Sonny Clark – Dial "S" For Sonny

Tried 2 copies from amazon, both came noisy as hell, particularly the last track.

This Sonny Clark album is just fantastic. The BN Classic pressing sounds wonderful in mono. The sound is really amazing! Seems that the remaster job of Kevin Grey has improved since the last Classic reissues.

Oh so close... a perfectly flat, bang on centre pressing. Side 1 plays like a dream, not a hint of surface noise. Phone in hand ready to write a positive glowing review and side 2 starts playing..... "czzzhhhh czzzhhhh" from the right channel. Check record in strong light.... NON FILLS!

Of course there is.

Edit... tried a second copy. No visual or physical defects at all. Plays abit noisy but acceptably and possibly due to stereo cart and no mono switching. Happy with it for the very acceptable £19 price

Sounds great, but detail is missing. No problems with pressing.
The sq is lacking. No other recordings to compare with. Don’t regret the purchase.

A great, very good pressing! Unfortunately, I am not a lucky owner of an original pressing, and these are meanwhile very valuable (!), so I cannot make any comparison. However, what I hear is excellent and is fun to listen to! Really great quality!

I agree with the other comments. Great audiophile pressing !

Spinning my copy with a mono cartridge.

Sounds great. Another classic from the BNC reissue catalog.

Tape errors galore on this one, sadly. Will have to A/B to the 2004 Van Gelder digital remaster, as I don’t recall those being as prominent. No question here that Blue Note is remastering from tape! Think this master tape sadly doesn’t have any more plays left in it.

On a hot Sunday, July 21, 1957 (oddly enough, Sonny's 26th birthday), our pianist walked into Rudy Van Gelder's modest studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, accompanied by Art Farmer on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, Wilbur Ware on bass and Louis Hayes on drums, excellent musicians carefully chosen and veterans of Blue Note, to record the session that would later be published (October 1957) under the title of "Dial "S" For Sonny”. (BLP 1570).

Sonny Clark was born in Pittsburgh on July 21, 1931 and began studying piano when he was four years old. He became interested in jazz around 1945 when he heard the Basie and Ellington bands through the radio and Fats Waller and Art Tatum records. Sonny names Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk as his most important influences. Clark's fingers on the piano keys created some of the favorite sounds of many modern jazz lovers.

This is his first studio album as a leader, and we find Clark full of youthful enthusiasm for his rapidly emerging talent as his head is abuzz with ideas, staying grounded and in tune with the other musicians, absolutely owning the show.

Clark shows what he learned from Bud Powell and then takes music in surprising directions, creating soulful music in timeless numbers like "Booting 'It," "Sonny's Mood" and "Shoutin' On A Riff."

Clark's brilliance was so powerful that every note he played is sought after by collectors despite remaining a heavily underrated musician today. No jazz pianist was more steeped in blues than Clark. But even among his many classic recordings, “Dial “S” For Sonny” is something very special.

Sonny plays with great freedom of time and form, never missing the line of the song. He shows much creativity in his blues-infused playing with an economy of notes that makes his music more effective as an example of a musician whose roots are firmly rooted in the jazz tradition.
A strong bluesy undercurrent can be detected throughout his performance.

With this set, Sonny secured his position as a major presence at Blue Note Records, where he played a dominant role as sideman and leader for two brief but intense stretches (1957-58 and 1961-62), an intense and rewarding period of activity in the studio before Clark died of a heroin overdose somewhere in New York City on January 13, 1963. He was thirty-one years old.

The percussion is recorded closely and the piano doesn't show much variety of tones, but the balance between the instruments is very good.
Although there is a certain lack of presence in this recording, there is plenty of warmth and detail to be enjoyed.

Once again, great mastering work by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio.

Listened to on loudspeakers you might find this is a passable recording, listened to on headphones with focus one realizes it’s pretty atrocious with lots of SQ issues.