Tag Archives: prestige

The Deep Groove Mono Classic Jazz Album Art Extravaganza

Ladies and gentlemen, after several unexpected weeks immersing myself in images and history, I present to you the Deep Groove Mono Classic Jazz Album Art Extravaganza! This design love fest has been broken into two parts with links below. The first is an essay on Modern American design and its origins, and the second is an extensive gallery that includes commentary on each cover from yours truly. This project started small and turned into something much bigger, I am exhausted, and I hope you don’t mind if I let the content do the rest of the talking!

LINK: Jazz Album Art and the Origins of Modern American Graphic Design

LINK: The Deep Groove Mono Classic Jazz Album Art Gallery

Vinyl Spotlight: Olio (Prestige 7084) Original Pressing

  • Original 1957 pressing
  • “446 W. 50th ST., N.Y.C.” on both labels
  • Deep grooves on both sides
  • “RVG” stamped in dead wax

Personnel:

  • Thad Jones, trumpet
  • Frank Wess, flute & tenor saxophone
  • Teddy Charles, vibraphone
  • Mal Waldron, piano
  • Doug Watkins, bass
  • Elvin Jones, drums

Recorded February 16, 1957 at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey
Originally released in 1957

Selection:

“Blues Without Woe” (Charles)

It’s rare that I hang on to a record in VG condition, but this record has a couple things working for it: 1. Despite the pops and ticks, it has no groove wear, 2. I got it for (the vintage jazz record collecting equivalent of) a dollar bin price, and 3. The music and performances are both spectacular. Like my copies of Saxophone Colossus and Coltrane Live at Birdland, this was a “jazz genre section” find. Unfamiliar with the music, the price tag made me walk it over to the listening station to give it a try, and I wasn’t expecting such great performances and such a sweet sound.

For several months I grappled with the choice of keeping it or selling it, and lately I decided it’s here to stay. The compositions are all top-notch, mostly written by the tag team of Teddy Charles and Mal Waldron. The sound of the recording hearkens back to the days of lo-fi recording, drums softly set back in the mix (although the bass is maybe a little too low) and the soloists are loud and clear up front, providing a unique take on late 1950s jazz recordings. And the solos are fantastic, from “leader” Thad Jones (the leader of these Prestige “jam sessions” is never clear, save their name being first on the cover) to Charles to Waldron to the most gifted Frank Wess, who plays with a breathiness undeniably reminiscent of Lester Young. Thad Jones had a unique tone and was inventive on the level of Sonny Rollins, and Frank Wess plays with unbeatable swing (this record made me realize what I miss with the avant-garde: swing). We also get to hear a young, swinging Elvin Jones on drums, a rare occasion considering the splashy, liberated rhythmic style he would develop and own in the post bop era of the ’60s. Everyone is on point when it’s their time to shine, and though these Prestige dates often get a bad rep for lacking the care and preparation that went into sessions on labels like Blue Note, one can’t help but conclude that this group knew what they were doing when they stepped into the studio that day.

The album maintains a high quality of writing and musicianship throughout. Opening with “Potpourri”, which features Frank Wess on flute, the group then shifts to “Blues Without Woe”, an uptempo hard bop masterpiece. The first side concludes with “Touché”, a lazy summer jazz walk most exemplified by the harmony of Charles’ vibes and Wess’ flute. Side two opens with “Dakar”, a Charles composition with harmonic chaos in the spirit of Thelonious Monk’s “Evidence”. From there the band slows things down with a reading of the Gershwin standard “Embraceable You”. Thad Jones is his usual ballad-sweet self, and Wess plays a resonating, breathy solo. The album’s final cut, Charles’ “Hello Frisco”, ends things without exclamation, though we still get an inspired solo from Waldron, a pianist who we hear tirelessly working out ideas record after record.

At the end of the day, a cheap original pressing that plays without groove wear or skips is a record worth listening to, especially if the music and performances are as captivating as they are here.

Vinyl Spotlight: Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus (Prestige 7079/7326) “Gold Label” RVG Mono Pressing

  • Mono Prestige reissue circa 1964-1971
  • “RVG” etched in dead wax

Personnel:

  • Sonny Rollins, saxophone
  • Tommy Flanagan, piano
  • Doug Watkins, bass
  • Max Roach, drums

Recorded June 22, 1956 at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey

Selection: “Blue 7” (Rollins)
Well it pays to give the jazz sections in record stores a quick flip on each visit. Though usually less than mediocre, I’ve found that jazz LPs often skip the new arrivals bins — a longstanding staple of record stores — and go straight to the genre section. My method is usually to flip quickly through each of my favorite players’ sections and the beginning of each “lettered” section. This effort usually ends up fruitless but every now and then something slips through the cracks.

That surely was the case when I found this copy of Saxophone Colossus. On the surface, this pressing seems harmless. It serves as evidence of Prestige Records being up to their old capitalist tricks, updating artwork and catalog numbers in a shameless effort to rebrand previously issued material. Prior to this I had seen fake stereo copies of this reissue a few times but this was the first time I failed to see the “stereo” moniker anywhere on the cover. As I examined the front and back of the jacket I thought, “Could this be mono, and better yet, could it possibly be made from the original 1956 RVG metalwork??” And when I slid the LP out of the jacket, I was overjoyed to find the initials “RVG” handwritten there in the dead wax. To sweeten the pot, the record looked near mint and the price tag was in no way suggestive of the colossal sound laying dormant in these grooves. (See what I did there?)

I promptly paid my fare at the counter, and on this hot, sunny Manhattan day, I posted up at a nearby burger joint to grab lunch as I researched the record’s obscure gold labels. While London Jazz Collector places this label run in the rather wide range of 1964-1971, VinylBeat.com makes a narrower yet less specific claim of “mid-1960s”. Discogs has the pressing year pegged down to 1964 (I have no idea what the source of that info is), but to be honest, the vinyl’s lighter weight and thinner, more bendable material makes me suspicious that it would have been released sometime in the ‘70s. The RVG etching and bold sound of this copy nonetheless remain, a fact made even more astounding when one considers that the original metal factory master disks could have been over 15 years old when this record was made.

Although I usually post favorite albums of mine on here, to be honest Saxophone Colossus is a classic that does not resonate with me as much as it does with most jazz fans. The melody and rhythm of “Saint Thomas” is a bit too corny to find its way into my regular rotation, though the jerky rhythm and brisk pace of “Strode Rode” has always appealed to me. But the real allure for a drummer-minded jazz fan such as myself is Max Roach’s pair of solos on side two. Roach’s hands get quite busy at times during “Moritat” (a renaming of the 1928 Weill-Brecht composition “Mack the Knife”, made for the German play Die Dreigroschenoper; “Moritat” roughly translates to “murder ballad”), but Roach plays with tasteful restraint during his solo on “Blue 7”. Engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s recording of drums was always second to none, even in 1956 as demonstrated here. Roach’s consistent striking of the ride cymbal during his solo on “Blue 7” shimmers with glowing resonance and his tom-toms ring with air-tight clarity and precision.

Though Sonny Rollins’ unique character and humor as a soloist became apparent to me many years ago, I can’t say that I’ve studied the breadth of his catalog with the careful attention it most certainly deserves. But with the addition of this record to my collection, Sonny is sure to get more play on my turntable in the future.

Vinyl Spotlight: The Cats (New Jazz 8217) Second “Blue Label” Pressing

  • Second (Prestige) pressing with blue labels circa 1964
  • “RVG” stamped in dead wax

Personnel:

  • Idrees Sulieman, trumpet
  • John Coltrane, tenor saxophone
  • Tommy Flanagan, piano
  • Doug Watkins, bass
  • Louis Hayes, drums

Recorded April 18, 1957 at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey
Originally released in 1959

Selection:

“Solacium” (Flanagan)

When I lived in Albany, New York, the East Greenbush library had a killer selection of classic jazz CDs, and the 1989 Original Jazz Classics reissue of this album was one of them. Flipping through the racks, this album piqued my interest because of its super-hip cover and the name “John Coltrane”. I became more familiar with this album over the years and acquired the Original Jazz Classics LP a few years ago through Discogs.

Then recently on one of my periodic trips to New York’s East Village record shops, I was doing my flip-through-the-jazz-bins routine, panning for gold and expecting to turn up nothing but the usual rocks. But then in the Kenny Burrell section, the deep purple of this cover peeked out from the tightly-packed row. I assumed this was another OJC reissue, but when I slid the record out of the jacket I was surprised to see the early ’60s blue Prestige label. Things were starting to heat up. The next crucial step was examining the dead wax. With any luck I’d find the initials of Mr. Rudolph Van Gelder stamped there, and sure enough, I did.

I then examined the vinyl, which looked solid VG+. The price tag made it seem like this one slipped by whatever staff member priced it, and strangely, the numbers on the sticker indicated that it had been priced for sale three months prior. I had to believe that it sat behind the counter for months before it made its way to the racks because this record at this price would never last in a store for more than a week. Finally, I brought it over to the listening station for the final leg of my inspection routine and was humbly blown away by how quiet and clean it sounded. So I didn’t hesitate to bring it to the front and I slammed my cash down on the counter: “It’s a deal.”

In the past I’ve expressed disbelief in the commonly uttered collector sentiment that “vintage jazz records sound better than they look”. But this record wasn’t just providing evidence to the contrary, it was proving me dead wrong. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a record that looked more marked up and sounded so quiet. In fact, this record sounds cleaner than a lot of records I own that are visually EX.

Recorded in the spring of 1957, we hear John Coltrane in a less adventurous but more accessible mood characteristic of the saxophonist before he began his ferocious onslaught of scales later that year with the release of Blue Train (Blue Note 1577). “Minor Mishap” and “Eclypso” are two favorites, but the ultimate mood-setter is “Solacium”, a somber, quiet tune that will perfectly complement a rainy afternoon spent indoors. Available in bold, straight-down-the-middle Hackensack mono only — no stereo option here.