Album Reviews

Going from Soft Lights & Sweet Music is like going from the merely excellent to the spectacularly suave and sublime, both musically and especially sonically. Though not as “clean,” and not nearly as detailed and revealing as the newer recording, there’s a liquidity, transparency and timbral rightness about the older one that just puts your mind and emotional state in a different world. Nonetheless, the piano has that boxy ‘50s sound and the bass is a bit muffled. There’s something to be said for the newer recording in terms of reality but for magic, it’s the older one. Sort of like old movies versus new ones.

These are simpler musical statements as well, backed by a more easy-going and relaxed rhythm section of Jimmy Rowles (piano), Leroy Vinnegar (bass) and Mel Lewis (drums), not one competing with the age of rock. While Mulligan’s baritone is remarkably mellifluous on the 1986 set, it’s positively buttery here, in part because of the recording, and to a great degree because of who’s sharing the bill. How could one not play big and round in the presence of Webster?

Tunes like “The Cat Walk,” almost a ditty more than a composition, wouldn’t cut it back then, not to mention today, if not for the players. In some ways this session, with the veteran Webster, was even more “mainstream” than the Concord recording, given how expansive and experimental jazz had become by the end of the ‘50s. Rowles playfully quotes a Monk tune in his solo on “Sunday.”

I have a mid-60’s Verve pressing that I compared to this Kevin Gray/AcousTech cut for Speakers Corner, and it’s got slightly greater definition overall and a bit more immediacy on top, as if perhaps the tape’s lost some luster over the years (both were no doubt cut from copies of the master), which is not hard to believe given the vintage.

In any case, the new pressing is far quieter than my clean second pressing and captures its warm, sonic spirit effectively.

A late night, elegant, cognac sniffer of a reissue. It’s what an all analog chain is all about.