Universal Audiophile Jazz Reissues
Universal (UMG) own Verve and most other great jazz labels from the peak era 1948 to 1968. After the success of the Blue Note Tone Poet series – UMG decided to release audiophile versions of back catalogue recordings – but of course nobody trusts the provenance after the fire, so they got Chad Kassem of Analogue Productions to curate. UMG are releasing a couple of titles every month, presumably pressed at QRP and expected to sell well. It seems that each month a different label will be selected – Verve, Philips, Impulse!, EmArcy etc. and the titles are very attractive, particularly if you are only starting a collection. Month one, for example, features an excellent 1959 Oscar Peterson / Louis Armstrong set alongside Jazz Samba by Stan Getz. But month 2 really piqued my interest – “Ballads” and “A Love Supreme” by John Coltrane – both of which I already have but – hmm a 33rpm AP style reissue (despite the €44 pricetag) seems very tempting. Co-incidentally, I was flicking through a 2003 (! yes I know, see previous post) copy of MOJO and read an article by Ashley Khan about Coltrane and Impulse records (basically a prequel for the book “The House That Trane Built” – which is excellent). Below is a comment from the article, that now seem prescient:
Apparently, fortuitously, the two Coltrane albums (were there more) were “out” at the time (for what – ? the 2010 AP Love Supreme maybe, ? 2009 ORG version of Ballads), and Kassem stands by the masters. I wonder, however, how much of this is “bait and switch”: the Tone Poet series are from (presumably) newly AAA remastered acetates from the original “master” tapes. There are issues with wow and flutter. Perhaps Blue Note would have been better digging up old metal parts from really good mastering sessions and re-pressing. However, with the AP – well all they say is that the titles are from the original masters – nothing about whether they are repressed or not (but the packaging will be gorgeous). According to Fermer the Getz Gilberto release will be from a pre-existing 33rpm master – possibly one the George Marino did while putting together the 2 x 45rpm 2011 AP version. Its a great record, everyone should have a copy. A recent Ahmed Jamal – At the Pershing release from AP used metalwork from 1983 (and doesn’t sound a whole lot better than the 2013 DeAgostini version). I do think that “audiophile” labels need to be careful and be “straight up” with the provenance of their product.
The other releases in this series that have me excited are “Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown,” “Clifford Brown & Max Roach – Study in Brown” & George Russell’s “New York, NY”: I have at least 2 (in SV case 3) copies of each and would dearly love a true audiophile version. But, realistically – will the George Russell album sound better than the 1993 version that I paid a lot for (and still don’t know if it is digital or analogue sourced) or the 2-fer French copy that I have from 1978 – that sounds great? Hopefully they will be really good, really successful and will keep going for a few years (and will include a reissue “Jazz in the Space Age” – and all of the other phenomenal Russell albums).
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