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AAA Vinyl
Joan Baez's Debut Album Still A Wonder
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 10, 2018
Joan Baez recorded this Vanguard debut in 1960 at age 19. With her impossibly high and pure quavering voice and matching pristine finger picking guitar, she and this album created a sensation that helped shift the "folk-revival" back to authenticity from the commerciality into which it had drifted. Though while she sounded like a barefoot waif recently arrived from the Appalachian mountains, she was born on Staten Island. Her Mexico-born father who grew up in Brooklyn, the son of a minister, was a Stanford PhD credited with co-inventing the X-ray microscope. Her Scottish mother's father was an Anglican priest.

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AAA VinylNews
Joan Baez's Debut Vanguard LP Coming From Craft, Cut From Original Master Tape
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 29, 2018
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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
Joe Jackson Reissues From Intervention Records
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 26, 2016
Joe Jackson's "angry young man" stance came late in the cycle and so at the time was less than fully convincing. Elvis and Graham had already been there and done that. The picture of Jackson on the back cover of his debut Look Sharp just wasn't convincing.

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
John Coltrane Quartet's Crescent  Reissued by Verve/Acoustic Sounds
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 02, 2022
Crescent, John Coltrane’s 9th Impulse! Album, released in the summer of 1964, followed a pair of live albums (Live at Birdland and Impressions [mostly live tracks from the Vanguard dates]) and a pair of collaborations (Duke Ellington & John Coltrane, and John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman) with Ballads—a quickly recorded album of standards sandwiched in between.

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
John Lee Hooker Conjures Acoustic Fire on AAA Acoustic Sounds-Curated 60th Anniversary 180g 1LP Reissue of Burning Hell Via Craft Recordings
Mark Smotroff  |  Jun 28, 2024

Original pressings of it from 1964 are scarce, as it was initially issued primarily in the UK. What’s a vinyl-loving fan of acoustic blues on a budget to do? Fortunately, Craft Recordings has come to the rescue, seeing fit to reissue John Lee Hooker’s legendary 1964 Riverside Records LP, Burning Hell as part of their new Bluesville series. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see if this AAA edition of Burning Hell should be fired up or your turntable sooner than later. . .

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
John Sebastian's First Solo Album Improves With Age (Amended to clarify was cut from tape and is AAA)
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 18, 2018
Simon split from Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield broke up. So did The Youngbloods, The Lovin' Spoonful and of course The Beatles. Yes, many '60s groups remained together, like The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead, but as the tumultuous '60s came to a close, others fragmented with leaders going solo.

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AAA Vinyl
Johnny Hartman's "Once In Every Life" Gets Well-Deserved 200g Treatment
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 14, 2016
Three years before he passed away in 1983 at age 60 from lung cancer, a somewhat diminished Johnny Hartman entered Ben Rizzi's Master Sound Productions in the small Long Island 'burb of Franklin Square and recorded this album for the small Bee Hive label. It would be his next to final appearance on record, and one that earned him a "Best Male Jazz Vocalist" Grammy Nomination.

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
Joni Mitchell's Hejira  Reissued AAA on 180g Vinyl
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 30, 2014
Not that it’s any of my business, but I was disappointed reading that Joni Mitchell had nixed Taylor Swift’s playing her in a biopix. “All you’ve got is a girl with high cheekbones” she’s reported to have said.

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
Katie Mahan Plays Gershwin (Direct-to-Disc)
Michael Fremer  |  Jun 05, 2018
It takes nerves of steel and a healthy serving of humility to agree to record direct-to-disc a solo piano recital but that's what Katie Mahan signed on for here. The results are both musically and sonically rewarding. Mahan gave her first piano recital at age 6, having decided at age 4 that she wanted to be a concert pianist after attending a performance of Gershwin's "American in Paris". From her online bio:

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AAA VinylLAAS 2017
Kevin Gray Cuts AAA Series For Speakers Corner
Michael Fremer  |  Jun 08, 2017
At his Masters of Vinyl seminar at LAAS 2017 mastering engineer Kevin Gray mentioned that he'd cut a series of records for Speakers Corner using original master tapes.

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
Kult of Kogan Kontinues!
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 20, 2016
By now you know the drill: The Electric Recording Company finds a collectible and music-worthy title to reissue and does its fanatical-attention-to-details thing, both in the mastering from the original tape on a lovingly restored all-tube cutting system to a meticulously produced record sleeve and jacket that are in most ways difficult to distinguish from the original as described in previous ERC reviews.

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AAA VinylNews
Let No Good Deed Go Unpunished! Craft Announces "Small Batch" Alert Newsletter
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 09, 2022
When Craft Recordings rolled out its exclusive "Small Batch" limited edition "One Step" series last year it thought it had done a good thing.

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
Lifeline Quartet's Music of the Underground Railroad
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 17, 2020
There’s no better time than now to release a live performance of Civil War era “lifeline” spirituals dedicated to Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave herself, who is best known as an “Underground Railroad” organizer personally responsible for smuggling to freedom hundreds of slaves, first to the North and then after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 that allowed the recapture of freed slaves in non-slave states, to Canada.

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AAA VinylNews
Listen to Two Compositions From Jack DeJohnette's New Solo Piano LP
Michael Fremer  |  May 25, 2016
The new subscription-based vinyl-only label Newvelle Records has given analogplanet.com permission to post this video with audio sourced from "Return" Jack DeJohnette's first solo piano record and the label's latest release.

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AAA VinylFeatures
Listening Session Impressions of Miles Davis’ New Birth of the Blue 180g 1LP at All Blues in NYC
Ken Micallef  |  Dec 05, 2024

Last night (i.e., December 4, 2024), a select group of journalists gathered at the All Blues listening bar in New York City’s Chinatown, and were treated to an exclusive preview of Analogue Productions’ special 180g 1LP edition of Miles Davis’ Birth of the Blue, which is set for release on December 13, 2024. Read Ken Micallef’s firsthand listening report to get a taste of what you can expect from this historic LP. . .

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