State of the Art Audio, 1953, or “How and Why we Burn”
Most of the letters and emails we have received over the years thank us for making this material available. Many of those notes, by the way, have been sent to us by Gene’s friends, family and personal and professional associates. Nothing could make us happier. The goal of JazzLegends.com is, simply, to make this material available.
On the other hand, since we’ve been at this, we have received about a good half-dozen complaints from customers who are not satisfied with the audio quality of some of our titles. “This sounds like it was taken from an LP record that is 50 years old,” read one e-mail. Well, in many cases, that’s because it was.
This specifically applies to our “private edition/limited circulation” LP titles from the 1950s-1960s. We will be right behind you in line at Tower Records, or wherever, to purchase “Burnin’ Beat,” “Great New Quartet,” “The Gene Krupa Story” and the rest, when they are issued commercially released on Compact Disc, and are digitally remastered complete with alternate takes, unissued takes, etc. Until then, just in order to make this material available, we have transferred the original LPs to Compact Disc (in many cases along with additional material), with all the squeaks, pops and surface noise we know and love. Yes, it will sound like a 40-year-old LP. A lot of folks think that’s actually a pretty pleasant sound.
Regarding the practice of remastering and digitizing, presumably most of you eagerly anticipated, like I did, the “Live at the Inn Club” CD with Gene, Eddie Shu, Dave McKenna and John Drew. This had been listed in Gene’s discography as a “stereo recording” for years, and all of us just couldn’t wait to hear it. What was done to it was a disgrace. It was digitized beyond any musical sensibility at all, which is when we decided to make our transfers without any digital interference. And again, those of you who expect 2005, state-of-the-art digitized sound should look elsewhere.
Finally, whenever one or more of these titles become commercially available–“The Drum Battle” and “Krupa and Rich” for example–we remove it from our listings. Everyone who listens to Gene and appreciates his music is entitled to the best quality available. If we’re offering something at JazzLegends.com, though it may not be state-of-the-art, you can presume we list it because it comes from the best–or only–source material available. If we don’t offer it, that’s because there are better sources elsewhere…or like the “video of the 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert,” it just doesn’t exist.
Keep swingin,
Bruce Klauber
Tags: dicoveries, jazz legends, jazzlegends, tradition
