Last spring I got a Columbia GP-3, the workhorse portable record player made in Japan that has been serving beatdiggers and the like for decades. Finances were good at the time and I had been trying to find ways… More→
Deep Groove Mono is back with another round of collector interviews! We’re kicking things off with a true legend, Italy’s Giorgio Sarchi a.k.a. “Dottor Jazz”. With over five decades of activity, Dott is one of the hobby’s real O.G.’s, and of course he has the jaw-dropping collection to prove it. I became familiar … More→
In my time collecting vintage jazz LPs I have always been curious about jazz from the bebop era, which for the most part was originally released on 78 R.P.M. shellac disks. Listening to digital reissues of music from artists who thrived in the 1940s like Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Lester Young was … More→
For a picky, minimalist collector like myself, collecting Monk on vintage vinyl has proved challenging. Never a fan of collecting compilations on vinyl, I have never pursued the early Blue Note LPs (BLP 1510/11). While the performances are undoubtedly world-class (and my… More→
I ignored this album for quite some time for a couple reasons. First, it was primarily comprised of standards and short on originals, but also because the album has rarely been reissued in mono and I kept reading about issues with the consistency of Rollins’ volume level in the stereo mix (apparently caused by the leader’s motion in the studio… More→
My first interaction with Curtis Fuller Volume 3 came when I bought a Japanese reissue at a local record store on a whim. The lineup looked good and I knew it was fairly rare in any format so I decided to take a chance. After an initial round of unfocused listens, I prematurely dismissed the album and sold it locally. Then about a year… More→
About a year ago, when I first sat down to work on my Rudy Van Gelder presentation, I compiled a (necessarily large) playlist on Spotify of albums he recorded that I hadn’t heard. Among those were maybe around a dozen recordings done between 1953 and 1955. Unlike other Van Gelder dates from around this time that are drenched in spring reverb, these… More→
I am excited to announce that I will be giving a presentation on legendary jazz recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder at this year’s Audio Engineering Society Convention at the Javits Center in New York City. The talk is titled “Rudy Van Gelder: A Legacy in Audio Engineering”, and it will take place on … More→
Deep Groove Mono is excited to announce the official launch of our YouTube channel. The channel currently features over 75 “video needledrops” of vintage jazz pressings and that number is growing. Some of the videos simulate a record spinning on a turntable, others flip through quality photographs of the jacket and labels. We … More→
When I first began collecting vintage jazz records, I quickly noticed that Sonny Clark’s Cool Struttin’ is a very in-demand album and considered by many to be a classic. Additionally, I noticed that original pressings fetched in the upwards of two thousand dollars. At some point I became aware that this third/fourth Liberty pressing with original mono Rudy Van Gelder mastering existed, but it still… More→