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Reviewed by John Sunier WHENEVER I HAVE visited a collector of old jazz recordings. I have been floored by the noticeable degradation in an A/B test of LP reissues compared to the original 78 versions. The impact, clarity and often both extremes of the frequency spectrum are gone in all but the most recent LP versions. Proper transfer of these 78s involves a laborious process of washing them, selecting the exact stylus size and speed (many were faster or slower than 78 rpm) and transferring with a professional noise reduction unit, such as the Packburn, to modern analog or digital tape, with out equalization. No artificial stereo rechanneling techniques are ever used, although a few tracks on some of the later sessions released by Mosaic are in authentic stereo. I auditioned the two collections de voted to the amazing Thelonious Monk --The Complete Blue Note Recordings (MR4-101) and The Complete Black Lion and Vogue Recordings (MR4-112); each is a four-LP set. The first set begins with Monk's first session for Blue Note back in 1946-a real risk for this small label which had previously recorded only traditional jazz and swing. These are the core recordings of Monk's career and put him in the front rank of jazz creators beside Duke Ellington. The mind-bending way he used ''wrong'' notes and the time pulse are all here in exceptional clarity. Probably more than with any other jazz pianist, listening to Monk requires being ready for the unexpected. The set contains 15 previously unissued tracks and two different takes of a tune nobody even knew about. Many great jazzmen played with Monk on these sessions. Some sides feature Idrees Sulieman, trumpet; Art Blakey, drums; Sahib Shihab, alto sax; Milt Jackson, vibes; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Lou Donaldson, alto sax; Max Roach, drums; Paul Chambers, bass and Sonny Rollins, tenor sax. A number of alternate takes are included, and since everything is in chronological order, many numbers are repeated. Fortunately, Monk does make noticeable changes from one version to another, but for the general jazz listener (opposed to the true jazz collector) it could become rather repetitive. Since these are multi-LP sets, I wonder why it wouldn't be possible to put all the alternate takes together on a separate LP? This might even have an advantage for collectors in enabling them to do phrase-by-phrase comparisons if they have two turntables. The Black Lion and Vogue set comes first from nine tunes recorded in Paris in 1954 as solos, and then from a long session in London in 1971, which was Monk's last recording as a leader and re mains among his finest piano works. These are the first issues of a number of the Black Lion recordings, and they are all in excellent stereo. Monk was no longer with CBS by this time. CBS had wanted him to record an album of Beatles tunes, against his wishes, and he was tired after traveling with a CBS promotional jazz group called The Giants of Jazz, which he found artistically unrewarding. At the 1971 London session he came into his own with a number of solo piano tracks and three LP sides with Al McKibbon on bass and Art Blakey on drums, featuring many of his best tunes--''Well You Needn't," ''Misterioso,'' 'Ruby My Dear,'' ''Criss Cross," "I Mean You'' and ''Crepuscule with Nellie." It's amazing that previously only part of this wonderful session was available and in much poorer sonics than Mosaic has achieved. The author of the 12-page booklet of notes accompanying the sets was present at the original sessions. Some of Monk's great laconic comments are included, such as: ''I don't know where jazz is going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens''; and, ''How can I be anything other than what I am?" Other Mosaic sets, ranging from one to six LPs, are priced at $9 each disk. Sets include Gerry Mulligan, boogie-woogie pioneers Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, Clifford Brown, Art Pepper, Sidney Bechet, Charles Mingus, Chet Baker, Art Hodes, Bud Powell and Buddy DeFranco. Their address is Mosaic Records, 197 Strawberry Hill Ave., Stamford, CT 06902-2510. One of my other favorite jazz pianists, surely a favorite of even more listeners than Monk, is Fats Waller: Fats and His Rhythm were one of the most popular and prolific recording groups in jazz history, and their appeal extended to millions of people worldwide in the '30s and '40s who were not jazz fans at all. Waller satirized the cornball world of popular music in the same way the Marx Brothers satirized Hollywood. He perfected a formula to transform the sorrier songs of his day (which couldn't hold a candle to the sorriest songs of today) into little gems of good humor. Ellington always said that humor was a vital ingredient of jazz, and nobody had it better than the rollicking Fats Waller. Most of Waller's recording career was with the Victor Company. Reissues of his 78s have been frequent ever since the LP era began, the best appearing during the '60s on RCA's Vintage sub-label. In 1971 RCA France issued two fat multi-LP packages titled Fats Waller Memorial Nos. 1and 2. Sonics were improved over the Vintage series and some tracks not previously available in the US appeared in these fine but expensive sets. Now RCA US has reached Volume IV of anew series of Waller reissues they began so early that Volume I is difficult to find. This series is on the Bluebird sub-label, and each volume contains two LPs with about seven tracks on each side. Noted jazz reissue expert Frank Driggs was responsible for the first three volumes. Volume II covers most of 1935, which was the year Fats had a small part in a Hollywood musical extravaganza. Volume III covers the rest of 1935 and the first half of 1936. Some of his best are here, such as ''Spreadin' Rhythm Around," "It's a Sinto Tella Lie,'' 'Sweet Thing'' and ''Christopher Columbus.” The sonics on both these volumes is far and away superior to the Vintage series reissues and often slightly ahead of the French editions. I realize that much of the surface noise I was hearing on the Vintage LPs was from the atrocious LP surfaces and not from the original 78s. Ah, but wait until you Wallerphiles dig the sound of Volume IV of this series, touted as Digitally Remastered! (Bluebird 5905-1-RB). Whether it's some arcane digital reprocessing that is responsible, or whether it's due to the producers going back to the original metal parts instead of using old 78 pressings, the sonics have a clarity and presence that haven't been heard before with these recordings. The other reissues all sound dull, distorted, thin and often inundated with surface noise compared to these four LPs. Bravo RCA, for bringing the unadulterated Fats to our ears, along with Herman Autrey on trumpet; Gene Sedric, clarinet and tenor sax; Al Casey, guitar; Charles Turner, bass; and assorted drummers. Some of the tunes you'll love are ''Lounging at the Waldorf," "'Crazy 'Bout My Baby," "Bach Up to Me'' and ''The Curse of an Aching Heart." There's sure to be a Volume V; watch for it. Another Bluebird reissue package is Duke Ellington: The Blanton-Webster Band (5659 2-RB, 3 CDs). The 66 tracks in this massive collection were mostly recorded in 1940, probably the Ellington Orchestra's best year according to critical acclaim. This was before Billy Strayhorn had become a regular part of the organization, but after the entrance of two extremely talented sidemen-breathy sax ist Ben Webster and path-breaking string bassist Jimmy Blanton, who moved his instrument from primarily a time keeping function to playing horn-like melodic lines. Because of their general effect on the musical nature of the band, as well as their many solo spots in the arrangements, the band of this era is sometimes referred to as The Blanton Webster Band. The range of musical styles is wide and includes moody tone poems such as "Warm Valley,'' humorous personality portraits such as ''Bojangles,"' Latin flavored numbers such as "Conga Brava,'' instrumental blues such as ''Ko Ko," swing numbers such as ''Cotton Tail'' and vehicles for Ellington's vocalists: Ivie Anderson and Herb Jeffries. This CD package exists in two versions. The first has some serious noise reduction problems in restoring these old 78s. RCA's general policy with its jazz and classical reissues has been to use only minimum noise reduction and let most of the noise and scratch all hang out, rather than risk eliminating any of the actual music in the process. Having heard some recent CD efforts where a ham-fisted manner was used in reducing noise (on other labels) and some of the music was lost along with the scratch, I can sympathize. However, when I compare some of the new BBC Jazz CDs restored by engineer Robert Parker with most previous jazz reissues, I wish RCA had the benefit of Parker's talents for employing noise reduction in a sensitive musical fashion. Anyway, even the first version of The Blanton-Webster Band CD set is a big improvement on the RCA Vintage LP Series of the 1960s. Those, like most jazz reissues of the time, were muddy, distorted and full of surface noises, including new noises of the LP added to the original noises of the 78s! The CDs have a much wider frequency range than the LPs, and the quieter sections (yes, with Ellington there often are quieter sections) possess a clarity that few would equate with 1940 vintage 78s. However, some strange things happen on certain tracks--notes cut off and fade in and, most annoying, distortion is present on the bigger climaxes when everyone is cutting loose. These sections sound similar to what one hears listening to an old record worn out by repeated playing with a ruined stylus. RCA quietly went to Sonic Solutions, the high-tech digital noise-processing company that eliminates noise on any recorded material using digital techniques derived from soundtrack work at Lucasfilm's Droid works. I understand that the newly remastered CD set is a big improvement on its predecessor. Since this is an expensive triple-CD set, you would be wise to seek out the second version. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get one and therefore don't know how to tell the two apart. Perhaps RCA requested stores to return the first version before the company would ship replacements. For now it appears to be pot luck, so good luck. John Sunier hosts the only national radio program for audio buffs--AUDIOPHILE AUDITION--heard weekly on more than 200 stations. It's a mix of inter views with leaders in the audio field as well as classics and jazz on the latest CDs, cassettes and LPs. AUDIO CASSETTES Reviewed by John Sunier PRERECORDED AUDIO CASSETTES have for some time now been the top-selling music format in the US. Although until recently their audio quality couldn't touch that of LP and CD, improvements in even the high-speed-duplicated variety have made excellent fidelity possible today. Witness even Telarc's plunge in to the cassette field. The first of this batch is titled An American Cabaret. Its notes explain that The New York Times puts under its Cabaret heading mostly small musical and theatrical events that don't seem to fit anywhere else. Well, that comes close to a description of the following cassettes. Most won't strain your amplifier, speakers or ears, but they all contain worthy, if occasionally unusual, material. Most contain solo or chamber sounds, so they're not pushing the cassette medium’s abilities and they are also fine for listening in your car or on your personal stereo unit. (I've decided to stop giving Sony free advertising by using the term Walkman.) So back to American Cabaret; that's really the subtitle, the main title of this RCA/Skylark cassette being Lime Jello. The performers are mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, with husband William Bolcom at the piano. The title tune is a hilarious novelty song in the style of the great Anna Russell's spoofs of society women's meetings. Some other gems are by Kurt Weill, Stephen Sondheim, Alex Wilder and Bolcom himself. Although these are primarily light and ironic sketches, some are in-depth mini-dramas as well. Excellent sonics are on this chrome tape. Jazz pianist Jacques Loussier is well known for his series of ''Play Bach'' albums, released some years ago. His treatment of Bach's music, accompanied by his bassist, percussionist and, on a few occasions, an orchestra, hewed fairly closely to the master's notes, but made it 'mean more of a thing by giving it a bit of that swing." Unfortunately, the sonics of nearly all his LPs were atrocious. So the promise of a brand-new digitally recorded session, The Best of Play Bach on the Chrysalis label aroused great anticipation. It's issued on all three formats and I can warn you right away to forget the CD version. I've tried more than one CD on more than one player, and they all have several large gaps in the music during which those digits just stop coming. The cassette version is free of this, and the sound on the chrome tape is beyond reproach. The jazzed versions of the Italian Concerto and the Harpsichord Concerto in D Minor are the major works on this delightful cassette. While we're on pianists, Lincoln Mayorga was the soundtrack performer for many of the piano selections in the film 'The Competition' and has re corded a number of them on a cassette with that title. Short works by Chopin, Scarlatti, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Liszt and Brahms are included, plus two originals by Lalo Schifrin. Mayorga is a first rate pianist and the Blumlein purist mike technique was used in this high quality cassette. Another Mayorga cassette is a lighter effort. Sophisticated Innocence-American Novelty Piano Solos features hits of the teens and twenties such as 'Kitten on the Keys," “Canadian Capers'' and ''Nola."' One of the loveliest is Bix Beiderbeck's greatest composition, ''In a Mist." Both are on the Town Hall label. One of my personal chamber ensemble favorites has long been the classical saxophone quartet. Here in San Francisco we have one of our own. The San Francisco Saxophone Quartet has two cassettes on its own label, of which the latest is transcriptions of two familiar works-Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Mozart's Quartet No. 14, K387. It's nice to have more meaty works such as these to balance the many collections of short encores and pieces of fluff usually found on classical sax albums. The versatile instruments give a new slant to the originals, much as Wendy Carlos and Don Dorsey have done with synthesizer versions of Bach. Sound is quite good. The cassettes are available directly from the San Francisco Saxophone Quartet, 350 Hearst Ave., San Francisco, CA 94112. If unusual instruments interest you, don't miss the mail-order cassette From the Pages of Experimental Musical Instruments, a sampler of music played on instruments that have appeared in the newsletter of that name featuring the design, construction and enjoyment of new sound sources. Their slogan is ''explore the world of sound that lies beyond and between the standard instruments of music.'' And they certainly do, with the Long String, Glass Orchestra, Varion, Puget Sound Wind Harp, Steel Cello, Crustacean and (my favorite name) the Disorderly Tumbling Forth. Most fun of all is a slapstick-style rendition of ''New York, New York," played on the Car Horn Organ. This high-bias cassette is available from Experimental Musical Instruments, Box 784, Nicasio, CA 94946. An intriguing mix of jazz and world music is found on Dangerous Ground, a new cassette from the Cafe Records arm of Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. Ian Dogole is a percussionist of great versatility who employs a potpourri of instruments ranging from African talking drums and thumb pianos to custom built Javanese tube saron and gongs. He is percussionist with the New Age group Ancient Future. His cohorts on this album round out the ensemble with guitar, sax, drums, viola, piano and bass. Don't be put off by the opening track, which is rather heavy on bleating sax and doesn't at all reflect the rest of this refreshing album. There i plenty of contrast among the seven tracks in spite of the percussion-centered approach. ''Jalath'' and ''Hamza Minor" were especially enjoyable. The sonics are terrific, although the coming half-speed mastered LP and CD versions will probably surpass it. Many major and medium-size record companies are finally seeing the possibilities of New Age music and are assembling sub-labels devoted to it. Some are worthwhile, and others are merely George Winston-ing or Paul Horn-ing their way into anticipated profits. Life style Records is the new effort of the Moss Music Group, whose Sample Volume I features seven performers an nine tracks on a chrome tape. The selections synthesize jazz, New Age and electronic music in often interesting ways The music isn't meditative or soporific some selections are a sort of New Ag disco approach. Thilo von Westernhagen was one of my discoveries on this cassette. This classical pianist teamed up with saxophonist Herb Geller for a very ''up"' sort of fusion music. The two tracks by Bearns and Dexter, better known as "The Golden Voyage Series,'' may be the most familiar to many listeners, known for their mix of stress-reducing melody with sounds of nature. The Mozart Requiem of New Age music may be Constance Demby's Novus Magnificat, subtitled 'Through the Stargate." This chrome cassette from Hearts of Space Records (producers of the nationally syndicated public radio program that popularized this format) is available from them at Box 31321, San Francisco, CA 94131. Much as Wendy Carlos and Larry Fast have done before her, Demby has created a complete dig ital orchestra through a digital sampling synthesizer, employing three other synthesizers in a massive score of futuristic liturgical music. Sixteen music tracks were directly created on the synthesizers, including choral voices sounding like heavenly choirs. Composer Michael Stearns is credited with adding ''electronic images" to the music. Strong spatial impressions in the nearly hour-long score can be realized even more successfully via surround sound systems or stereo headphone listening. This can be an inspiring and powerful musical experience. Two cassettes from The Musical Heritage Society have found a comfortable place on my shelves. The first is Scott Joplin-James P. Johnson-Back to Back (MHC 6022). On the first side, William Bolcom plays five rarely heard and quite charming ragtime selections that Joplin composed in collaboration with others. William Albright performs on the second side in rollicking stride piano pieces by Johnson. These are more extroverted and swinging; ''Carolina Shout,'' areal barnstormer, should be the most familiar. The other MHS offering is The Mandolin Through the Ages, performed by Didier La Roux and Jean-Paul Bazin. On the first side we hear primarily eighteenth-century works for two mandolins and continuo, one mandolin and continuo and mandolin plus guitar. Three obscure composers penned some lovely little pieces for this distinctive-sounding instrument. Onside two, the first piece is an extensive quarter-hour-long symphony for two mandolins and an orchestra of mandolins and other plucked instruments. Wolki, the composer of this sometimes simple, sometimes exotic work, did all hiscom posing for plucked instruments, believing that an orchestra of them could equal the expressiveness of the symphony orchestra. This recording originated from Arion in France and has excellent sonics (MHC 6963). MHS is strictly mail order; at 1710 Highway 35, Ocean, NJ 07712. Our final few offerings come from another primarily mail-order operation- Orion Master Recordings, Box 4087, Malibu, CA 90265. Their extensive library has reasonably priced classical cassettes, each of which may contain as much as 90 minutes of music. Unfortunately, quality sonics are not their forte, except for their dozen-or-so Super Cassette releases. Susan Greenberg, flute, and Dusan Bogdanovic, guitar, are the spotlighted performers on ICM 782. Music for that combination is by Ravel, Handel, Ibert, Gossec and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, as well as Mr. Bogdanovic. The program is well-chosen, and anyone attracted to this duo of instruments will find the tape well worth the purchase. Certain Orion tapes suffer from non-musical noises such as whistling on the guitar strings or clacking of the clarinet or oboe keys, but these cassettes are free of those defects. The complete sonatas for flute and harpsichord of Bach are on Orion ICM 780 performed by Paul Fried, flute, and Mark Kroll, harpsichord, with Ronald Feldman providing the cello continuo. Since these works are some of the most important works in the flute repertory, Fried is up against stiff competition on other more widely available labels. Still, these are lovely performances with clean sonics and all 80 minutes fit on a single cassette. The last Orion tape provides some unusual material in an unusual coupling: Dohnanyi's Ruralia Hungarica and Cyril Scott's Piano Sonata No. 3 (OC 678). Evelinde Trenkner is the pianist. The Hungarian composer's selection grew out of his country's folk music, which he used in the Bartok manner. They alternate melancholy and wild virtuosity. Cyril Scott, perhaps best known for his little impressionistic gem Lotus Land, deserves more attention for his exciting piano sonatas and his two concerti. Piano Sonata No. 3 illustrates the Debussy in fluence as well as Asian exotica. The piano sound is rather dull; you might do better with the Dolby off and the treble (if you have it) reduced slightly to control the resulting hiss. 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