We’re working on some new things at Octave and I need to know… what are your favorite 1950’s jazz standards? If you share, they may just show up on an album soon 
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Hi Jessica……Are you planning to re-master classics….or cover classics with current talent/technology?
Jessica, instrumental or vocal? Or both?
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Great question, Jessica. But it would take weeks of typing to answer.
And if you want to cover the true enduring gems, you should expand your inquiry to start in the early 40s.
For now, I’ll contribute just one:
“Joy Spring”, Clifford Brown–early 50s
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Mostly instrumental only, here some of my favorites:
- Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
- Lee Morgan
- Horace Silver Quintett
- Cannonball Adderley
- Jusef Lateef
- Duke Ellington
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We’ll be recording covers of classics on our DSD256 Pyramix system. We’re very excited!
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Both
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The Playfulness of early Dave Brubeck is my favorite. From Oberlin to Time Out period. The band are just having fun back then and it can be noticed in the recordings.
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If you do covers you should be recording vocal well known songs where the artist really cares for the songs message and also creates the story via changing the way it’s beeing sung. To be able to create a melody with the voice, that’s the difference between real emotional music and just another cover…
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And please don’t forget the bebop and hard bop Miles Davis.
Hank Mobley’s Soul Station, and Ben Webter’s Soulville are also wonderful.
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Hi Jessica!
I don’t know enough to advise specifically which group/musician to cover.
But, I don’t think that you can go wrong with the big name classics from the era.
The big names mentioned above would be grand!
Quartets. Quintets. It’s all good!
Someone worth listening to for inspiration, a great male jazz vocalist, is Andy Bey. I just found out about him yesterday. He is really good! I have listened to his live album, Ain’t Necessarily So.
In the meantime, looking forward to the OR jazz classics album!
BTW: Will you be gracing the album with a song or two?
B.
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Here are a few suggestions of fifties compositions I wish were more accepted as standards and are worth revisiting in this day and age:
“Sid’s Ahead” Miles Davis composition from “Milestones.” This one still kicks my ass with wonder nearly fifty years after I first heard it.
“Friday the Thirteenth” Thelonious Monk composition. It’s an earworm that is hard to dispose of.
“Pee Wee’s Blues” a Pee Wee Russell composition I love–especially the version on “Pee Wee Russell Plays Pee Wee Russell” Dot Records LP
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And here is one that IS a jazz standard from the end of the 'fifties:
“Lonely Woman” perhaps the most often covered Ornette Coleman composition.
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15 posts were split to a new topic: Listening to DSD 256
Vocal sibilance’s are back finally. So many DSD recordings (Octave, Sony, Analogue Productions, Mobile Fidelity, HDTT, and so many others) seem to have forgotten the “Treble” on so many recordings. It’s like they are worried about making the recording strident, fatiguing, hard on the ears, and so forth if they even dare playing with that end of the frequency spectrum.
Great recording, music, players, and I love how the the vocals are anchored in the center. The Aries now acts like a Tube Buffer before the L & R Amps. And I backed off on the "Fosgate Surround " cause theis recording doesn’t need any added flavors. You get that 1950’s feel when listening without ANY of the muddiness in the vocals particularly.
Another shining example why LP’s aren’t necessary anymore ! Oops…I forgot that I’m in that crowd too now for 2 years.
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Do you find this Jazz recording lacking in the treble? On my system, trebly instruments like the cymbals are breathtakingly there and present.
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No. Not at all with respect to what you Guys did here. But yeah on past stuff, the vocals always seemed laid back.
Not that it’s a bad thing Paul. Not that I’m a “V” curve kinda Guy. But I like my “s” es on the vocals.
Again, great stuff.
Paul…Realism, liveliness and emotional connections getting better with each production! 
Thanks. Wait until you hear the upcoming Pennies from Heaven with Jeremy Mohney’s band. Just killer.
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