Soular Energy
Ray Brown Trio/Gene Harris
Pure Audiophile PA-002
Rejskind: It was maybe a dozen years ago. Ray Brown was in a Montreal church for a solo concert -- how often have you seen a bassist doing a couple of hours of solo music? He recalled the first time he had played Montreal, in 1948. After his gig, he had gone to a late night bar to listen to a phenomenal young pianist. Impressed, he asked the young man to come touring with him. "Sure," said the young pianist.
     "Great. I'm Ray Brown. What's your name?"
     "Oscar. Oscar Peterson."
     Peterson would, of course, turn out to be one of the greatest jazz pianists of his era, and the the most famous of Canada's jazz musicians. The tour stretched across an incredible five years.
     Brown must have been 73 when I last saw him, not long before his death. He was playing as well as ever, and it was clear that he was still having the time of his life. Was he the greatest bass player of the jazz age? I'd be tempted to say so, though my impression of him is altered by the fact that he played with the best musicians of the jazz world: Peterson of course, but also drummer Shelly Manne, guitarist Laurindo Almeida, and the LA4 (of which Manne and Almeida were members as well).
     I wasn't familiar with Gene Harris, who plays piano on this 1984 recording, but Brown said he was one of the great ones, and that's good enough for me. Besides, the proof is right here in these grooves.
     And they're some grooves! The Concord Jazz label over the years did some of the finest jazz recordings in the world...finest for the sound, and not only for the (admittedly fabulous) artists. Stan Ricker did the half-speed mastering of this double LP, and clearly got everything just right. The pressing is done on transparent blue 180 gram vinyl, and it is as close to perfect as vinyl can get. Even the lead-in grooves are quiet, perhaps because the disc doesn't have that stupid raised "GruvGard" edge, originally conceived to keep stacks of records apart on a changer.
     Fortunately, the music deserves star treatment. Brown, Harris and drummer Gerryck King have a fine rapport together. Indeed, according to the original jacket notes, none of it is the result of rehearsal. This is an improvised album, though that may not be evident from the quality of the playing and the sheer togetherness of the trio. When more than one take was recorded, it came out quite differently the second time. That gave the producers of this double disc the opportunity to include alternative takes that are more than repetitions of the main ones. Cry Me a River, which is both the second track on Side A and the first track on Side D, is quite different the second time, but it is a tribute to the excellence of these musicians that neither sounds more "right" than the others. You'll recognize several of the pieces without looking at the jacket: Take the A Train, Teach Me Tonight and Sweet Georgia Brown among others. What Ray Brown and his friends do with them is downright thrilling.

Soular Energy
Ray Brown Trio/Gene Harris
Hi-Res HRM2011
Rejskind: It's a happy coincidence that, only three weeks after I received that excellent double LP, in came this DVD version from Hi-Res. It is nothing less than fabulous. Which will bring up the inevitable question: does digital finally beat analog?
     The answer is that, if this doesn't, nothing will. Like the superb LP, this 24 bit 96 kHz digital recording sounds amazingly coherent at the bottom end, which is good because that's where Ray Brown does his work. The other extreme of the spectrum is perhaps even better than that of the LP. It is so clear and at the same time so natural that you don't even think about whether the speakers are doing their job right. And the dynamics, as with other Hi-Res recordings, make Red Book CDs sound like distant echoes. So, of course, does the excellent LP.
     You lose something, you gain something. The digital disc doesn't have the bonus tracks of the double LP. On the other hand, it does have a second side, containing a 192 kHz DVD-Audio version (the 24/96 side can be played on any DVD player).
     By the way, the box carries the HDCD logo, which suggests that there must also be a Red Book layer for CD players. There isn't, but the digital mastering from the original analog tape was done in HDCD, to improve the definition even more. Certainly the result is as good as one could possibly wish.