I’m sitting here in my living room tonight, relaxing after a long day in the office, listening to my favorite Chet Baker album of all time, the Someday My Price Will Come on SteepleChase that was recorded live at Montmartre in Copenhagen on October 4, 1979. I’ve listened to the CD version for years, and have been completely infatuated with it, but tonight the LP version I just bought ($25 USD) arrived via UPS today. I have to tell you the LP version of this album is so ridiculously good in so many ways: most importantly the music is wonderfully alive, and the tone of the instruments is drop dead gorgeous. Those who place a lot of value on wide and deep soundstage might not be all that excited by the somewhat narrow and shallow soundstage, but man, the music is to die for! If you love jazz, and enjoy the cool jazz interpretations of Chet Baker, you’ve got to get this album! Highly recommended for the music, a little less so for the typical audiophile sonics.
I have to say, I’m just totally blown away with my Hi-Fi rig these days. The combination of Tannoy Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers, Leben vacuum tube electronics, VPI Classic turntable with Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood cartridge, and every Acoustic Revive equipment & room tuning device you can imagine, is just totally blowing me away. The combination is so good that it puts me in some danger as an audio equipment reviewer, as I just don’t care about equipment as much as I should at the moment, all I want to do is to buy more LPs and listen to music, which I suppose is the way it really should be.
If you’re a jazz fan be sure to get a copy of Chet Baker’s Someday My Price Will Come, you won’t regret it – most highly recommended!
Yes, it’s a really good Chet Baker album. I like Chet and NHØP as well. I even met the latter in Hong Kong and had a very nice interview with him. Now only Doug Raney is still around… Thanks for bringing this title up. I’ll try to play it at my radio show tonight.
Hi Mike,
That’s very cool about meeting Chet Baker in Hong Kong. It seems like I might have asked you this once before, but where can I catch your radio show? It definitely sounds like my kind of show! I’m sure others reading this thread would like to listen in too.
I’d love to hear more about your interview with Chet as you have time, it sounds like a great story.
Kind regards,
Jeff
No! I just interviewed NHØP! Only in my dream I met Chet.
(I did have a picture of me taken by the memorial plaque of the hotel outside which he was found dead in Amsterdam. He is one of my most favourite jazz artists.)
My show is at Radio Macau ( http://www.tdm.com.mo/liveaudio.php ) from 22:30 to 00:00 (Asia/Macau) every Thursday and Friday. The jazz section is from 23:00 to 23:30 (Guess it’s early morning your place, isn’t it?
). I host the show in Chinese. Tonight I’ll play tunes by Jim Hall, Gabor Szabo and Mal Waldron.
I think I’ve reached a similar place to you Jeff. I don’t care about the gear so much now, I just want more music! I have just acquired a Shindo Aurieges L, a Pass XA30.5 and a VPI CLassic (coincidentally with a Virtuoso Wood as well) and I couldn’t be happier! The little Pass in particular is fantastic and drives my Dynaudio C4s with ease…
All good!
Hi Neil,
Congrats on the new Hi-Fi equipment, that’s really nice equipment!
I know what you mean, when you get to a certain point the equipment just becomes a means to an end – the music.
I suspect there will always be new equipment that will pique my curiosity, but if nothing new came through the door I could easily live happily with my system for the rest of my days.
All I want now is more LPs!
Kind regards,
Jeff
Thanks Jeff,
I am really enjoying it! I think the next acquisition may well be a Leben CS300 primarily to use as a headphone amp… we shall see. And you’re right, new gear is always fun, but unless I could move up the Shindo chain I suspect I am done, I have no need for more power!
I am awaiting several packages full of LPs, the anticipation is painful!
Have a good one!
Neil
Hi again Jeff,
I was intregued by you mentioning the Chet Baker LP. I love jazz but find it hard to know what is worth buying and can always use advice, as I tend to just go to my local store and pick CDs with little knowledge. A bit hit and miss.
I don’t have a turntable yet so ordered the Chet Baker on CD…Wow! From the first few notes I knew it was the kind of music I’ve been looking for. So intimate and delicate and just perfect! My Nagras and LS3/5As love it! And so will the Leben when I get it!
Thanks so much for bringing this recording to our attention Jeff – you’re a star!
PS.
It would be great if you could post a Best of Jeff’s Jazz list! It would really help young people like me who are unsure where to find great jazz like the Chet Baker stuff. You’d be doing a great musical service !
Kind Regards
Greg D, Oxford, England
Thanks for the kind words, Greg, I appreciate it.
That’s a good idea about the jazz list, I’ll have to put something together and post it, so more to come on that front.
Cheers,
Jeff
Great! I look forward to it!
Hi again Jeff
After getting this on CD, I’ve now got the vinyl today at a vintage audio fayre in the UK. At the same time I also picked-up other Chet Baker trio albums on Steeplechase – This Is Always, Daybreak and Stan Getz Quartet Live at Montmatre(2LP). You introduced me to Stan Getz with your recommendation of the Lost Sessions for A+M, he’s now a firm favourite. I also got the Miles Davis – Someday My Prince Will Come CD that you recommended…they’re ALL brilliant, so I think we share the same good taste in jazz!
BTW, I’ve sold my Nagra CD player today, so the Leben system looms nearer
all the best
Greg D. Oxford, UK.
Jeff,
As a brief f/u to Greg, would you ever consider setting out some of your “must have” lp’s? You know, the 20, or so, that you swear you couldn’t live with out? Might be a nice (and easy) post…
PS I’ve moved on from the EMT JSD 6 cart and I have a Koetsu Vermillion in for a demo right now. Plus, I’m giving the Sophia Electric 300B’s you wrote about a try this week. They’re due in shortly.
Hi Jeff,
In used to work in the HiFi trade, here in New Zealand, in the very early 80′s. At that time I was sell the most fantastic gear of the day. Being a single man with nothing resembling a “life” I was able to afford to purchase some of the very good second-hand gear that had been shrugged off by many of our keener audiophiles.
Like many people new to this hobby I became so involved in the quality of the sound I failed to realise that I was no longer listening to the music. In fact I got it so bad that I often purchased LP’s because of the sonic reviews rather than the content. The most extreme example of this was the ridiculous amount of money I paid for an LP which had a recording of a train on one side and a rainstorm on the other. At the time I had a pair of B&W 801’s (the originals) in the sound lounge at work and I could blow the protection circuits at about 1 on the dial of the Perreaux preamp running into the original Perreaux 2150B power amps.
Time moved on and I got kids and a career and mortgages (yes plural) and then my wife decided to go to University to train as a composer and …., well you get the idea. My system is now very modest, PSB Alpha B1 speakers, Rotel amplifier, Sony Play Station 1 as a cd player and an Apple TV.
It wasn’t till years after I was forced to sell my good system to pay for a minivan that I finally realised what I was missing was the system, not the music. In truth I still had the music; I was constantly bathed in it from all sorts of sources – most of them live.
I have had to retrain myself to focus on the music first. Now my modest system, which will gradually get better, is a window into the world of music.
Finally let me tell you about one of my customers from back then; a person I should have learned more from. He loved opera and had the largest collection of LP’s I have ever seen. His playback system was horrifying. The sound quality was terrible. You could almost see the small peelings of vinyl coming off the “needle” as the “record player” rumbled, wowed and fluttered. But the music was sublime. When he played an album he was at the Met, La Scala, or Glyndebourne. What he could hear was the memory of what he had really experienced when he had been to these places. He couldn’t hear the system at all, and I sometimes envy him for that audio blindness.
Bill
Great post, Bill…..
cheers!