Album Reviews

Let the Blue Note reissue riot continue! Fans of the cool, bluesy, gospely Blue Note sound can’t help but feel blessed at the output, whether from Classic in mono or from Analogue Productions and Music Matters in stereo.

There’s little sonic difference between the Analogue Productions and Music Matters releases since both are cut by Kevin Gray and mastered by the Gray/Hoffman team at AcousTech and pressed at RTI, though Music Matters packages them more sumptuously in a gatefolded jacket, the inside of which contains superbly reproduced Francis Wolff black and white session photos, while Analogue Productions simply gives you a standard jacket reproduction, expanded in width to accommodate the double 45rpm records.

How good are these records? Better than the originals for the most part, because most of the originals were compressed somewhat in the mastering process so the old styli wouldn’t leap from the grooves on heavily modulated passages. Ol’ Rudy Van G. knew that Blue Note buyers (and there weren’t that many overall, hence the big bucks for clean originals), weren’t among the more affluent record buyers at the time.

This 1960 set, when Morgan was but 22 (he died in 1972 way too young), has him fronting an all-star group featuring Jackie McLean, Bobby Timmons, Paul Chambers and Art Blakey. Now that had to be a dream come true for a kid and Morgan plays as if it is here as he does on 1960’sNight In Tunisia (MM/Blue Note ST-84049) as a member of Art Blakey’s The Jazz Messengers.

Morgan produced a big, vibrant sound and he was more a hard-bopper than a Miles-inspired cerebral player. RVG's recording gets right in the trumpet's bell and delivers Morgan's sound fully fleshed out.

Net Hentoff’s notes will tell you more about the date, the compositions and the players, should you be so wise as to buy this well recorded RVG session (even Timmons’ piano sounds pretty good and never overmodulates the tape, despite some pretty heavy hitting), so I’ll shut up except to write that these Blue Notes are like candy: you can never get enough until you’ve had enough and then you need to listen to something else, but eventually your musical sweet tooth takes over and you need some more.

Jazz today may be more mathematical and cerebral, but this stuff remains the genre’s most accessible and tuneful, combined with superstar instrumental giants and that classic big RVG sound. Maybe it isn’t perfect, but it sure is pretty and these double 45s give you everything that’s on the tape that a second generation tape copy might, so other than owning the master tape, it really doesn’t get much better than this. No wonder sealed copies of some of these double 45s are already fetching 100s of dollars.