Memphis Slim - U.S.A. - 180g LP

Product no.: CJS9024

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Memphis Slim - U.S.A. - 180g LP
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Pure Pleasure / Candid  - CJS 9024 - 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl - AAA 100% Analogue

Limited Edition - Pressed at Pallas Germany

Pure Analogue Audiophile Mastering by Graeme Durham at the Exchange London

MUSIC 9/10 SOUND 10/10 Michael Fremmer -  The recording is extraordinary (despite numerous imperfections, technical and musical) and Nat Hentoff doesn’t exaggerate when he says that engineer Bob D’Orleans “as caught the full sonic impact of Slim more accurately than on any previous recordings by the Chicago-based wanderer.” At least that I have heard. In fact, the engineer has managed to make this studio set sound like a field recording. It sounds outdoors, which only adds to the authenticity of the album’s feel Truth be told, I didn’t think I was ready for another dark blues album. This one isn’t dark. Even the slow, mournful tunes have a vivacious, liberating quality to them, probably because these three veterans, Memphis Slim, Jazz Gillum and Arbee Stidham know that even at their lowest moment, there’s something good awaiting them just down the road.A rough-cut gem that’s easy to recommend. It’ll take you there! Analogplanet

This Memphis Slim record is special because it was an impromptu session, occurring at the end of his first “scripted” Candid date. As the tunes rolled out, it became clear to producer Nat Hentoff that Memphis’s playlist was comprised of “Traveling Music.” The blues great suggested the album title. I learned all of this from the liner notes.

What I learned from listening was the spontaneity and fun the three men had recording this “off-road” session. Arbee Stidham’s guitar goes wildly out of tune, Memphis misses some piano keys sliding up and down the scales (of a piano that he may have pounded out of tune during the previous session) at breakneck speed and pops some horrendous “P”s singing with gusto and abandon and not only don’t all of those “imperfections” matter, they give the record an honesty and humanity sometimes missing from formal sessions.

Memphis takes “Red Haired Boogie” at a daring boogie -woogie tempo—one I doubt the trio would have attempted had this been one of the “contract” tracks. Jazz Gillum sings a pithy edition of the now-familiar “New Key To The Highway,” popularized (for the hippie generation) by The Allman Brothers almost a decade after this session was cut. According to the notes, Memphis went looking for the veteran bluesman a few years before this session was recorded (so figure mid to late 1950s) and found him selling rags on the southside of Chicago.

There’s pain, joy and all emotions in between on the album’s 14 tracks, propelled by Memphis’s pulsing boogie-woogie keyboard. Side two begins with the rollicking train song “El Capitan,”—an ode to the joys of being on the road— and then derails next track with the mournful “I Just Landed In Your Town.”

The recording is extraordinary (despite numerous imperfections, technical and musical) and Nat Hentoff doesn’t exaggerate when he says that engineer Bob D’Orleans “…has caught the full sonic impact of Slim more accurately than on any previous recordings by the Chicago-based wanderer.” At least that I have heard. In fact, the engineer has managed to make this studio set sound like a field recording. It sounds outdoors, which only adds to the authenticity of the album’s feel.

Truth be told, I didn’t think I was ready for another dark blues album. This one isn’t dark. Even the slow, mournful tunes have a vivacious, liberating quality to them, probably because these three veterans, Memphis Slim, Jazz Gillum and Arbee Stidham know that even at their lowest moment, there’s something good awaiting them just down the road.

A rough-cut gem that’s easy to recommend. It’ll take you there!

For the most part, this is a 1961 session wherein the blues raconteur and pianist Memphis Slim runs through a good chunk of his repertoire, the songs that came to mind that afternoon. As such, it's relaxed entertainment, rather than a fixed recording for a larger audience. Which is not to say an audience can't enjoy this music. Slim's piano playing is dynamically rich, delicate at times, and pounding when necessary. His vocals are strong, too, but just as capable of dropping down to just above a whisper to make a point. They just don't make records like this anymore, documents of an artist at work without any attempt to be outside the moment.

A quote from Nat Hentoff's liner notes: "Aside from the usual hyperbole of record liners, I do think that engineer Bob d'Orleans has caught the full sonic impact of Slim more accurately than on any previous recordings by the Chicago-based wanderer. The best description I know of the sound of Memphis Slim is Stanley Dance's in the British Jazz Journal: 'It's an outdoors voice with a hard strength that suggests inflexibility, but it bends at the right times. It has a somber gravity, dignity, shyness, and a shade of melancholy. As he sings, he often seems to withdraw into memories, fond and sad, of other days, other places and other faces.'"

Beautifully remastered from the original analog tapes by Graeme Durham at The Exchange.

Musicians: 
Memphis Slim, vocals, piano
Jazz Gillum, vocals, harmonica
Arbee Stidham, vocals, guitar

Selections:
1. Born with the Blues
2. Just Let Me Be
3. Red Haired Boogie
4. Blue And Disgusted
5. New Key To The Highway
6. I'd Take Her To Chicago
7. Harlem Bound
8. El Capitan
9. I just Landed In Your Town
10. John Henry
11. I Believe I'll Settle Down
12. Bad Luck and Troubles
13. Late Afternoon Blues
11. Memphis Slim U.S.A.

Recorded at Nola Penthouse Studios, NYC, January 16th 1961
Recording engineer: Bob d’Orleans
Session supervised by Nat Hentoff

Memphis\u0020Slim\u0020\u002D\u0020U\u002ES\u002EA\u002E\u0020\u002D\u0020180g\u0020LP

 
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At the beginning of the 90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the situation was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and, of course, Pure Pleasure all maintained a mutual, unwritten ethical code: we would only use analogue tapes to manufacture records. During the course of the present vinyl hype, many others have jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source to master from: CDs, LPs, digital files, MP3s – or employed existent tools from the 80s and 90s for manufacturing.

A digital delay is gladly used when cutting a lacquer disc because tape machines with an analogue delay have become quite rare and are therefore expensive. When cutting the lacquer, the audio signal is delayed by one LP revolution against the signal, which controls the cutter head, and for this a digital delay is very often employed. Of course, the resultant sound signal is completely digital and thus only as good as this delay.

We should like to emphasize that Pure Pleasure Records on principle only uses the original master tape as the basis for the entirely analogue cutting of lacquer discs. In addition, the pressing tool is newly manufactured as a matter of principle. We only employ existing tools for manufacturing if an improved result is not forthcoming, e.g. the title Elvis Is Back, which was mastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray, or several titles from our Philips Classics series, which in any case Willem Makkee cut from the original masters at the Emil Berliner Studios in the 90s. It goes without saying that we only used the mother and that new tools were made for our production. To put it in a nutshell: we can ensure you that our releases are free from any kind of digital effects and that the lacquer discs are newly cut.

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