This is one of my favorite Herbie Hancock albums. It has a soft, gentle vibe that I return to time and time again when I want to listen to something quiet. The quartet with trumpet seems like the perfect minimal arrangement for this album, and even though I’m not the biggest Freddie Hubbard fan, I find that he fits in with the rest of the group… More→
On numerous occasions, listening to a general jazz playlist covers too broad a range of emotions. In these instances I want a playlist that captures the mood perfectly. Over the years I have made several playlists of this sort for my own personal use and now I’m sharing them with you! In addition … More→
Truth be told, these United Artists mono pressings from the early to mid ’70s are hit and miss, having heard more than one that suffered from significant non-fill problems. But this particular copy made it through that inconsistent manufacturing process unscathed. United Artists pressings also seem to have a gentler top end than a lot of… More→
Since its introduction in the 1950s, the stereo audio format has become an inseparable part of listening to recorded music. This two-channel standard has been implemented on such a universal scale, the terms “stereo” and “audio system” are virtually interchangeable today in everyday language. The original theory of sound recording was a little … More→
This record is one of the finest examples of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s original mono mastering work in my entire collection. Granted, I only own a handful of these, but I’ve had dozens more pass through my hands over the years and this is definitely one of the good ones. What makes it one of the best? Condition. Since so many… More→
Deep Groove Mono is very excited to announce the release of a project that has been in the works for quite a while now. After many hours of research and curating, I am releasing my “Showtune Standards” playlist on Spotify! The idea for this playlist came from the realization that many of my … More→
So far on Deep Groove Mono, we’ve covered original pressings, Liberty pressings and early ’70s United Artists pressings of classic albums released by the beloved Blue Note label. This ’70s copy of Hank Mobley’s No Room for Squares with the all-blue label and the white (sometimes black) lowercase “b” logo is more or less… More→
Generally speaking, I don’t know the Impulse catalog very well, and accordingly I have a harder time keeping track of the ‘first-first pressing’ melee associated with the label. Thus I’m not really sure if this is a ‘first-first pressing’ or just a ‘first pressing’, but it has the Van Gelder stamp of approval and, more importantly, it plays… More→
Deep Groove Mono is excited to announce that it is now sharing playlists on Spotify! The idea for this has been brewing for a while now, but the creation of the Thelonious Monk original recordings discography prompted me to create a Spotify playlist for the recordings in that database and to share it … More→
A rare record in any format, this is the genuine article right here: Van Gelder stamp, Plastylite “P”, mono. After its original release in 1964, The Way I Feel was never reissued on LP or CD in the United States, and it has only been reissued twice in Japan on CD. The reason for the scarce number of reissues could be related to the fact… More→