Bill Evans Trio • Everybody Digs Bill Evans Riverside/Craft Recordings CR00751
Another commonality of all of these titles is the high cost of original mono pressings. Mono records have their own sonic merits, but stereo has been the accepted standard since shortly after recording in two channels was introduced in the 1950s. Collectors love mono pressings, the rationale being that mono is somehow more authentic, closer to the music's genesis; they are artifacts of a time when only mono LPs were available, even if that wasn't the case a few years later and definitely isn't the case now. Mono pressings are also generally rarer, especially if a title appeared well into the stereo era. Craft Recordings decided to offer 4500 copies of its latest RSD mono release, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, and that may mean you have a greater chance of getting a copy at the list price instead of whatever it will fetch on eBay after the fact. I say "may" because a Bill Evans trio recording is a big deal on Record Store Day, and Everybody Digs Bill Evans in mono is tempting on its face. As with other mono releases from Craft, Kevin Gray cut the lacquers and RTI pressed the LPs. Label-released Bill Evans Trio recordings are abundant and fall into two general categories: classic and near-classic. This one is in the latter, and it begins a five-year stretch of superlative trio recordings with a revolving lineup. Here Evans plays with established veterans: former Miles Davis drummer Philly Joe Jones and bassist Sam Jones. This album was released in the same year as Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, on which Evans played. Evans's lyricism became renowned, and he also became a supreme interpreter of standards. Here we have five standards, along with two Evans originals and one Sonny Rollins tune. It's difficult to separate this recording musically from the ones that follow, because Evans's playing is consistently sensitive on them all. He was who he was in 1959, and that remained true in the decades that followed. Before hearing this mono release, I only knew Everybody Digs Bill Evans in stereo, so the terrific sound of this pressing was a real delight. Played with a mono cartridge, which is requisite if you want to hear a mono recording sound its very best, there is a purity and directness, a sense of not only the proverbial veils being lifted but also being able to hear further into the recording. The center image is big and redolent with inner detail. The only pressing I have for comparison is a Japanese stereo reissue [Riverside/Victor SMJ-6090], which sounds very good in isolation. However, as with early stereo recordings, the channels are discrete, with so much of the music happening in one or the other and not much in between. Just as sonically consequential is the different layering the stereo and Craft mono pressings give. With the stereo pressing, the music hangs more at the speakers, while with the mono it propels from them, front and center. From this point forward, if I am going to listen to this music, it will be with the Craft mono pressing. I would love to see Craft release a series of
mono recordings, instead single titles for Record Store Day and Black Friday. The release
of Everybody Digs Bill Evans and its predecessors in mono has become enough of an
event that I'd like to anticipate it every other month, for instance, instead of just
twice a year. |
ne of the highlights of recent Record Store Day (RSD)
and Black Friday events has been Craft Recordings' release of a jazz chestnut from one of
its vast and important catalogue of labels -- in mono, not stereo. The lacquers for
earlier titles, which include Kenny Dorham's Quiet Kenny [New Jazz/Craft
Recordings CR00347], Chet Baker's Chet [Riverside/Craft Recordings CR00593], Art
Pepper's Meets the Rhythm Section [Riverside/Craft Recordings CR00491], and Gil
Evans's Gil Evans & Ten [Prestige/Craft Recordings CR00674], were cut from
the original mono master tapes, not stereo tapes folded down to mono, and pressed on
180-gram vinyl. All of these releases were more than mere remastered LPs. They were replica
reissues, right down to their heavy, glossy tip-on sleeves. Each sold out quickly,
due both to the quality of the products themselves as well as the small number of copies
-- usually in 3000 range.