Album Reviews

“Do we really need yet another version of Patricia Barber’s café blue? was my reaction upon hearing about IMPEX Records’ new $125 “One-Step” edition of this more than a quarter century old (1994) Premonition release.

After listening to the original and all subsequent reissues, the answer is clearly “yes”. The original Jim Anderson digital recording (16/48 PCM) was first available only on CD. Later, as I recounted in a 2012 post headlined Barber Classic Remixed at Capitol, Premonition’s Michael Friedman chose in 1994 to release a vinyl edition at a time when the LP record was seriously out of favor. He went to Greg Calbi, who at the time had left Sterling Sound for Masterdisk, and along with Jim Anderson, supervised a truncated vinyl edition (the entire CD would not comfortably fit on a single LP), leaving off “Mourning Grace” “Romanesque” and “Yellow Car III”. The mastering credit read “Mastered….directly from the session source material”—a digital dodge.

The album was not Barber’s first, but because of the production and how it was promoted, café blue gained for her a strong audiophile following, solidified thereafter with a series of equally fine sounding Anderson engineered, musically solid releases. When she played a few years ago to a large, ballroom filling AXPONA crowd, it was clear to all who attended that Barber was not merely a recording studio phenomenon but rather a consummate live performer and commanding (classically trained) jazz pianist who knew how to wow a crowd.

Barber recorded café blue as part of a quartet that had been playing together live for quite some time. As I wrote back in 2012, “….(she’s backed by a) trio that dazzles with audacious improvisations and lock-step communication even as it clears space for Barber's vocals and meshes effortlessly with her expressive piano. It's jazz of course but John McLean's guitar work brings it into a rock space, while the A&R work that covers everything from "Ode to Billy Joe" to "The Thrill is Gone" and Miles' "Nardis" defies genre-fication.” In that write-up I left out Barber’s own compositional gifts.

For the original Chicago Recording Company mix Anderson used a stairwell as a “reverb chamber” that gave the recording a unique sound Anderson in 2011 described as the sound of “lethargy,” of “beatniks” and of “poets.”

Of the original vinyl release (licensed and released by Music Direct) I wrote “(It) was at best OK, but given how great was the recording, it sounded pretty good and became a vinyl audiophile favorite at a time when few new records were being pressed.” The jacket was a thin direct board type (not sure of the tech printing term for it), unlaminated and visually lackluster but at the time vinyl beggars were hardly choosy.

In 2004 Mobile Fidelity released a 3 record (2.5 sides) box set of the original CD program sourced using the original mix, ½ speed mastered by Paul Stubblebine.

Then, in 2011 Premonition’s Michael Friedman and Jim Anderson undertook a café blue remix in Capitol Records’ legendary Neve 8068 console equipped Studio B using in place of a stairwell, EMT plate reverb along with Capitol Records’ legendary under the parking lot reverb chamber used by Frank, Nat, Peggy and the others to produce some of the greatest records of all time.

Bob Ludwig mastered the resulting mixes, this time transferred to analog tape, and for the double LP set that included all of the original tracks, the late Doug Sax cut lacquers at The Mastering Lab, in Ojai, California. The laminated gatefold “tip- on” packaging was a major improvement over the original and included notes from Friedman, Anderson and Stereophile contributing editor Thomas Conrad.

Though the new double LP included all of the tracks, the running order had changed, and I’m not delving into why or how it affected how fans experienced the album other than to say that the sound was much improved: warmer, fuller and richer, with greater depth and spaciousness and the original’s ever present slight edge taken off.

Spend some time on Discogs and you’ll see how valuable these earlier versions have now become. Clearly a new reissue, taking things to the max, seemed to Impex like a very good idea. With the original 1994 single LP vinyl edition cut from digital selling now for upwards of $165 a new deluxe one-step edition selling for less is a good idea.

The new edition of café blue cut from the same analog mixdown tape used for the 2011 reissue, but with tracks assembled in a different running order comes packaged in a super-deluxe slip case similar to the one Craft used for its Lush Life reissue in which is a triple-gatefold tip-on jacket, the outer two of which contain the 2 180 gram LPs pressed on Neotech semi-transparent VR 900 Supreme semi-transparent super-quiet vinyl compound. The center pocket contains a full-sized color glossy booklet that attractively repackages the annotation and photographs included in the 2011 release’s gatefold plus new notes by P.B..

The running order more closely adheres to the original 1994 CD and Mobile Fidelity’s 2004 3 LP box set though with the 57 second “ wake up from a nightmare and get a grip on the reality of a chest of drawers” interlude ("Wood Is a Pleasant Thing to Think About") moved from its intrusive side 3 opening position to a more appropriate side 4 bridge between a cover of Miles Davis’s Bill Evans associated composition “Nardis”and the oft-covered Bonfa/Jobim “Mahna De Carnaval” closer, better known as “The Theme From Black Orpheus” or with lyrics as “A Day in the Life of a Fool”—a perfect, downcast ending for a pretty dark album well-explained by P.B. in newly written (December, 2019) liner notes. A life-long asthmatic, Barber recounts growing up sidelined by the condition from the usual childhood joys only to have it put her at age 37 again out of commission for an entire year. “The emotion you hear in the songs on café blue”, she writes, “is some combination of my sadness at being imprisoned, my love for music and life, and my joy in seeing light at the end of the tunnel.”

Songs of sickness, loss, death-acceptance, being overwhelmed and suicide have never sounded so good or been so well packaged. So, yes, we do need yet another café blue and honestly, even if you already have a copy (especially the original pressing, or the Mo-Fi, which on some songs like “Ode to Billy Joe” sound as if Barber’s voice was out of phase and almost “canceled out”—never mind it was sourced from the original inferior mix) and love the music and the sound, you too need another copy. This one. You can then sell on Discogs what you now have and maybe even make a profit. Dare I say it? Yes: café blue is the perfect pandemic companion (not to be confused with P.B.’s album Companion).