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Post by rpsayles on Jul 9, 2018 11:13:31 GMT
Hi
Rather like the 1998 Columbia remastered Robert Johnson catalog which is by far the best quality collection of his work I wondered If there was a definitive Charley Patton collection in a similar higher quality vain.
Best wishes
RP
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Post by meanstepfather on Jul 9, 2018 12:31:06 GMT
Best remasters I have heard are on the Blues Images Calendars.Then you have the yazoo cd`s.None complete though.
If it were me,I`d get one of the complete collections (Document, Revenant, JSP) & then the Yazoos/blues images for their superior sound.
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Post by Michael Messer on Jul 9, 2018 12:38:03 GMT
Hi RP, Actually the 1998 Robert Johnson collection was never mastered as well as it could have been. It was too nasal and too much mid range. A lot has happened in 20 years and currently the best Robert Johnson collection is on the Legacy/Sony label, "Robert Johnson - The Centennial Collection Complete Recordings" www.amazon.co.uk/Centennial-Collection-Robert-Johnson/dp/B004OFWLO0Charley Patton's recordings were for Paramount and are notoriously poor quality. Andrew Rose has done a set of Charley Patton XR remasters for his Pristine label. Andrew's work is superb and I would recommend you check this out. If you are looking for the current best remaster, this is probably it. www.pristineclassical.com/products/pabl006Shine On Michael |
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Post by rpsayles on Jul 9, 2018 12:42:50 GMT
Great info thanks both.
I'll check those out. Cheers
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Post by wezzywest on Jul 10, 2018 13:37:15 GMT
Brilliant that Michael, I will be ordering a few CD`s from pristine. Cheers.
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Post by macspadger on Jul 13, 2018 9:48:21 GMT
Jeepers, I might just end up buying the Pristine remasters, but some of those Patton songs I'd be buying for the 4th or 5th time. As others have said, the Document releases are complete but poor quality in places.
The 3 cd box set "The Definitive Charley Patton" on Catfish Records is not bad, 58 tracks, and found quite cheap online, but some tracks are wooly where the background hiss has been removed but audio has been sacrificed. It's still good value for money, IMHO.
The Yazoo cd "Charley Patton - Founder Of The Delta Blues" is good quality, 24 tracks, about the same level of quality as the aforementioned Blues Image Calendar releases.
Yazoo also have some great Blind Blake and Blind Lemon Jefferson remasters.
Dammit, I just know I'm going to buy the Pristine Patton issues of tracks I already have at some point, just to compare.
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Post by Michael Messer on Jul 13, 2018 11:08:31 GMT
The Pristine collection will be a good quality sound and won't be stripped away. Andrew does his remastering in a unique way and it is very good. The problem with the Catfish master was that Russell & Khaled, the owners of Catfish, wanted a clean sound at any cost. To achieve that, the mastering guy, Mark Lordy, had to strip away some of Charley's performance.
I was signed to Catfish at that time and was involved with some of the clean-up jobs. When we released the Ted Hawkins Live album "The Unstoppable Ted Hawkins" that I recorded on a Sony Professional cassette recorder. When we came to clean it up and master it, I preferred the pure sound from the cassette to anything we could do with the mastering software, so we left it alone and released the album as it sounded on the cassette I recorded it on. I think that the best remasters of old blues recordings are the ones that come from the cleanest 78 records, which is why the Centinnial Robert Johnson collection sounds so good. Steve LaVere found the cleanest 78s and in some cases went to the original acetates. So with Charley Patton, the best one so far is the Revenant box set because they did very little cleaning up of relatively clean 78 records. Nothing can sound as good as a clean original.
I used to visit the great John RT Davies at his home near where I live. John was THE master of remastering. Instead of using any kind of digital software or jiggery pokery, John would literally physically clean and repair the 78 record. I have seen him do this and it was amazing. He used a microscope and some homemade dental-type tools, and he would spend days working his way through a 78 record, removing the scratches and pops and cleaning the grooves.
So back to Charley Patton.... The Pristine collection by Andrew Rose will be superb, and so is the Revenant box set.
Shine On
Michael
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Post by macspadger on Jul 13, 2018 15:14:29 GMT
Those Sony professional cassette recorders were great, I got one in '85, used it up to 2005 when I switched to minidisc, but I still used the Sony mike that came the Sony professional with the minidisc. I worked for the BBC for 20 odd years, and the Sony professional was deemed broadcast quality and used for a great many radio programmes, usually with a metal tape.
Your John RT Davies anecdote reminds me that there was a mastering suite at the BBC cutting rooms at Kensington House, often old records were restored with a mixture of wax and black boot polish to fill the scratches and imperfections, then using tiny tools the grooves were reworked. White woodglue and WD40 were also handy for cleaning up grooves. Painstaking work that many wouldn't have the patience for nowadays.
Back to Charley Patton, the Revenant box set was remarkable, a blues nerds wet dream, but very limited, used box sets go for a lot of money these days. I will buy the Pristine set over the weekend, I'm sure it's wonderful, but might be a waste of time for me as my hearing sure isn't what it was.
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Post by creolian on Jul 13, 2018 20:23:35 GMT
I know my hearing aint what it used to be and Fwiw, I listen to a lot of music recorded in the 20s & 30s and for me sounds best when I'm using less than audiophile quality gear. I recently found an old 40s vintage ships hailer which although made for intelligible voice transmission in a noisy environment sounds great for older mono music recordings at low mid volumes.
I can also vouch for leaning a metal reso guitar in front of one of your speakers... I thought my little bedroom system had developed a lush reverb love for Louis Armstrong before I realized what I'd done.
Apologies for wandering, I need to add some Charlie Patton, Lonnie J., Hog Maxey, Blind Boy Fuller and much more to my collection of older recordings.
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Post by Michael Messer on Jul 13, 2018 20:31:59 GMT
Those Sony Professional machines were brilliant and so were the mics. I still have mine, although I haven't used it for many years. I recorded some amazing concerts on it. As well as the Ted Hawkins at the Mean Fiddler, I recorded Taj Mahal & Ali Farka Toure meeting for the first time, Flaco Jiminez, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Buddy Guy & Junior Wells, and numerous other recordings of my own gigs. Always used metal or SA-X. I love cassettes, they mini reel to reel tapes, just like big ones!
Shine On
Michael
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Post by macspadger on Aug 3, 2018 11:13:39 GMT
OK, after accidentally wandering into this thread, I have bought the "Robert Johnson - The Centennial Collection Complete Recordings" from Amazon and the Charley Patton and Skip James remasters from Pristine. I can say they are the clearest recordings I have of these guys, and I have quite a few.
I just wish someone would do the same for Tommy Johnson, but I guess the demand wouldn't be there.
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Post by wezzywest on Aug 4, 2018 18:09:20 GMT
I`ve gone for the Charley Patton and Blind Willie McTell, I will probably end up going back for Skip James. The sound quality is brilliant.
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Post by marcobellani on Aug 24, 2023 21:31:54 GMT
Hi RP, Actually the 1998 Robert Johnson collection was never mastered as well as it could have been. It was too nasal and too much mid range. A lot has happened in 20 years and currently the best Robert Johnson collection is on the Legacy/Sony label, "Robert Johnson - The Centennial Collection Complete Recordings" www.amazon.co.uk/Centennial-Collection-Robert-Johnson/dp/B004OFWLO0Charley Patton's recordings were for Paramount and are notoriously poor quality. Andrew Rose has done a set of Charley Patton XR remasters for his Pristine label. Andrew's work is superb and I would recommend you check this out. If you are looking for the current best remaster, this is probably it. www.pristineclassical.com/products/pabl006Shine On Michael |
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Post by marcobellani on Aug 24, 2023 22:25:43 GMT
Hi RP, Actually the 1998 Robert Johnson collection was never mastered as well as it could have been. It was too nasal and too much mid range. A lot has happened in 20 years and currently the best Robert Johnson collection is on the Legacy/Sony label, "Robert Johnson - The Centennial Collection Complete Recordings" www.amazon.co.uk/Centennial-Collection-Robert-Johnson/dp/B004OFWLO0Charley Patton's recordings were for Paramount and are notoriously poor quality. Andrew Rose has done a set of Charley Patton XR remasters for his Pristine label. Andrew's work is superb and I would recommend you check this out. If you are looking for the current best remaster, this is probably it. www.pristineclassical.com/products/pabl006Shine On Michael |
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Post by marcobellani on Aug 24, 2023 23:25:23 GMT
Hello
I have seen that for Charlie Patton PRISTINE Cd there are the following options:
€15.00 - Ambient Stereo 24-bit FLAC€15.00
€9.00 - Ambient Stereo 16-bit FLAC€9.00
€9.00 - Mono 16-bit FLAC€9.00
€7.00 - 320kbps Ambient Stereo MP3
and €10.00 - CD only in plastic sleeve (+MP3)
Unfortunately with the 10 Cds box set (Pristine Blues Collection Vol. 1 - PABX014), that include Charlie Patton Cd, it looks like there is not the Ambient Stero 24-bit option, but only the Ambient Stereo 16-bit.
It may make sense the Ambient Stereo file for an old mono recording? Are there audiable differences between the 16 and 24 bit? What could You suggest me? I already bought the REVENANT 7 CDs Box set, the Catfish 3Cds box set and the old Yazoo Cd (that I am not able to listen because of the noise).
Thank You very much
Marco
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