I love live music because the performance and adrenalin often brings out the best in the musicians. This is an example where the performance was not live in front of a paying audience, but a live jam session with friends – only it was in a studio and microphones were present. It is one of the happiest sounding pieces I own – the Ellington Jazz Party in Stereo. It was literally a “Welcome Home” party for Duke Ellington after a long tour, but held in a studio where there were lots of microphones. First pressings of this album in very good condition are extremely rare. I totally lucked out finding this one in a thrift store.
Some one had spilled what looks like a cup of coffee on it. The inner liner was stuck to the sleeve and glued to the album. But it cost me 50 cents.
It took some work to carefully un-stick the inner liner and peel the it off the album. After careful cleaning with a soft sponge and some dish soap, then a couple of rounds in a Nitty Gritty cleaner and finally twice in a Klaudio ultrasonic cleaner, it sounded like the album had never ever been played. Now, it’s been played – a lot.
When I was introduced to this album a couple of years ago by an audiophile friend, I set out hunting for it, and have almost every release – including the original Columbia stereo and mono, original Philips stereo and mono, the Classic records 1997 (and even a test pressing of this), and the ORG 2-LP 45 rpm version. The copy that rocks my boat is still this original 1959 coffee-spilled pressing.
Mono & Stereo friend Gary Koh of Genesis Advanced Technologies, Inc.