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SACD

Johnny Hodges And His Orchestra – Blues-A-Plenty (1958) [Analogue Productions 2014] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CVRJ 6123 SA]

adminMarch 31, 2026 3 Views

Title: Johnny Hodges And His Orchestra – Blues-A-Plenty (1958) [Analogue Productions 2014]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

One of the giants of the alto saxophone, Johnny Hodges was perhaps the most important soloist and sideman in Duke Ellington’s orchestra from 1928 up to Hodges’ death in 1970. The self-taught player made many solo forays during his long career – one of his ’50s outfits included a young John Coltrane – but history remembers Hodges for his virtuosic sidemanship, particularly his sensitive rendering of ballads.

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1 min read

SACD

John Williams – The Magic Box (2001) [SACD / Sony Classical – ss 89483]

adminMarch 31, 2026 5 Views

Title: John Williams – The Magic Box (2001)
Genre: Easy Listening, New Age
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

John Williams, classical guitar virtuoso, is known for his wide-ranging approach to repertory, which includes appearances playing electric rock guitar and international music… With his crystalline articulation and extraordinary rhythmic prowess, John Williams ranks among the greatest solo voices the acoustic guitar has ever known. Now, with the joyous evocations of the African guitar tradition, Williams has hit upon his most emotionally satisfying crossover recital to date. Though both chief soloist and arranger, Williams nevertheless avoids shining the spotlight on his virtuosic skills–even his solo showcase, “Masagna,” places greater emphasis on the tune’s folkish incantations. He allows plenty of melodic space for the likes of steel-string player John Ethridge, while guiding listeners through the idiomatic flora and fauna of the pan-African experience: from the hornpipelike airs of Madagascar (“Mitopa”) and kora-styled arpeggios of Mali (“Malinke Guitars”) through to intimations of South African vocal traditions with a lovely children’s chorus on the anthem of the African National Congress, “Nikosi Sikelel’I Africa.” Simply expressive and deeply felt, Magic Box exudes a universal vibe that transcends borders and nationalities.

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2 min read

SACD

John Pizzarelli – John Pizzarelli Trio: Live At Birdland (2xSACD) (2003) [SACD / Telarc – 2SACD-63577]

adminMarch 31, 2026 3 Views

Title: John Pizzarelli – John Pizzarelli Trio: Live At Birdland (2xSACD) (2003)
Genre: Jazz
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

This is a wonderful, warm-hearted, and effortlessly virtuosic live recording by one of the finest living exponents of pre-bop small-ensemble jazz. With pianist Ray Kennedy and bassist Martin Pizzarelli (and on two songs joined by vocalist Grover Kemble), singer and guitarist John Pizzarelli runs through a generally lightweight but thoroughly charming set of standards, homages, funny stories, and the occasional original tune; the fast tunes are light and frothy, the ballads smooth and gentle, and even the moments that are less than utterly inspired work together with the album’s highlights to create a very satisfying whole. John Pizzarelli has a suit sponsor, which tells you something about what to expect of him as a singer: his voice is smooth and warm, offering a nice combination of Chet Baker’s timbre and Dean Martin’s fullness; as a guitarist you need to know that he favors seven-string guitars and flat-wound strings, leading him naturally to a swinging Django Reinhardt-meets-Freddie Green kind of sound. As for the trio’s instrumentation, it’s true that when you can comp with this kind of authority you don’t technically need a drummer. But on a few tracks a drummer would have filled out the band’s sound nicely. Highlights include the group’s fun, slightly greasy take on “Frim Fram Sauce” and a great ode to Art Tatum called “Tea for Tatum,” as well as a fine original blues composition titled “Headed Out to Vera’s.” Pizzarelli’s own “Oh, How My Heart Beats for You” and “Day I Found You” are also wonderful. But the album’s standout track is a limpidly gorgeous rendition of another original, “Better Run Before It’s Spring.” Pizzarelli is obviously having a blast in the intimate setting of the legendary Birdland club, and so will any jazz lover who takes the time to listen. Very highly recommended.

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2 min read

SACD

John Pizzarelli – Dear Mr. Sinatra (2006) [SACD / Telarc Surround – SACD-63638]

adminMarch 31, 2026 3 Views

Title: John Pizzarelli – Dear Mr. Sinatra (2006)
Genre: Jazz
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

John Pizzarelli, one of the most celebrated performers bringing popular standards to a new generation, pays homage to Frank Sinatra with the release of Dear Mr. Sinatra. Early in his career, Pizzarelli opened for Sinatra on tour. His father, the jazz guitar legend Bucky Pizzarelli, played on many of Sinatra’s seminal recordings. Focusing on songs that were specifically written for ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ and also featuring The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, Dear Mr. Sinatra is in many ways the most personal of all the Sinatra tributes available.

Frank Sinatra, though not a jazz singer, was long respected by jazz musicians for his natural ability to get the best out of a song while developing a trademark approach to singing that had great appeal. While many recorded tributes to Sinatra since his death have been abysmal at best, vocalist and guitarist John Pizzarelli knows a little something about swinging and finding the essence of each song. Backed by the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, with whom Pizzarelli toured prior to the making of this CD, along with arrangements by John Clayton, Don Sebesky, Dick Lieb, and Quincy Jones, he sought to focus primarily on songs written with Sinatra in mind, though taking new approaches to each of them. Dear Mr. Sinatra opens with an over-the-top rendition of “Ring-A-Ding-Ding.” Clayton’s sensitive writing for reeds provides the perfect backdrop for Pizzarelli’s warm vocals in “If I Had You.” The singer works magic in another fine Clayton chart, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” delivering the goods in a sensitive interpretation. Pizzarelli is backed only by pianist Tamir Hendelman in the miniature scoring of “The Last Dance,” which serves as a perfect finale. Only three of the tracks clock in at over four minutes, so there’s not much of a focus upon instrumental solos, though Pizzarelli’s guitar is featured in “Witchcraft.” With a total time just under 40 minutes, the program is a little short by CD standards, but the performances by John Pizzarelli and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra in this warm tribute to Old Blue Eyes are consistently of high caliber and hit the mark every time.

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2 min read

SACD

Johnny Griffin – Introducing Johnny Griffin (1956) [APO Remaster 2011] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CBNJ 1533 SA]

adminMarch 31, 2026 3 Views

Title: Johnny Griffin – Introducing Johnny Griffin (1956) [APO Remaster 2011]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Introducing Johnny Griffin is the debut album for Blue Note Records by jazz tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin. A seminal date that shows Griffin’s speed, technique, and power. It was recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack studio on April 17, 1956.

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1 min read

SACD

Johnny Frigo featuring John & Bucky Pizzarelli – Live from Studio A (1988) [Reissue 2003] [SACD / Chesky Records – SACD264]

adminMarch 31, 2026 5 Views

Title: Johnny Frigo featuring John & Bucky Pizzarelli – Live from Studio A (1988) [Reissue 2003]
Genre: Jazz
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

At the age of 71, Johnny Frigo finally had his debut as a leader on record, with the exception of an obscure effort in 1957. Although he had spent much of his career as a studio bassist, Frigo successfully switched full-time to his first love, the violin, and was immediately considered one of the top swing-based violinists. Joined by both Bucky and John Pizzarelli on guitars, either Ron Carter or Michael Moore on bass, and drummer Butch Miles, Frigo is in wonderful form on 14 standards, including “Pick Yourself Up,” “Detour Ahead” (which he had co-written while with the Soft Winds in the late ’40s), “Stompin’ at the Savoy” and “The Song Is You.” This recommended album launched the Chesky label.

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1 min read

SACD

Johnny Cash – Silver (1979) [Reissue 2003] [SACD / Columbia – CS 86791]

adminMarch 28, 2026 21 Views

Title: Johnny Cash – Silver (1979) [Reissue 2003]
Genre: Country
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Silver was a below-average Cash outing, due both to the routine material and the mixed attempt to update his sound with more modern production techniques. Brian Ahern, who produced Emmylou Harris, was at the helm of a set that often put a more contemporary sheen on the sound with filters and phase shifters. Plenty of session help was on hand as well, sometimes on trumpet and French horn, and it’s usually not a great sign when the list of players on some tracks run to more than a dozen. The idea was probably to make Cash sound less old-fashioned; the ironic result was to make it sound more dated and flat than most of the rest of his catalog, without comparing to his better recordings in the quality of the content. Still, erratic production can’t smother Cash’s strengths, and the record’s not terrible, just uninspired. Some of the better songs include his reading of Tom T. Hall’s “The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore”; a cover of “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” (a song that’s hard to ruin) with contributions from Ricky Skaggs, Wayne Jackson, and the Carter Family; and veteran cohort Jack Clement’s memorably titled “West Canterbury Subdivision Blues.” George Jones adds harmony vocals to “I’ll Say It’s True,” and the 2002 CD reissue on Columbia/Legacy adds two previously unreleased duets with Jones on remakes of the late-’50s Cash recordings “I Still Miss Someone” and “I Got Stripes”.

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2 min read

SACD

Johnny Cash – I Walk The Line (1964) [MFSL 2020] [SACD / Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab – UDSACD 2197]

adminMarch 28, 2026 20 Views

Title: Johnny Cash – I Walk The Line (1964) [MFSL 2020]
Genre: Country
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Originally released in 1964 on Columbia, produced by fellow Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Don Law, and featuring note-for-note re-recordings of several staples Johnny Cash made for Sun Records – including the title track, “Hey Porter”, and “Big River” – as well as several new originals, I Walk the Line cemented the singer’s place as the leading country artist of the era. Indeed, as the original liner notes state, “I Walk the Line offers Johnny Cash, renowned storyteller-in-song, at his creative and performing best”. The album was certified Gold by the RIAA in 1967.

Now, for the first time in more than five decades, you can experience it in true-to-the-source mono courtesy of Mobile Fidelity’s meticulously restored reissue. Mastered from the original mono master tapes and limited to 2,500 numbered copies, the audiophile label’s hyper-clear disc broadcasts the inimitable sonics of the Man in Black’s cut-from-bedrock baritone, earnest acoustic strumming, and hand-in-glove band with utmost clarity, directness, and realism. Much has been rightly made about the sparse, deceivingly simple boom-chicka-boom sound of Cash’s righthand men, otherwise known as the Tennessee Three: bassist Marshall Grant, guitarist Luther Perkins, and drummer W.S. “Fluke” Holland. On this collectible edition of I Walk the Line, the trio’s steady, fundamental rhythms and fresh, driving beats resonate with a presence, solidity, and immediacy unavailable on any other Cash recording. Such are the advantages associated with going back to mono, which gets right to the core of the rough-and-tumble country tenor of songs such as “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk the Line.”

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2 min read

SACD

Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison (1968) [Remastered Reissue 1999 (2002)] [SACD / Columbia – CS 65955]

adminMarch 28, 2026 20 Views

Title: Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison (1968) [Remastered Reissue 1999 (2002)]
Genre: Country
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Folsom Prison looms large in Johnny Cash’s legacy, providing the setting for perhaps his definitive song and the location for his definitive album, At Folsom Prison. The ideal blend of mythmaking and gritty reality, At Folsom Prison is the moment when Cash turned into the towering Man in Black, a haunted troubadour singing songs of crime, conflicted conscience, and jail. Surely, this dark outlaw stance wasn’t a contrivance but it was an exaggeration, with Cash creating this image by tailoring his set list to his audience of prisoners, filling up the set with tales of murder and imprisonment — a bid for common ground with the convicts, but also a sly way to suggest that maybe Cash really did shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Given the cloud of death that hangs over the songs on At Folsom Prison, there’s a temptation to think of it as a gothic, gloomy affair or perhaps a repository of rage, but what’s striking about Cash’s performance is that he never romanticizes either the crime or the criminals: if anything, he underplays the seriousness with his matter-of-fact ballad delivery or how he throws out wry jokes. Cash is relating to the prisoners and he’s entertaining them too, singing “Cocaine Blues” like a bastard on the run, turning a death sentence into literal gallows humor on “25 Minutes to Go,” playing “I Got Stripes” as if it were a badge of pride. Never before had his music seemed so vigorous as it does here, nor had he tied together his humor, gravity, and spirituality in one record. In every sense, it was a breakthrough, but more than that, At Folsom Prison is the quintessential Johnny Cash album, the place where his legend burns bright and eternal.

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2 min read

SACD

John Mayer – Heavier Things (2003) [SACD / Columbia – CH 90746]

adminMarch 28, 2026 24 Views

Title: John Mayer – Heavier Things (2003)
Genre: Pop, Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

John Mayer’s big-label debut was a multiplatinum breakthrough success whose sensual anthem “Your Body Is a Wonderland” scored him an unlikely Grammy for Best Pop Vocal. That out-of-the-box succes–and more than a few critics grousing that Mayer’s muse was cloned from Dave Matthews–primed him for the typical sophomore slump. Instead, Mayer delivers an album whose tone and title suggests a gentle, tongue-in-cheek rebuke to his naysayers. Propelled by the subtle ambitions of an expanded pop-jazz framework (largely courtesy of Sheryl Crow/No Doubt/Jellyfish producer Jack Joseph Puig), Mayer’s breathy vocal tack now suggests a detached, conflicted, and significantly less precious incarnation of Michael Franks. But, the way he weds fluid pop hooks to lyrical concerns whose self-obsessions are undercut by telling dollops of self-deprecation from the my-spirit’s-too-big/smart-for-my-body laments of “Clarity,” the upbeat single “Bigger Than My Body,” and the bluesy plea “Come Back to Bed” to the cautionary, melodically-rich “Daughters” and even the antimaterialist agitprop of “Something’s Missing” should clearly draw in listeners.

Don’t take the title of John Mayer’s Heavier Things literally. Mayer offers nothing heavy on the follow-up to his breakthrough hit, Room for Squares — nothing heavy in the music and nothing heavy in the lyrics. No, Mayer is smooth, slick, and streamlined on his second or third album (it all depends if you count his 1999 debut, Inside Wants Out, half of which was re-recorded for Room for Squares, which itself was released in two different incarnations), playing things straight and following the blueprint his big radio hit, “Your Body Is a Wonderland,” provided. The title Heavier Things does reflect his new directness, lacking the lithe playfulness that resulted in a Hank Mobley joke, of all things, for an album title last time out. That extends to the rest of the album — the humor and interesting wordplay have been toned down, leaving very little ambiguity. Actually, there’s little left unexplained on the record, with every song on the album spread across several grids explaining where they were written and how many beats per minute they are, breaking them down into keywords, charting what “suggested target points” on the body the song should hit (tellingly, not one track is targeted at the crotch), and even grouping the songs together by key. The latter is a bit of a mistake, since it shows that for all those jazzy major and minor seventh chords gliding by in his songs, he’s keeping his songwriting pretty simple, sticking to D, E, F, G, and A, with a G minor thrown in for good measure. This, of course, is not really a problem for listeners, since most listeners don’t care how a song is written as long as it sounds good, but this does confirm that he’s kept things simple, concentrating on how the record sounds and feels. And, as a piece of mood music, this is really quite effective, delivering on how “Your Body Is a Wonderland” sounds, with some really nice lush, laid-back textures and songs that are melodic without being truly catchy. It’s music that floats through the speakers nicely and never leaves much of a lasting impression; it’s how a jazzier, laid-back, less adventurous, and MOR-oriented Dave Matthews would sound. Mayer is now more of a record-maker than songwriter, which will undoubtedly dishearten those who liked the song-oriented Inside Wants Out, but those who just enjoyed the sound and feel of Room for Squares should feel right at home.

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4 min read