Speakers Corner / Mercury - SRM 1-631- 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl - 

AAA 100% Analogue -   Mastered By Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound 

Limited Edition - Pressed  at Pallas Germany

 

Speakers Corner Records has done a service to the jazz community with this vinyl upgrade of The Chuck Mangione Quartet. For those who only associate this artist with his late 70’s easy listening jazz reputation, this will be a revelation. The quartet chemistry is palpable. The re-mastered sound is balanced. Mangione’s flugelhorn is mellifluous, and Niewood’s soprano is sharp, but not over the top. There is ample bottom-end for the bass and drums, with room on top for the congas.- Sound 4.5/5 Audiophileaudition

 

Speakers Corner has done vinyl fans and mainstream-jazz lovers a big favor by releasing this LP. It has been out of print for decades and, to my knowledge, has never been reissued on CD. This release is another of Speakers Corner's fine-sounding records. It was cut at Sterling Sound in New York from the original analog master tapes and pressed at Pallas in Germany. It is perfectly flat and heavy, and the dead-quiet surfaces let all of the nuances in the music through. The jacket is a faithful reproduction of the original, even to the inclusion of a reminder in the liner notes that the album is available on "Musicassettes and Stereo 8 tapes" (!). Those indeed were the days! -Audiobeat Review

 

Now – in which pigeonhole that the innumerable self-proclaimed jazz critics like to create does this release from 1971 fit? Jazz-rock, jazz-fusion, soul-jazz-rock-fusion, electro-fusion-pop? Perhaps we can all agree that we should just enjoy these quartet recordings!

These recordings, all of them absolutely fantastic numbers, have been made by flugelhornist Chuck Mangione with his marvellous quartet without a piano in a sort of 'jam session'. The band members are absolutely top notch with Ron Davis on drums, Joel DiBartolo on the double bass, and Gerry Niewood (still underestimated and mostly known as a sideman) on the soprano saxophone and flute (which is his foremost instrument although the more hushed one).

 

On this LP, which has long been out of print, Chuck Mangione comes into the limelight in wonderfully melodic and mellow solos such as "Land Of Make Believe" and "Little Sunflower" – and the latter certainly needs not fear a comparison with the original by Freddie Hubbard! And "Manha De Carnival", composed by guitarist Luis Bonfá is especially worth listening to for the amazing improvisations which have been set down for all times. Mercury’s recording technology was of the very best in the Seventies, and that makes itself heard when listening to this recording on a new high-end vinyl LP instead of the original pressing.

 

 1971  Mercury Sound Studios, New York with  Chuck Irwin

Production: Chuck Mangione

                               

 

This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head. All royalties and mechanical rights have been paid.

 

Are your records completely analogue?

Yes! This we guarantee!

As a matter of principle, only analogue masters are used, and the necessary cutting delay is also analogue. All our cutting engineers use only Neumann cutting consoles, and these too are analogue. The only exception is where a recording has been made – either partly or entirely – using digital technology, but we do not have such items in our catalogue at the present time

 

Are your records cut from the original masters?

In our re-releases it is our aim to faithfully reproduce the original intentions of the musicians and recording engineers which, however, could not be realised at the time due to technical limitations. Faithfulness to the original is our top priority, not the interpretation of the original: there is no such thing as a “Speakers Corner Sound”. Naturally, the best results are obtained when the original master is used. Therefore we always try to locate these and use them for cutting. Should this not be possible, – because the original tape is defective or has disappeared, for example – we do accept a first-generation copy. But this remains an absolute exception for us.

 

Who cuts the records?

In order to obtain the most faithful reproduction of the original, we have the lacquers cut on the spot, by engineers who, on the whole, have been dealing with such tapes for many years. Some are even cut by the very same engineer who cut the original lacquers of the first release. Over the years the following engineers have been and still are working for us: Tony Hawkins, Willem Makkee, Kevin Gray, Maarten de Boer, Scott Hull, and Ray Staff, to name but a few.

At the beginning of the ‘90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the reissue policy was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC Compact Classics, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and others, including of course Speakers Corner, all maintained a mutual, unwritten code of ethics: we would manufacture records sourced only from analogue tapes. 

 

Vinyl’s newfound popularity has led many other companies to jump 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 from which to master: CDs, LPs, digital files and even MP3s. 

 

Even some who do use an analogue tape source employ a digital delay line, a misguided ’80s and ‘90s digital technology that replaces the analogue preview head originally used to “tell” the cutter head in advance what was about to happen musically, so it could adjust the groove “pitch” (the distance between the grooves) to make room for wide dynamic swings and large low frequency excursions. Over time analogue preview heads became more rare and thus expensive. 

 

So while the low bit rate (less resolution than a 16 bit CD) digital delay line is less expensive and easier to use than an analogue “preview head”, its use, ironically, results in lacquers cut from the low bit rate digital signal instead of from the analogue source! 

 

Speakers Corner wishes to make clear that it produces lacquers using only original master tapes and an entirely analogue cutting system. New metal stampers used to press records are produced from that lacquer. The only exceptions are when existing metal parts are superior to new ones that might be cut, which includes our release of “Elvis is Back”, which was cut by Stan Ricker or several titles from our Philips Classics series, where were cut in the 1990s using original master tapes by Willem Makkee at the Emil Berliner Studios. In those cases we used only the original “mother” to produce new stampers. 

 

In addition, we admit to having one digital recording in our catalogue: Alan Parsons’ “Eye in the Sky”, which was recorded digitally but mixed to analogue tape that we used to cut lacquers. 

 

In closing, we want to insure our loyal customers that, with but a few exceptions as noted, our releases are “AAA”— analogue tape, an all analogue cutting system, and newly cut lacquers.