Blue Note 45rpm reissue

These first two LPs are great! I agree with your observations about these pressings - treasures to have. The second two LPs are only now being shipped to retailers, according to posts by Joe Harley on the Steve Hoffman music forum. I have mine ordered through Elusive Disc and can't wait to get them in hand. As I commented in an earlier thread: GET THESE WHILE YOU CAN. This is going to be a great reissue series judging by what I'm hearing in the first two releases of the series. These will not last.
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I've found that, for me, this will always be the case... :-) Wish that it were not.

I cannot have all the music, vinyl, that I want. Yet.

Too many Speakers Corner Mercury reissues also coming out to commit to the entire Blue Note series coming from both Music Matters and Analogue Productions. And then there are wonderful things like the Kavi Alexander recording of Ry Cooder and V.M. Bhatt. Ah, well... Never thought I'd see the day of a wonderful vinyl resurgence like we're enjoying.
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Dan_ed, these will all be issued in stereo (with a possible few exceptions with some of the earliest titles). From Joe Harley's comments on the Music Matters web site:

"The mono vs. stereo question confronts anyone dealing with reissues of Rudy Van Gelder’s Blue Note masters."

If the goal is getting to the essence of the music, we discovered that you cannot take a dogmatic view of this issue. Rudy Van Gelder first began recording Blue Note sessions in stereo in March of 1957. From then until an October 30, 1958 Art Blakey session, Rudy simultaneously ran both mono and stereo session tapes. After that session, Rudy abandoned the practice of running both mono and stereo session tapes and recorded strictly in stereo. The evidence is there for anyone to see who examines the original master tapes. When Steve Hoffman, Kevin Gray, Ron Rambach and I began our first mastering session with our first six Blue Note masters we couldn’t help noticing the clearly marked (by Alfred Lion) notations indicating “monaural masters made 50/50 from stereo master” on the master tape boxes. Quite frankly, our expectation going into this project was that both mono and stereo masters existed and that the mono masters would probably be preferred. After all, in the LP collector market it is the mono Blue Notes that are most prized. Steve, Kevin, Ron and I put up the first tape (Horace Parlan’s great “Speakin’ My Piece” session) with an open mind. To our collective surprise, when listening to the master tape, the stereo was greatly preferred to the (summed) mono. There was no doubt that the stereo presentation much more clearly presented the quintet performing these six great tunes that July day in 1960 at Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio. The stereo presentation revealed more air, more detail and more sheer life than the mono. The mono playback was a wonderful remembrance of the old LP we all knew and loved. The stereo playback from the original masters was eerie. It was like going back in time to that day in Rudy’s studio. Quite simply, the stereo masters revealed more of what it was like to be there that day."

Listening to tape after tape during that first two-day mastering session revealed the same thing. And every one of those master tape boxes had the same hand written notation “mono master made from 50/50 stereo.” For me, and for everyone involved, the great RVG mono/stereo controversy had been solved once and for all."

...As good as the mono originals are, after the October 30, 1958 session at Van Gelder Studios the mono masters were made by folding down the original stereo master. Once we heard the actual stereo masters, the decision was made: when a stereo Blue Note master exists, we will use that stereo master to cut our lacquers for this series."
http://www.musicmattersjazz.com/sound.html

Hmmm..., The Analogue Production Blue Notes have not yet been released. But both the AP and the Music Matters Blue Notes are/will be mastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray on the same equipment, and both are/will be pressed in the same pressing plant, RTI. They should be identical in their sonics, the difference will be in the packaging.

From what I hear comparing the Fantasy 45 series from Analogue Productions and the first of the two Blue Notes from Music Matters, I don't expect to hear any sonic differences between the Blue Notes from Analogue Productions and the Blue Notes from Music Matters.
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Kthomas, there is no overlap between the Music Matters and the Analogue Productions Blue Note releases. The titles announced for each series are listed here:

Analogue Productions series

Music Matters series

This is going to be a challenging year on the pocket book. :^)
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The Hoffman and Gray mastering process is all analog with no digital preview in the circuit.
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Jloveys, the licensing with EMI, who now own the Blue Note catalog, determines the number of copies Music Matters and Analogue Productions are allowed to press. This is a very expensive undertaking, and from Joe Harley's comments posted on the Hoffman Music Forum it is quite apparent that EMI is monitoring the quantity pressed quite strictly. Could they have contracted to press a larger number? Possibly. But they are the ones who had to pay the entire press run licensing fee up front and find the capital to do that, not you nor I.

"Remember, we have our life savings in this venture. It's our asses on the line, no one else."
Joe Harley, post at Steve Hoffman Music Forums

As to the sonics of these 45 rpm stereo reissues, The folks behind this effort are quite clear on their objectives: they are trying to put onto vinyl the best sounding pressings of these master tapes possible, not trying to match what folks may be used to hearing on the originals, but to put out something as close as possible to what one hears when playing back the original master tape. They openly acknowledge that these will not sound like other pressings of these recordings that people may be used to hearing. Joe Harley notes in one of his posts:

"We definitely encourage that [a direct comparison between a mint original and these new re-issues] Audiolab. Between Ron and myself, we have mint copies of practically the entire Blue Note catalog. As you can imagine, one of the first things we did when the mastering process began was to make those comparisons."

I will tell you that these pressings sound different from the originals. I'll leave it for you to decide whether they are better or not."
Joe Harley, post at Steve Hoffman Music Forums

Jloveys, I certainly did not intend to offer any criticism of you commenting on what is important to you for enjoying the music. That is truly fair game and good to share, and I've enjoyed the portions of your comments that focus on that. If I came across otherwise, I apologize.
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