tatifan

I noticed some recent additions from the HEP label, including a couple of the Teddy Wilson series. Would be nice to have all of those, and pick and choose (since I have so many in the Billie Holiday set on Sony).

I've always thought it was in the sense of whittling a raw piece of wood down to a nicely perfected carving of some sort.

Well, at least by the time they finish it, they won't need to break any copyright laws for his later recordings....unless they change the laws.

Sad news indeed. His sounds form a real connection to my days growing up w/ the Phils, along with Harry Kalas & Richie Ashburn, of course. Being a (former) long-time Wilmingtonian, I appreciated the mention in the obit of the Wilmington Music School, where I began my own piano studies! Paul will be missed, as one of the last (and certainly the best) at his occupation.

Good deal. Fans of "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" should note this Paramount disc is miles better than the numerous Public Domain issues of this flick. It's a fun film in a kind of lurid way.

Got the Blakey at Borders yesterday (they STILL hadn't put it into stock....waited 15 mins. for them to look in the stock room!). It's really something....the sound is much better than I was expecting, damned good, in fact, capturing a roundness of tone often missing from studio recordings of the time. The video quality is just a tad grainy, but the detail is there. The packaging and booklet are first rate. Moanin' is certainly a highlight, and Timmons is cookin' throughout. But Morgan and Golson are just on fire! I'm not ordinarily a fan of the type of "let's-throw-in-the-kitchen-sink" solo that Golson gives us at the end of "A Night in Tunisia", but it works like a charm here! An interesting detail: Timmons is playing a Bluthner piano, which were (are?) big in the former Soviet Union (I played one there once, and loved it) and Eastern Europe, but not SO much elsewhere....it's a tiny bit out of tune, but it's a really interesting (and beautiful) piano sound. Blakey's first spoken intro is from outer space! He seems to have been told not to plug Blue Note Records specifically, but he ends up doing so anyhow, after making a meal of whatever he's trying to say! He's having fun, at least! Anyhow, I'm ready to spin this disc again today! I guess it's on to the Gillespie and Monk for me....maybe Armstrong & Baker. Not a bad deal at Borders with the 25% coupon from this week ($14.98).

Uh-oh.......dangerous for the old credit card! I was tempted by the Fearless Leader set (did grab that Fats Waller set, though), but then started doing some rooting around and found nice deals on some of the Mosaic Selects (Russ Freeman/Pacific Jazz Piano Trios for $33.59). Also a fair number of Lone hill releases show up, and a couple of Frogs and Jazz Oracles found their way into my cart. I save my biggest sin for the end though.....the Bear Family Nat King Cole Stardust set for $162.39!! My credit card company and I thank you!!

Progression of moods trying to watch last night's game until past 1am CST!

What a crazy night between the Phils and Nats....kind of a "I can play worse than you" challenge going on! Somebody had to win, I guess, and I'm glad the Phils did. I was flipping to the Astros craziness of their own just for kicks. Look out Cardinals! The drama is unreal this week for NL fans!

Did they?? I just saw the highlights of the game, looks like Ultey hit a 3 run homer, hitting a ball off the fair/foul pole, but it was called a foul ball. Would hate to see a team bounced from the playoffs on a play like that. Yep, seems to be the latest thing...denying the Phils homers (like Howard's one in the Crawford boxes in Houston that the kid deflected). This one tonight really hurt! From the Phils dugout angle they probably couldn't see this one anyway, hence no argument, or request for a 2nd opinion.

Turned that game on my computer and saw the end.... almost predicted it! It was funny, Vin Scully didn't seem that surprised, but then he's eternally smooth! As to the good luck charm thing... and as a Phils fan.......could I respectfully ask you NOT to go to any more games??!!

I think since 1964, Phillies fans almost breathe a sigh of relief when things HAVEN'T been decided too far in advance! In any case, too much optimism may be dangerous to my health, but you've gotta hand it to them for making it interesting here! If Howard re-ignites to his level of a couple of weeks ago who knows what might happen? At least it won't be the guys from my current city of residence (Houston) to knock them off this time. THAT was tough to watch last year....not that I didn't enjoy going to some of those incredible late season games the past couple of years in Minute Maid -- and too bad about Clemens' possible last game being irrelevant.

Oh god, don't say that!

Gee.......I wonder where they got them?? I'll bet their "cost" was $2.98. Well, I'll be damned if I'm going to buy the 4 cancelled items from my Concord order......ok, so I'll be damned! Thanks for the heads up!

He was something like 4 for 28 before that! A 3-2 pitch right down broadway.....but then he's been missing most of those lately. All of this was set up when a steal of 2nd base, while Howard was up, triggered his being walked intentionally. Ordinarily I'd say why take the bat out of Howard's hands by opening up first base (Abreu used to do this with Thome up, and it drove me nuts), but hey...it worked out. In any case Clemens was having trouble locating. Gotta try and run down to the Juice Bowl (Minute Maid Park) for this afternoon's game

No, I missed that! Makes sense to me....no asterisk needed for him, in any case. No big deal, because next year he's going to hit 80!! I'd sacrifice a few of those, if the Phils could snag the wild card, but looks like they've just dropped another to Florida.

Yah.....damn he's good! Another crazy night for the Phils, ever the cardiac kids, but I must admit these young guys are fun to watch. Bullpen lookin' a bit overtaxed these days, hopefully Gordon will be back to form after a couple of appearances. Being a long-time Phils fan, but living in Houston is tough. Nothing against the 'Stros, but I do NOT want to see Houston eek out another wild card at the Phils expense........seeing Biggio hit that homer against Wagner and the Phils last year in a key late season game was something out of the Twilight Zone!

Yes, that's it. It's also no easy task to figure out if subsequent issues used those same poor masterings again.

That's interesting, thanks. My only hands-on experience has been with fairly recent versions of CEDAR de-clicking and de-noising, so I'm interested to hear about this. I think it's interesting how some people talk about what CEDAR does, like it's an absolute thing. Of course, it can be applied with a light touch, or absolutely ruin a recording, since it starts removing musical attacks (as noise) when to much of it is applied. Also, many (perhaps most, these days) transfers are issued without credit to CEDAR, but the majority ARE using it. The power of suggestion is such that I've seen reviews and comparisons between one CEDARed transfer and one that supposedly did not use it (but was in fact, used uncredited), where the CEDARed cd was denigrated because of the process. It may indeed have been inferior, but NOT because of the program itself. As to early "No-Noise" use, that's interesting to hear how minimal it was. I'm not sure how to explain its extremely poor interaction with other elements of mastering then, because across the board, I feel the Philips historical series (classical only), Milestone & RCA reissues using it in the late 80s & early 90s are some of the worst sounding remasterings in existence! Perhaps using that No-Noise logo and the promise of a certain digital "perfection" caused the engineers to rolloff any high frequencies that they felt sounded like noise, and the house of cards collapsed under poor EQ decisions. Is it possible that the use of the program just interacted poorly with other equipment used at the time?

That long box for the RCA set was pretty much for cosmetic use only. The 2 jewel boxes were shoved inside, and needed to be pried out. I tossed mine. Oh well, I'll add my .02 to the sound issue. I think the source material might be better on the RCA, and the EQ is fine to my ears. I'm abnormally sensitive to the overuse of Sonic Solutions No-Noise program, which RCA used on all of their 78 rpm jazz transfers at that time. To me, the artifacts are audible as a kind of swishing out-of-phase sound. To me, the "air" is sucked ouf of the sound also. To others, this stuff may not even be audible. The JSP, while not perfect, is more honest, perhaps a tad noisier, and has a better bass presence (perhaps TOO much, at times). The RCA booklet is certainly a notch in RCA's favor, and the '39 sessions missing from JSP shouldn't be overlooked. BTW, back on the subject of this thread.....are we to assume the discs in the new issue of the Rounder set are exactly the same? I know there was plenty of flack about their noise reduction method, and I though (or was it someone's wishful thinking) that they had plans of a remastering?? Perhaps someone noticed the original piano-shaped box had been withdrawn and thought it might be due to a remastering??

BTW, in Houston today I saw multiple copies of the Savoy 2 cd "Modern Red Norvo" and Complete Lester Young sets for $9.98 (and this weekend is 20% off everything, starting Sept. 1, I think). There were a few other Savoys, but mostly compilations. Oh, and the Adderley "Bohemia after Dark" (I gather it's better to pick up the 2 cd Savoy Adderley set if one is interested in that material??).

Well, can a place be useless that usually yields nothing of interest, but then coughs up an $80 copy of the Mosaic Nat King Cole Trio set? Sometimes persistance in the face of overall uselessness yields a gem.......

For me, the sets are attractive for the booklets and sometimes fit my needs for certain artists (in the day, the Henry Red Allen set was a great introduction to him for me), but I'm afraid the mastering/78 transfer work was only just average for the time, and is well below modern standards (they're VERY filtered on the top end, and pretty lifeless as a result).

The only reissues that compare favorably to the sonics of the Mosaic (I've heard just about all of the offical Columbia & RCA reissues) are the J.R.T. Davies JSP set (although he was reportedly unhappy because they used older masters of his, but I think they sound very good). The price is certainly right. If you want the Victor stuff (with All of the known alternate takes) Davies also did 4 volumes (3cds each) of a series called Bix Revisited. They are full priced, duplicate much of the Mosaic set, but also include the best tranfers (by far) of the his earliest acoustic material. The Victor stuff has way more sonic impact compared to those French RCA transfers that Jazzbo mentions, but there are LOTS of alternates of the Goldkette stuff, which as much as I appreciate, I don't really need 3 takes of some of these cuts. I stumbled upon the 1st volume of this series, was floored by the sound on the Gennett sides, and ended up getting the lot of them, despite having recently purchased the Mosaic set......which remains essential for some of the non-Bix stuff and the fantastic notes and pics. Sony's elderely 2 cds (not sure if that's what the 2cd SET consists of) have been thoroughly outclassed by all of these, with JSP being the best bang for the buck if you don't want to go broke and/or insane with the choice of the other 2 sets/series.

Don't the MP3 players that avoid this bump do it by some kind of crossfading between tracks? And this crossfading usually loses something at the end or beginning while smashing them together unnaturaly, in my limited experience. Whenever I burn straight cds of MP3 files (or AAC-m4a) I still get this bump, whereas Flac, Ape or Wav burned to cd maintain the smooth transition between tracks (as long as you make sure that 2 sec. gap isn't inserted when it's not needed).