We move from San Francisco to the opposite coast, New York City, in December 1958, to hear Chet Baker’s greatest recording ever. The ensemble with whom he played was the best he would ever play with: Bill Evans, Herbie Mann, Pepper Adams, Paul Chambers and Connie Kay. Recording engineer Jack Higgins knew his stuff: he produced a whopper of a recording. Add to that, we are fortunate that this CD was processed by the JVC K2 superbit coding system. The results are stupendous. When Pepper Adams enters a minute or two in the first track, you can literally “see” the outline of his baritone saxophone, so drenched with real life harmonics this recording is. A triumph in every way. Another desert island disc from the east coast.
Listening to a Miles Davis album that precedes his famous Kind of Blue. I’m sampling the 24/192 bitstream. Acoustic Sounds has reissued this album on vinyl that’s gotten a lot of good reviews. Anyone has that on WBF? The streaming version seems kind of muted and lacks punch.
Listening to the breakthrough jazz-rock fusion album by Miles Davis that features a star studded cast, including Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin, and Wayne Shorter. Recorded in 1970, it’s sufficiently forward thinking that it could form the soundtrack for a sci-fi movie shot today or even a decade from now. These artists were way ahead of their time. It feels a bit like Stravinsky combined with a touch of Poulenc and other classical composers as well.