this collection and here’s one: Lee Morgan, The Cooker, Blue Note 1578. Sad to say, I do not own an original copy of this record. Sad because original copies are selling for nearly $500 on eBay these days. It also shows how difficult it was to find original pressings prior to eBay. I’ve been seeking jazz records for close to 40 years and, if I had ever seen one of these at a decent price in a record store, I would certainly have purchased it. Which means, it never happened. Scary. In this casethe copy in my collection has been a Liberty pressing with a Liberty cover. I think I purchased it back when I was in college in the 1970s. It is a stereo pressing, which means some level of sound reprocessing took place to make the record sound worse than intended. Why Blue Note or any other label did this is anybody’s guess, but the obvious guess is that they wanted to make more money by selling more records. Anyway, within the collection I purchased the other night was a Japanese pressing of this LP in mint condition. It is a Toshiba-EMI pressing. I put it on the turntable this morning and it sounds great. I then put on the Liberty Stereo pressing and it sounded not-as-good. So this one is a no-brainer: I keep the Japanese pressing (thank you to John for having this in the collection) and sell the Liberty pressing on eBay. Oh, and, of course, I keep searching for an original.
The Toshiba presses vary greatly in quality – the first press BLP issues (like the one you have here) with coated cover & heavy vinyl are by far the best IMO. Some of the other’s are no better than the late 80s DMM pressings.
Right, the Toshiba pressing vary in quality. but the coated ones were later (late 80ths) and for my ears, do not sound very good.
By the way, what do you think of the “Classic Records” reissues?
The 3 Lps I had were a grear dissapointment. At first glance the look great, but the second glance… and they sound bader than any UA pressing.
Robert, the ones I’m thinking of are the 1983-4 BLP pressings – I think the later BNJ pressings also have coated covers but, as you say, do not sound so good.
I, too, have been massively disappointed by the Classic Records reissues: it seems to me they’ve been mastered to sound like CDs & represent the antithesis of why I remain a vinyl junkie in spite of crackle & pops.
What’s a good price in your opinion for a first pressing of this in vg?