Now Hear Thi$$$$$
Sorry to disappoint so many of you who sent me advice and good wishes, but I spent two days in Los Angeles and did not visit a single record store. I did go to the pier at Santa Monica, where the sights were lovely, and I did attend my first baseball game at Dodger Stadium. Perhaps next time the allure of jazz vinyl will be too compelling to pass up. I also apologize once again for the infrequency of my posts. Now that I am back home again and off the road, I will try to be more consistent in meeting my normal objective of at least one post a day. While I was gone, CeeDee was vigilantly watching eBay and sent me a note with a “did you see thi$$$$$” subject matter. The object of thi$$$$ email was: Freddie Hubbard, Hub-Tones, Blue Note 4115. This looked to be an original New York pressing in what looked to be VG++ condition for both the record and the cover. It sold for $602.25 and CeeDee was obviously quite surprised. To me, this is the new normal. Watching eBay prices soar over the years and, in particular, watching the increasing prices of records in the 4100 series, it is only a matter of time before records such as this start approaching the $1,000 mark. There’s a limited number of these original pressings in nice condition and collectors want them.
Man, I look for this one all the time and don’t ever see it. Especially when I actually have the money! I haven’t been buying lately so I’m not looking and that’s when it appears! Dang! Just my luck! That is a hard 4100 series lp to find for sure (and in good condition!) and a great record which is the reason I look for it! Surprisingly it didn’t fetch more.
It doesn’t have Deep Groove like the seller says. Wonder if the seller really knows what an EAR looks like as well? Makes you wonder huh?
Another 1960s Blue Note mono fold down from the superior Stereo original goes for mega-bucks on eBay! The number of folks with more money than sense seems to be on the increase.
I saw the same also sold a NY USA mono copy of Dexter Gordon – Our Man in Paris sell for about $600 last week. And was surprised at this. It is now back on the market (eBay item 390587233311) so I guess the buyer pulled out/came to his or her senses!
Fred Cohen’s book mentions deep groove on side 2…
Fred seems to be right…My copy has DG on side 2. And is in even better condition than this one…:-)
No deep groove on either side. Not a first pressing then. I really hope it has an ear.
Fred also says in his book that the presence or not of a DG on one or other side is not necessarily proof of a first pressing after the end of DG only period so don’t take it too seriously guys.
DG or not DG. Maybe it does not impact the sound quality of this LP but I think threr is a problem if the seller states DG and it’s not. This small ridge is definately NOT a DG.
Regarding the mono folddown vs stereo much has been said but still collectors like the monos most and pay premium for them.
Audiophiles may go for the stereos – I’m not sure?
I think a most “collectors” don’t actually know that all Blue Note monos released after 1958 are fold-downs, and just follow the generally perceived wisdom that mono is best, which it is pre 1958, just not after IMO. Same applies for DG on the label – irrelevant after a certain point.
Yes, the albums recorded after ’58 are fold-downs, but for a lot of collectors and jazz aficionados jazz just sounds better in mono. My theory is that it has something to do with the way jazz is typically heard at clubs such as the Village Vanguard or Birdland. When you are at a club the music comes at you from the stage in one direction. You don’t hear the drums and one horn on your left and the bass and another horn on your right. Jazz in mono sounds more true to life than stereo playback.
Upstate Bill,I could not agree with you more. This is especially the case on lps like Unity and Softly As A Summer Breeze,two smokin’-though quite different- organ dates. For me,fold-down or no,mono is the way to go.
If mono is so good then why don’t such jazz aficionados listen to it on one speaker, why two?
I love mono myself, when it was recorded in mono – but the fold downs are as bad as “re-chanelled for stereo” in my book.
Robert: for quite a while now I have taken it upon myself to explain the RVG mono-stereo situation. Though it is true that Van Gelder stopped recording to full-track tape in 1958, and that from point on he only recorded to two-track tape, the following is often overlooked.
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Until he left Hackensack in the summer of 1959, even if he was recording to two-track tape, he was *listening* to everything in mono. This is true beyond a shadow of a doubt since he definitely did *not* have a stereo monitoring system at Hackensack. So while he was recording to two-track tape, he was mixing (live), monitoring, and doing everything in mono. Blue Note didn’t release their first stereo record until May ’59, so the theory is he had his control room and lathe set up at Englewood before he made his official move over there in the summer. He did have a stereo monitoring system at Englewood.
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Many interviews indicate that after the move to Englewood mono was still the main focus through the sixties. In one interview (referenced in Cohen’s book) he explains that, while the stereo balance was referenced briefly at the outset, everything was still done in mono “for a few more years”, which would put us at around 1962 as the earliest point in time in which he may have started to pay more attention to the stereo mix. But in every interview I have ever read with him, he has always emphasized his preference for mono and has never suggested an equal interest in stereo at any time.
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The thing I believe gets by most people, which is understandable because it is so unorthodox, is that he could be mixing and monitoring in mono while recording to two-track tape. So for me, if Van Gelder’s focus was mono, that’s what I wanna hear; I wanna hear the music as he intended it to be heard. The stereo mixes have their own unique and desirable traits, but I’m not the kind of collector who wants two versions of something to always have to choose between in my collection, so this is why I go with mono.
For the record, deep grooves on post-4059 do *not* indicate original pressings, and at this point in time, *all* the evidence indicates that the exact opposite is true. It appears to me that all review copies post-4059 are non-deep groove, and since review copies would have went out before the album release, this indicates that original pressings were done with the new non-deep groove center dies. I have also seen situation where lighter weight pressings are deep groove and heavier pressings are non-deep groove, and if you go to London Jazz Collector’s site he has written an excellent article showing the steady decline in vinyl weight for Blue Note records over the years. This makes sense too, that they would use older equipment for reissues. But there is no hard evidence proving that this is true. So the bottom line is that there is really no way to know for sure which pressings are original after 4059.
Richard, RVG was notoriously secretive and purposely misleading about his recording techniques.
You seem to make the often repeated mistake of confusing monitoring in mono with stereo mastering. After 1958 all, and I mean ALL Blue Note recordings were done in Stereo, not mono. Before 1962 the equipment available at the mixing end was pretty primitive, to say the least, so there as actually no advantage to monitoring in Stereo as really all you were doing was checking levels – which were the same regardless of mono/stereo. All the actual instrument placement was done by flicking a switch (left, right or centre). And of course, RVG was excellent and close mike placement to get the sound he wanted.
I realise today we are accustomed, in the digital age, to having to hear/view everything first, but at the time Stereo monitoring was no more necessary than viewing a photo on your Leica before pressing the shutter.
To hear how good RVG stereo recordings were look no further than the recordings themselves. For someone who, allegedly took no interest in Stereo, he has managed to produce a vast catalogue of excellent sounding Stereo recordings from 1958 onwards that put their mono fold down versions to shame IMO.
For me also, the very best RVG recordings were made at his parents house at Hackensack – perhaps its the physical space – but I do feel his output does not sound as good after moving to the new studio, and gets progressively worse as the 60s roll on. And his recent CD remasterings are very poor IMO.
Richard,
Also, regarding Cohen;s quoting of RVG, he provides no actual information as to its source, so cannot be verified for veracity, they are just “excerpts from an interview”, not the whole interview so out of context. But, this aside, RVG does actually say that:
“Alfred still expected me to create a two track tape from which I could make the mono master disk while mono was still in demand. Later I could then use the same tape as a master for the Stereo LP. I did this by combining the two-tracks in a manner that we called 50/50”.
So it appears that RVG was instructed to create masters that could be used for both Stereo and Mono. It is not correct therefore to say, as you have above, that “Van Gelder’s focus was mono”, or at least not exclusively so.
Cohen, also goes on to quote from RVG:
“When the studio in Englewood Cliffs opened in 1959 it had three speakers in the control room and four speakers in the studio.”
Again, I find it very unlikely that, given RVG had been told to produce a master that could be used to produce Stereo LPs as well as mono, and working in a studio that had clearly been created (by RVG himself no less) for stereo recording and mastering, that he made no use of those facilities in producing the Stereo LPs, about which he states “the transfer of these recordings to early Stereo LPs is an interesting story, but perhaps for another time….”
It is very uniquely, to say the least, that RVG would have pressed Stereo LPs without hearing them at some stage during their produciton.
I remember reading about someone who visited Van Gelder at his studio a couple of years ago. He looked at the Blue Note vinyl collection on Rudy’s shelves and was surprised to see mostly stereo pressings. This is interesting because Rudy has often stated his preference for the mono.
I think the mono vs. stereo debate ultimately comes down to a matter of personal preference. A lot of audiophiles prefer to listen to the stereo pressings, while collectors and jazz aficionados quite often covet the mono pressings.
I prefer to listen to classical music in stereo, which is closer to how it is heard in a concert hall. However, I enjoy listening to jazz in mono, which I feel is closer to how it sounds when I listen to combos play at the Village Vanguard.
I have acquired a lot of Blue Note stereo LPs over the years, but I often use the mono switch on my preamp when I listen to them. I also tend to think Rudy did an excellent job on his RVG Remaster CDs. To me, they sound much more like real jazz music (which I believe was his goal) than the highly separated channels contained on the Analogue Productions SACDs. The gang who hang out on the Huffman website would probably disagree, but to thine own ears be true is my happy motto.
Quote: “You seem to make the often repeated mistake of confusing monitoring in mono with stereo mastering.”
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Oh no, my good friend, the entire process is very clear to me. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand it through research and direct exchanges with people like Steve Hoffman, Kevin Gray, and Fred Cohen–because I’m an obsessive analytical nerd lol. Your quote above attempts to relate two COMPLETELY different aspects of the recording process…I have no idea how you could imagine that I’m confusing these two unrelated processes.
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Quote: “After 1958 all, and I mean ALL Blue Note recordings were done in Stereo, not mono.”
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This is erroneous terminology IMO. You can’t talk about him recording in “stereo” or “mono”. It makes more sense to think of it as either full-track or two-track recording. After ’58 he did, as I said, record only to two-track.
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Quote: “Before 1962 the equipment available at the mixing end was pretty primitive, to say the least, so there as actually no advantage to monitoring in Stereo as really all you were doing was checking levels – which were the same regardless of mono/stereo.”
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I don’t mean to be argumentative or to sound harsh but this just sounds like total nonsense to me lol. I couldn’t possibly disagree more with the last two sentences.
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I also don’t see any point in your attempt to question the validity of the interview used in Cohen’s book. I can email Fred and ask him what it’s from if you like. Do you really think the quotes could be considered “out of context”?? Just about every interview in the world takes bits and pieces of the entire meeting, so isn’t everything out of context then?
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At Englewood, two speakers for stereo, one in the center for mono…this does not at all indicate that it was designed strictly for stereo.
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I really don’t have time to debate these things to this extent, I have to stop this haha. But real quick: you do understand that there are no “master” tapes in the modern sense of the term for these recordings? The tapes that Music Matters used were the tapes RVG tracked to–the only ones that exist, he never “mixed down” to another master tape. So two tapes exist: the “master” tape which was the takes to be used for the record spliced together, and the “session” tape, which was comprised of the leftover takes. I just wanted to make sure you understood that the mastering process did not involved recording to another tape; the master tape was piped into the mastering rig then straight to the lathe for cutting, both for mono and stereo masters.
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Definitely gonna agree to disagree on this. I have read just about every interview with Van Gelder out there ad have taken the matter kind of seriously as I have the highest respect for him as an artist and recording engineer. After all this, its seem pretty clear to me that mono was indeed his focus all those years. There’s probably no way for me to convince you (or anyone else for that matter) of this over the internet so it is what it is. Over and out.
Upstate Bill: “I think the mono vs. stereo debate ultimately comes down to a matter of personal preference. A lot of audiophiles prefer to listen to the stereo pressings, while collectors and jazz aficionados quite often covet the mono pressings.”
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Very, very true. The more you analyze it, the more you see all the grey areas where the truth isn’t and probably never will be known. But who really cares at the end of the day haha. It is indeed all about the music and what we hear. Honestly, in headphones, which I use to listen most often, the stereo is way too disjoint to be enjoyable. But I do love hearing all the intricacies of the drums on those separated stereo records.
BTW: Robert, this has been a very insightful exchange, thanks for taking part.