Album Reviews

Maybe you kicked yourself for not buying Steve Hoffman’s outstanding re-mastering of The All Tme Greatest Hits of Roy Oribison issued by DCC Compact Classics almost a decade ago. Maybe you didn’t have a turntable back then. Or maybe you have a copy of that limited edition release and you think it is now gaining value.It's not, now that this edition is about to be released.

At a time when glam “hair bands” reigned, and “synth bands” waned, two guys named David and a producer named Davitt decided to make a grittier sound—a rock-roots kind of album—yet one that didn’t stray completely from the synth strains still permeating pop music.

The review of the original Blix Street vinyl issue appeared in the February, 2003 musicangle.com home page. I wouldn't bet heavily against Nick Webb's Abbey Road mastering and Pallas's pressing quality, so when this S&P reissue showed up, I wondered how it could possibly improve upon the original—good as Steve Hoffman's work can be—but this reissue, mastered at AcousTech and pressed at RTI, does improve on the original.

Perhaps this 1963 session isn’t peak Mingus, but it’s still unpredictable, volatile Mingus, leading two different 10 piece ensembles recorded in January and September of 1963. Side one’s group includes Eric Dolphy, Booker Ervin and Jaki Bayard, among others, and Mingus’s arrangements let them take flight beginning with a rumbling “II B.S.” (two bullshit), which probably became the template for every second rate jazz composer scoring for 1960’s television crime shows. The track absolutely smokes, fueled by Britt Woodman’s angry trombone blats and Jaki Bayard’s controlled keyboard pounding. Try not to get charged up when this track is playing.

One might argue there have been enough Krauss vinyl reissues, what with two outstanding ones from Diverse Records, but give this two LP set a spin and end of argument-even if you have those two superb sounding sets.

I'm not sure how many Roy Orbison completists are out there. I know two: myself and my friend Frank Doris. Classic has issued Orbison's Crying in both mono and stereo and a good case can be made for either edition, once the case has been made for the music, which is a bit of a more difficult proposition.

Producer Norman Granz's “songbook” concept, made possible by the invention of the LP, proved to be one of his most popular and enduring ideas. Ella sang Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, and of course Gershwin, but this one, pairing two of the biggest names of the last musical century, with Ella performing with three ensembles, was perhaps Granz's most ambitious undertaking. Ella and the Duke were signed to different labels, and both had busy concert and recording schedules, but after Ella performed with Ellington at a Jazz at the Philharmonic date, Granz set about getting the two together in a recording studio for a songbook production.