Verve Acoustic Sounds Series Reissues

The UK 1970s 'Atlantic Years' pressings are still cheap - possibly because they have cover art that's rather of it's time...

I seem to recall Jim @poco a poco compared one of the titles against a good recent reissue and it got the thumbs up.

 

I've got the Heavyweight Champion Boxset - must have a listen, it's been a while

 

Me too - overshadowed by all the Impulse stuff. Listened to Africa Brass a few days ago - still wow!

 

I understand that: I probably would too. I just have a soft spot for Ole: I might hunt out one of the George Piros cuts from late 60s/early 70s.

 

While pretty much everything is overshadowed the Impulse stuff but there is some great recordings on Atlantic including the great and important Giant Steps of course, but I also rate My Favourite Things, Ole and Coltrane Jazz highly.

 

I think that was My Favourite Things where I have a US 1970’s Atlantic that is pretty good. I think I bought for less than £5. Ole seems to be about £40 for a 70’s Pressing though and most are French so I’m not sure how good that title would be.

 

Ah I was thinking of the UK 1970s 'Atlantic Years' series. I'd always assumed it reissued all the Atlantic albums. But it looks like I was completely wrong! On DIscogs all I can find is:

Vol.1 - Three Little Words (aka Bags & Trane)
Vol.2 - Giant Steps
Vol.5 - My Favourite Things

I wonder what happened to volumes 3 and 4.

 

I am really taken aback (shocked actually!) by the lack of consideration here for Trane's Atlantic period. To me, it constitutes an important period of evolution in his playing and music and stands up very well to his Impulse albums. And contrary to opinion here, I probably play these more than the Impulse albums. There are so many great Coltrane albums here - Coltrane's Jazz, Giant Steps, Coltrane's Sound and also My Favorite Things (not a favorite but I admit that's my shortcoming ). Don't forget also that many of his classic tunes originated from this period - Giant Steps, My Favorite Things, Naima, Like Sonny, Countdown, Body & Soul etc - tunes that served as jumping off points for improvisation later in his career.

 

If Coltrane had have quit in 1960 before his Impulse period, he’d still be considered a genius, no doubt. He pushed conventional harmony and chord structure to its limits, Giant Steps being the pinnacle in this respect. But then, in his own words, he was hearing something different, especially in terms of rhythm and time.

It’s the post 1960 Impulse period that excites me the most. It could probably be argued that opinion on this relies on how individuals approach Coltrane. Mine was from the perspective of avant garde rock and British free jazz in the early to mid 70s, (Henry Cow, Beefheart, AMM, Evan Parker, Peter Brotzmann, Brotherhood of Breath etc...), so something like Interstellar Space, Ascension, Meditations, and all the Village Vanguard albums made perfect sense to me. Not so sure a ‘lack of consideration’ for the earlier period has much to do with my own perspective.

 

I've got an early 70s German Atlantic 'Giant Steps' which sounds really good - richer, more open and more dynamic than the Rhino. I've not come across much else though. Interesting how the best sounding LP in the Heavyweight set by far is Alternate Takes.

 

I just heard a 1969/70 copy of 'Coltrane' at Cosmos in Toronto. 'Out of This World' sounded fantastic and the horn was really dynamic. After a discussion with Aki I've started to wonder if the Jasmine copy I bought in the late 80s is in fact a needle drop, but whoever did it had a pretty good early pressing.

 

If anyone has any links to the history of Coltrane master tapes I'd be very grateful. I'd like to know where the Impulse tapes are and where they have travelled over the years. Whilst the Acoustic Sounds reissues do sound pretty good, they still haven't given me the feeling I'm at the end of my quest for definitive pressings of certain favourites (at least definitive for me). Do we know what tapes they have used?

 

Well in the case of Giant Steps the Electric Recording Company claim the original mono master-tape exists as they released one of there expensive reissues this year “ Cut in true mono directly from the original dedicated mono master tapes on our 1965 Lyrec all valve cutting system”. 345 copies issued and now sold out. About £600 now on the reseller market. There is NM OG Stereo of Giant Steps on Discogs for around £400.

Following the MoFi revelations one tends to be even more sceptical about which tape and the ‘full’ transfer process, but ECR seem to be fairly clear about it
https://theelectricrecordingco.com/news/2022-01-06-erc059-john-coltrane-giant-steps
https://theelectricrecordingco.com/about/uk
They also released a mono My Favourite Things in 2021.
https://theelectricrecordingco.com/shop/my-favorite-things

So current prices for OG’s or the ECR are a bit academic for most of us.
I have a First 1961 Mono repress, Red & Plum label with etched 11637-A AT, [anvil-lathe] matrix in the dead wax bought over 30 years ago probably for less than £5?

 

According to Tom Dowd when recording Giant Steps and most Atlantic John Coltrane around this period they were running separate Stereo and Mono Tape machines simultaneously as Van Gelder also did around this time. So there were separate Mono and Stereo Master-tapes. It was not a fold down. Atlantic had an 8 track tape machine commissioned by Dowd in late 1958, but it seems that was mainly being used for pop recordings.

“When I was doing Coltrane, we were using the eight-position 2-track custom console I’d built,” Dowd recalls, “and I was feeding a stereo and a mono machine simultaneously. When we were doing jazz stuff we had to be able to record it mono, too, because there were still so many mono players out there; in fact, it was still mostly mono. Both the mono and the stereo were Ampexes-the mono would have been a 300, the 2-track machine a 352.”

 

May as well post this here…the latest “Coltrane” (Impulse) reissue has landed here and it sounds great. Not heard it before so can’t compare to anything…but it really is very nice.

 

@poco a poco thanks for posting that quote Jim. It led me to reading the full article which has some interesting detail in how Coltrane approached recording - plus some pleasingly nerdy mic stuff : )

 

Last nights ‘live’ 45rpm Audiophile session with Chad Kassem, Burnie Grundman and Ryan K Smith. Nearly 2.5 hours long so still working my way through it.

 

"God invented the volume knob for a reason" - love it