Rare test pressing - 45 RPM Direct to Disk

Yesterday I came into possession of a test pressing of a 1977 recording of the CSM (College of San Mateo) Jazz Band, under the direction of Fred Berry. It's a very unusual recording in that one side of it is a 45 RPM direct-to-disk recording of exceptional quality. It's probably only been played a handful of times in its existence.

This was recorded at Sonic Arts Studios, which was owned by Leo de gar Kulka. They did some great stuff there and this is very, very rare.

I took it to digital last night and have put the tracks, along with image of the album cover and labels at the web page below. Audiophiles will appreciate that this is a recording with *DYNAMICS*!! If you've got a system that can do it, this is one you want to play at live levels! Wow...

Please hit the link below for the web page I put up on this. Listen to the tracks and download them if you like. This is one any audiophile should enjoy.

http://russbutton.com/sounds/CSM_Jazz_Band_77/

Downloaded, played, ENJOYED.

Thanks very much!

Ditto !  Thank you for sharing this Rusty!  It sounded pretty darn good


Might want to convert to .flac ( lossless compression ) to maybe lessen the hit on the server's data cap - 263mb wav vs 147mb
If you have that page set nót to be indexed by google and other search engines it also might stop lots of hits happening

Roy D wrote:Ditto !  Thank you for sharing this Rusty!  It sounded pretty darn good


Might want to convert to .flac ( lossless compression ) to maybe lessen the hit on the server's data cap - 263mb wav vs 147mb
If you have that page set nót to be indexed by google and other search engines it also might stop lots of hits happening

I have my web page hosted by Amazon S3.  There is no server data cap, either in bandwidth or data space.  Costs me all of $5/month.

As for file type, I find that there are those who don't know how to cope with flac files and everybody can handle wav.  These are 44.1/16 files, so someone could just burn 'em to a CD if they like.  I think they sound OK the way they are.

That recording was given to me by a friend who found it in collection donation pile.  He knew I was a big band player and felt I'd enjoy it.  But wow.  What a find to have a nearly virgin test pressing of a 45 RPM direct-to-disk recording!  It's a good band too, though the arrangements really are pretty dated.

Enjoy the tunes.

pff k well thats good then   bout the s3 bucket.. It was just that I've had some friends get nasty surprises end of the month sometimes from providers when there was a sudden spike in traffic thought I'd mention it.

Yeah  sadly flac is not something often preinstalled on any commercial platform.. Shame really - its full GPL and vendors are free to do it.

Yes the  sound quality is really very good - so far only heard it on my desktop Kef Q100's but  top notch, and the band is pretty damn decent too!


Completely unrelated lol but for some reason a movie we saw here recently comes to my mind now - cant post links yet but youtube; Whiplash Official Trailer

Roy D wrote:

Yeah  sadly flac is not something often preinstalled on any commercial platform.. Shame really - its full GPL and vendors are free to do it.

Yes the  sound quality is really very good - so far only heard it on my desktop Kef Q100's but  top notch, and the band is pretty damn decent too!

I use flac format for all of my own music storage. I'm a Linux dude and use free, open source software for almost everything. I do use a commercial product, dbPowerAmp, for ripping CDs. I run it on my Linux box under WINE, which is a Windows interpreter for Linux. It's a little slow, but it works pretty reliably. I use it because you need a license to access the meta information databases for commercial recordings. There are freebie databases, but they are far from complete and the license for this this is only about $50.

And since you like flac format, here are links to a few other tracks I think you'll enjoy. These are the reference tracks I use for evaluating systems.

Victor Feldman, Stan Levy and Scott LaFaro - Bebop
http://russbutton.com/tmp/bebop.flac

Scott Hamilton - That's All
http://russbutton.com/tmp/Thats_All.flac

Wesla Whitfield - Lucky to Be Me
http://russbutton.com/tmp/Lucky_to_Be_Me.flac

The Temescal string quartet (my wife's group)
Ravel String Quartet, 1st movement
http://temescalquartet.com/sounds/Ravel96_mvt1.flac

nice ^^  thnxs will give those a listen

I use fre:ac for ripping our cds to our pi+allo boss dac    Oh darn yes   cant place links yet ^^   freac dot org   Its nice, some batch options etc and the linux version has full access to the various databases for comparative ripping and metadata

hm listening now to those tracks I wonder what piano the Scott Hamilton arragment was played on Sounds very distinctive

Roy D wrote:hm listening now to those tracks    I wonder what piano the Scott Hamilton arragment was played on  Sounds very distinctive

Bass – Monty Budwig
Drums – Jake Hanna
Liner Notes – Leonard Feather
Piano – Nat Pierce
Producer – Carl E. Jefferson
Tenor Saxophone – Scott Hamilton
Trumpet – Bill Berry

Nothing is said about what instrument it is the piano player is using. Probably just whatever it is they have in the studio. Steinway perhaps?