I love jazz. While I really enjoy listening to a lot of different musical styles, jazz was my first musical love, and it remains my first choice to unwind with a little music listening after a long day.
So I want to offer kudos to Analogue Productions - my favorite jazz reissue record label - for producing a cherry-picked set of 25 of the best Rudy Van Gelder Prestige mono recordings, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog mono master tapes, and pressed at Quality Record Pressings on 200 gram vinyl.
These are superb reissues, and at $30 USD per LP, they are an extraordinary value too, given that some of the original Prestige mono LPs are going for as high as $2000 USD in the collectible market.
Earlier I told you about Rollins Plays for Bird in mono (above), which is a fantastic album that is part of this same Prestige mono series, and today I want to tell you about two more LPs, the first being John Coltrane's Soultrane (below).
Soultrane was recorded in 1958 by Rudy Van Gelder in his Hackensack, New Jersey studio, in both mono and stereo. Both mono and stereo recordings have their strengths, so it would be too simplistic to just say one format is better than the other, but I love the way these mono releases sound. They have awesome tone!
On Soultrane, John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Art Taylor (drums), play 'Good Bait', 'I Want to Talk About You', 'You Say You Care', 'Theme for Ernie', and 'Russian Lullaby'.
Did I mention that all of the Prestige mono LPs are numbered limited editions? It just so happens that my Soultrane was humorously stamped as number 666! Priceless! But no worries, on this mono Soultrane LP, Coltrane, Garland, Chambers, and Taylor are playing in heavenly form!
All humor aside, when you put the mono Soultrane on the turntable ...
... and give it a listen, I think you'll be impressed - just like I was - with the music that flows out of the speakers.
The mono Soultrane has superb tonal balance, being naturally warm and rich, with a superb portrayal of timbre, tone color, tempo, melody, dynamics, and rhythm. This album is fantastic, and I'm glad I bought it. I think you'd like it too.
As an aside, when I think about the difference between mono and stereo versions of albums, it seems like the mono versions portray the musical experience more naturally to what I hear in life, and that the stereo versions add some hi-fi style excitement in like wider and deeper soundstages, and crisper images. Neither is wrong, of course, and I'll have a bit more to say about that topic in a future post comparing the Beatles mono and stereo versions of the Rubber Soul album.
John Coltrane's Lush Life is a collection of unissued takes recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, over the period of 1957 - 1958, and then assembled into an album, and released in 1961.
Lush Life features Like Someone in Love, I Love You, Trane's Slow Blues (all recorded August 16, 1957), Lush Life (recorded January 10, 1958), and I Hear a Rhapsody (recorded May 31, 1957).
John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Earl May (bass), and Art Taylor (drums), play on Like Someone in Love, I Love You, and Trane's Slow Blues; and John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), Donald Byrd (trumpet), and Louis Hayes (drums) play on Lush Life and I Hear a Rhapsody (where Albert Heath plays the drums instead of Louis Hayes).
Like Rollins Plays for Bird and Soultrane, Lush Life is a must have for jazz lovers, and shares the beautiful tone that are captured in the mono reissues by Analogue Productions. These limited edition Prestige mono reissues are like a fine vintage of wines, once they're gone they're gone, never to be had again, so I suggest if you're interested, you'd better get them ordered pretty quick if you want to get in on the fun. Did I say they're highly recommended by yours truly? They are!
From my home to yours, may the music playing make you happy.
