Tag Archives: Vintage Vinyl

Vinyl Spotlight: Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet (Prestige 7166) Original Pressing

Collection Favorites >
  • Original 1959 pressing
  • “Bergenfield, N.J.” address on both labels
  • Deep groove both sides
  • “RVG” stamped in dead wax

Personnel:

  • Miles Davis, trumpet
  • John Coltrane, tenor saxophone
  • Red Garland, piano
  • Paul Chambers, bass
  • Philly Joe Jones, drums

All tracks except “Half Nelson” recorded May 11, 1956
“Half Nelson” recorded October 26, 1956
All tracks recorded at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey
Originally released December 1959

1 It Never Entered My Mind
2 Four
3 In Your Own Sweet Way
4 The Theme [Take 1]
5 Trane’s Blues
6 Ahmad’s Blues
7 Half Nelson
8 The Theme [Take 2]

Selections:

“It Never Entered My Mind” (Rodgers-Hart)

“Four” (Davis)

This hobby is all about patience. Several years back, a friend of mine who is almost exclusively a collector of rock and disco twelve-inches randomly scored an EX original pressing of this album for 30 bucks at a shop in Troy, New York, just a 15-minute drive up the Hudson from my native Albany. Try as I have to pry it from his hands over the years, he’s never budged. A pinch of jealousy toward his steal may have then influenced me in the coming years to pass up countless copies of this album that I felt weren’t the right combination of condition and price (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a copy of this album for $30 in any condition). Recently I finally found a VG+ copy that, while priced over double what my friend paid, was still fair nonetheless. Upon previewing playback at the store, I found a passage of very light ticks in one spot, but after running the record through my Spin Clean, I was astonished to find that the ticks went away. (As much as I adore the Spin Clean, this was a first!)

Being one of four legendary albums Miles and company recorded for Prestige in 1956 in order to quickly fulfill his contract with the label before moving over to Columbia, this copy of Workin’ now complements my copy of Cookin’ (Relaxin’ and Steamin’ I can take or leave). These recordings represent a “sweet spot” in engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s tenure at his Hackensack, New Jersey home recording studio: lifelike mono sound that creates a natural sense of space with instruments balanced to perfection. “It Never Entered My Mind”, a patented, gorgeous Miles ballad complete with the sweet sounds of the leader’s muted trumpet, will perk up the ears of just about any music lover (my rock-and-disco-collecting friend included), and “Four” has all the ingredients of a hard bop classic. As with Cookin’, Philly Joe Jones’ drums sound incredibly natural at times and thunderous at others, and I don’t think I’ll ever grow tired of the more structured style of improvisation John Coltrane sported in 1956. This combination of world-class musicianship paired with a charming, minimalist monophonic presentation firmly places these sessions near the top of my list of favorites.

Vinyl Spotlight: Larry Young, Unity (Blue Note 4221) “Earless NY” Mono Pressing

Collection Favorites >
  • Second “earless New York” mono pressing ca. 1966
  • “VAN GELDER” stamped in dead wax

Personnel:

  • Woody Shaw, trumpet
  • Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone
  • Larry Young, organ
  • Elvin Jones, drums

Recorded November 10, 1965 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Originally released August 1966

1 Zoltan
2 Monk’s Dream
3 If
4 The Moontrane
5 Softly As A Morning Sunrise
6 Beyond All Limits

Selection:

“The Moontrane” (Shaw)

Back in 2010, I first got interested in collecting vintage jazz records by way of the Blue Note Album Cover Art book. Since then it’s been glaringly obvious that Larry Young’s Unity sports one of the most popular and timeless covers in the legendary label’s catalog — there’s even a copy of it on display (alongside BLP 1530, Jutta Hipp and Zoot Sims) at the Museum of Modern Art here in New York City. I always fancied this album art but initially ignored the music; I may have initially bought into the hype of jazz records with organ not being “cool”, and the post bop leanings of the soloists here didn’t appeal to me at first either.

Well I’ve come full circle with most of that. Finding an earless mono copy in excellent condition for a fair price on Discogs recently forced my hand at giving the album another chance, and all kinds of great musical things started jumping out at me. Being a big Monk fan, “Monk’s Dream” got my attention first, and I found a new appreciation for its tag-team arrangement featuring Young and drummer Elvin Jones. From there, it became clear how incredible Jones sounds on this album and how well his kit was recorded by engineer Rudy Van Gelder. Over time I’ve also become a bigger fan of the sound coming out of Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio in the mid ‘60s. Distinguished from all of the engineer’s previous eras by a “softer” approach to recording and mastering, there is a smoothness to these 1965 takes that starkly contrasts with the more heavily compressed instrumentation on other Van Gelder albums recorded in 1963 and 1964 like The Sidewinder (BLP 4157), Search for the New Land (BLP 4169), and Song for My Father (BLP 4185).

Other standout tunes on Unity include “If” and “The Moontrane”, composed by frontmen Joe Henderson and Woody Shaw, respectively, and the pair’s contribution as songwriters is paramount to the album’s classic status. As for this band’s interpretation of “Softly as in a Morning Sunrise”, I prefer Sonny Rollins’ (BLP 1581, A Night at the Village Vanguard) and Sonny Clark’s (BLP 1579, Sonny Clark Trio) treatments of the standard. Auditioning this album multiple times early on in my jazz listening, I probably rarely got past Shaw’s “Zoltan”: I enjoy the melody here but the tune’s dissonant “B” section leaves the door open for chaotic improvisation and Joe Henderson seems to take advantage of that more than any other band member.

Unity is a gorgeous recording of four adventurous musicians that I have returned to countless times since acquiring it. The more progressive frontline pairing of Henderson and Shaw make it a challenging listen, and the more tempered post bop leanings of Young and Jones have kept me coming back for more.