A little vinyl snobbery for your Monday. Why snobbery? Well, I happen to own both of these albums on other labels. I ordered them before I knew much about vinyl and which labels were perhaps better than others, and the differences in sound quality from one to the next. I have Midnight Blue on the DOL label, which despite its reputation sounds pretty good. My first copy of Somethin’ Else comes on Waxtime, and it too, doesn’t sound bad at all.
Then I discovered Blue Note Records and my standards for jazz pressings changed dramatically. From their Classic Jazz reissues to to the Tone Poet series, I have never, not ever, been disappointed with the quality of the music I’ve bought from them. So naturally when I saw two of my favorite albums available from Blue Note, I had some decisions to make. Was it worth spending the money to replace two pretty reasonable pressings just to get them on the correct label? This vinyl thing isn’t cheap. It is known. But, as I’m adding more titles to the jazz side of the library, I am starting to take some pride in the quality of the LPs that I represents a genre of music I love so much.
Vertical Separation 