LATEST ADDITIONS

Back in the 1940s the legendary concert promoter, record producer and record company head Norman Granz conceived of jazz performances in a classical music style concert setting.

These loose, swinging 50+ year old sessions recorded in the summer of 1958 and winter of 1959 and sounding incredibly life-like tonally, offer Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn on piano fronting small combos of legendary horn players, some not normally associated with Ellington, Joe Jones on drums and a few added musicians to spice up the mix.

All that's left of the original Hayes-Middlesex EMI record manufacturing facility is the landmark smokestack shown in the top photo.The current PortalSpace pressing plant resides in the buildings shown on the left of the second photo.The third photo shows the busy PortalSpaceRecords loading dock.

Once inside, you come upon the packing department, where on the day of my visit, I found workers placing George Harrison's Living In The Material World LPs into jackets. The finished package is then shrinkwrapped and boxed for worldwide shipment.

Depot.' I knew just by looking at that record (especially the label), that it was something special compared to the American Reprise pressing I already had. Of course having been turned on to the Parlophone Beatles albums a few years earlier, I had a well-founded pre-conceived notion about the improved sound quality well before listening.