Just wondering, is anyone familiar with the “Lost Recording” series?
Just become aware of them and they have some really enticing recordings that I’ve not seen elsewhere, just wondering if they’re done well and worth the premium?
I’m really taken with the Ella Fitzgerald 1967 East Berlin record
I have the Ella and Sarah Vaughn and they’re excellent.
That’s fantastic, thanks so much for that. It’s one thing seeing them look so good on paper, but another thing hearing an every day listener give good feedback.
I see they’re cut by Kevin Gray as well which is all I need to get the Ella copies.
Thanks again, Ron, much appreciated!
I have all of them (so far). The musical performances are great, the records themselves are of super quality (quiet etc). The packaging is great. The only variable in no one’s control is how well mic’d some of these lost performances were. Most are very nicely captured, one or two not so much. But if that doesn’t bother you then I’d say the chance to get these otherwise unavailable performances on beautifully produced records is well worth it.
I have some of them on 176.4kHz/24Bit download form their website. Maybe I’m just too fussy and appreciate these “document” recordings. But they are are in mono or reprocessed stereo from what I hear. I believe these were all recordings made for both AM & FM Broadcast in Europe specifically.
The top end on the ones I have seem rolled off. Bass is what you’d expect for the time period these recordings were made in.
Again, I’m probably wrong, but that’s what I think of them.
These are the DD’s I bought :
Joe is on target about this. I think this in part has to do with the way most of these were captured, plus not wanting to mess with the transfer too much (no boosting etc).
I tried a couple of them and found them to be pleasant, but they did not wow me. Possibly my choices did not represent the series at its best. Now the Tone Poets and Craft recordings is a different matter regarding sonically satisfying reissues.
I have about seven of these on cd and I didn’t buy them for sonic reasons, though they sound good. The Duke, Monk, and Blossom Dearie are quite good musically, well so is the Brubeck and Blakey and Getz. . . well these persons all gave great concerts.
I found the performances in general to be fine, but nothing special. I consider them more geared towards completists within the particular genre offered than I would as an essential item to be considered for a serious collection.
Okee Dokee.
…after all it comes down to our preferences, in our systems, with our ears. Wonder where I’ve read that before.
Okee dokee.
Yep, I suspected the actual recordings may not be the highest quality.
Certainly from the Ella 1967 one, I very much doubt that was her label at the time that arranged the performance, likely a private invite from the ruling German party of the time. I suspect it would have been quite a private audience of high end military figures and high society rather than an open invite to the public. I doubt it was the label that provided the recording engineers, likely in house staff of the venue. And then after the fact, the recording would have been restricted to East Germany, they kept their musical recordings very close to the chest, and often tapes were destroyed when the Berlin wall came down.
I think what makes these recording significant is that they are very much “off label” as such.
They do state this in the bumf for this particular recording: “The Lost Recordings managed to obtain the original analog tapes of this unique performance, one in stereo and one in mono. Neither version was complete. The concert had to be reconstructed, and the version of each track that most perfectly revealed the magic of the moment had to be chosen prior to the restoration work.”
I think the content of these recordings you won’t find on other sources though, and most of them probably required some kind of reconstruction, so sonically may have impaired parts or folded stereo for the early recordings.
I’m really intrigued in the actual performance from Ella because it sounds very significant in her career although mostly unknown to the west.
So long as it doesn’t come across highly compressed and muted, that’s what I can’t abide on vinyl, but it sounds like they’ve done the best they can to keep the masterings as high quality as possible.
That’s what’s drawing me to them, they’re different performances that aren’t found in every day label releases. Find that quite fascinating and want to hear more of the content.
Spyder, I like the content of these that I have. Sometimes it’s their standard European tour material of the time, a few times not. Sonically I do not think it’s worth spending big bucks on vinyl; I found cd versions cheap and they sound just fine on cd to me. I didn’t buy the Sarah or Ella–I have enough of their official material so far, I’m a bigger Ella fan than Sarah and. have a good handful of recordings from this time period.
Well, the ELLA FITZGERALD - LIVE IN EAST BERLIN 1967 vinyl should be here tomorrow, really looking forward to it, many thanks to all for your contributions, all valued.
That’s come up on a few of my searches, definitely going to pick that up next week, thanks for the pointer 
