Music Matters Blue notes

Music Matters SRX pressing of Night in Tunisia is one of the best sounding jazz record reissue I've heard.  It sounds very live, especially the drums, yet it's a studio recording.

A bit off subject: The only version of "Night in Tunisia" that I've managed to hang onto is from "Live at Birdland I" with Clifford Brown, Horace Silver, Lou Donaldson, and Curley Russell. It's a bit perfunctory in some parts but is snappy and has a spontaneous raucous edge I like.

JPO

AFAIK Classic Records never did Art Blakey's "Night in Tunisia". Does it have "BG" in the dead wax? If it doesn't and it's 180g I suspect it is a Scorpio re-issue which was taken from the CD. The sound on the MM issue should be a huge step up.

Maybe I'm so used to the RVG piano sound that I find I am able to listen around it. I agree, the Mobley album is spectacular, even better than the 200 gm version.

Dave, with respect to the Horace Parlan "Us Three" MM 45 reissue, I had the same impression as you. The music is great, and the sound is dynamic/propulsive. However, the recording quality is mediocre in capturing the sound of the piano and inferior to the sound quality of some of the other Blue Note sessions.

I also have 33-1/3rpm LP versions of all these Blue Note Horace Parlan sessions (another Mosaic Records reissue box set). At some point, I intend to listen to some excerpts from both the Music Matters pressings and the Mosaic Records pressings to judge the comparative sound quality. I suspect that Music Matters is getting everything possible from the underlying master tapes but that there are some inherent problems with recording quality for some of these sessions.

Jazzdoc, did I get a bad copy of Parlan's "Us Three?" I was very disappointed in the sonics of this one compared with "Hank Mobley's "Soul Station" and the Parlan quintet's "Speakin' My Piece," both of which sound spectacular. By contrast, my copy of "Us Three," a piano trio album, reflects the well-chronicled issues with piano recording by Van Gelder, at least in his early days. Music is fine, though. Dave

The Music Matters 45s will give you dynamics that are superior to your 33-1/3rpm reissues. With respect to "A Night in Tunisia," I have another 33-1/3rpm version that was remastered and pressed by Mosaic Records in the Complete Blue Note 1960 Jazz Messengers box set. The sonics are, as you described, not great.

While the Music Matters pressing does not overcome many of the limitations that are, presumably, inherent in the master tape, I believe the new MM pressing is better in certain respects (dynamics, for example). I will need to listen to these LPs back-to-back to confirm this.

As a Music Matters subscriber, in the case of "A Night in Tunisia", the answer is an unequivocal yes. Blakey's drum set never sounded better than on the title track.

Also check out the Horace Parlan "Just Us Three". I was not familiar with his music prior to subscribing, but this album is incredible: great performance and amazing sonics!