I shall always recall fondly the hours I spent shopping for used vinyl at my “local,” my favorite Portland, Maine, used record store. If you wanted great-sounding records of great music in very good condition, for just a few bucks, this was the place. My local did not carry much collectible vinyl, but that was okay: I was never really interested in the high-dollar stuff. It wasn’t until I moved to New York City that I started to wonder where it had all gone. The proprietor, I knew, traveled the country buying up collections. It was the ’00s; he would have encountered many valuable records—so where did they go? He was a total luddite—not the type to sell on eBay, I knew.
One summer, I read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, the memoir by Haruki Murakami, long-distance runner, jazz fan, audiophile, and seller of millions of books worldwide, especially in Japan. In the book, Murakami mentions a record-buying trip to northern New England while he was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I immediately recalled a conversation I’d had years before in which said record-store proprietor told me he regularly shipped records to a guy in Japan. Hmmm.
On a recent visit to Portland, I stopped by the store. The bins were almost empty. The proprietor asked me if I had any records to sell. These are tough times for the used-vinyl trade.
For fans of jazz reissues on vinyl, though, life just keeps getting better.
If you’re a jazz-vinyl fan, you know about the Tone Poet series from Blue Note, and Music Matters Jazz, and other premium jazz-vinyl reissue series. Here’s one you may not know about: the “Small Batch” series from Craft Recordings, the first release of which is due to hit the streets at about the same time as this issue of Stereophile.
Physically, the Small Batch series resembles a slimmed-down version of MoFi’s One-Steps. The records are 33rpm, not 45. A convincing reproduction of the original outer sleeve (but with a Craft Recordings catalog number following the word “Prestige”) tucks inside a luxurious outer box with a ribbon to make pulling it out easier. There’s a nice insert with reissue notes and photos of the master-tape boxes.
The first Small Batch title is John Coltrane’s Lush Life, which documents three recording sessions in 1957 and ’58, several years before the record was released in 1961 on the Prestige label. ‘Trane had left Prestige for Atlantic and released Giant Steps, Olé Coltrane, and My Favorite Things, but Prestige kept issuing Coltrane sessions for years. Lush Life was an attempt by Prestige to capitalize on Coltrane’s fame by issuing old recordings. It’s not a bad record. It’s not a great one, either.
Sonically and musically, it sounds like at least two albums. Side 1 is lovely and spare, with just three musicians: ‘Trane, Earl May on bass, and Art Taylor on drums. It’s unmistakably Coltrane, but it sounds like a Sonny Rollins record. Apparently that’s not by intent: Coltrane told Joe Goldberg, who wrote the liner notes, that the pianist—Red Garland, according to other sources—just didn’t show up. Side 2 adds piano—Garland—on both tracks and Donald Byrd (trumpet) on the first one. Paul Chambers is on bass here, with Louis Hayes and Albert Heath on drums. The sound is good mono. On Side 2, Garland’s piano burbles vaguely as it often does on Rudy Van Gelder recordings. Coltrane’s playing is good on the ballads, but he seems tentative—and less articulate than usual—on his more ambitious solos.
The resemblance to MoFi’s One-Steps is more than skin deep: Small Batch records utilize the same process, in which the lacquers are used to generate a “convert,” which in turn is used to make stampers, skipping two lossy generations. Bernie Grundman cut the lacquers, from the original analog master tapes. A thousand copies of each title will be pressed at RTI on 180gm Neotech vinyl. The price is $99.
This first issue in Craft’s “Small Batch” series is beautifully done. Ultimately, the series’ value will depend on the quality of the records Craft reissues. As I write this, future titles have not been announced.
When Blue Note introduced its 75th Anniversary series in 2014, I sampled a few. I wasn’t impressed. I skipped the rest of the series—and also its successor, the 80th Anniversary series that commenced in 2019. That was a mistake; the 80th series was good.
With Blue Note’s 80th anniversary year past, the label continues that series under a new name: Classic Vinyl. Despite the low price ($24.98), there are similarities to Blue Note’s Tone Poet series. Classic Vinyl records are remastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog tapes (when the original recording was analog). They’re pressed at Optimal, not RTI, on 180gm vinyl. The outer sleeves are simple, not gatefold.
A few weeks ago, I received one of the first releases in the series, Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder. It’s great music and it sounds superb.
Indeed, the most exciting thing about the Classic Vinyl series is the music: Horace Silver’s Song for My Father; Cannonball Adderley’s Somethin’ Else; Hank Mobley’s Soul Station; Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch!; and Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage are among the scheduled releases. There’s much overlap with recent Music Matters Jazz reissues, although these records are much cheaper and will presumably be easier to buy than those excellent-sounding, limited-edition premium reissues, which sell out fast.
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