Jazz at the Pawnshop (UltraHD CD review)

The Fifth and Ultimate Version. Arne Domnerus and friends. LIM UHD 071 (3-CD set + DVD).

Here’s the thing: If you who are reading this consider yourself an audiophile but you don’t own some version of Jazz at the Pawnshop, trust me, you’re not really an audiophile. It’s been around now in various formats for some four decades, so you’ve had plenty of chance to hear and obtain it. The recording has developed something of a cult following among those in the know, and for good reason. Now the folks at LIM (Lasting Impression Music, a subsidiary of FIM, First Impression Music) have remastered it for the fifth and probably not last time in a rendering they understandably claim is the best ever. It’s hard to argue with them; the performances are first-rate and, more important, the sound is terrific.

But why so many versions? LIM’s owner and producer Winston Ma explains it in a booklet note: After Proprius Music released the album in the late Seventies, it became almost an instant hit on LP, followed by a two-disc CD set in 1984. Proprius (and American AudioSource) continued to rerelease the set on CD for the next few years, and then in 1997 Winston stepped in. Sensing a good thing, his company remastered the recording in an HDCD 24k gold format. Subsequently, he decided to remaster it in every new and improved disc format that came along, including XRCD and SACD, even obtaining the original tapes for the second disc that folks for many years thought lost. Then, in 2007 he did it all over again in K2 HD, convinced that K2 was a superior Redbook CD format over all others. Sure enough, there was a sonic improvement. This most current iteration of the product, the “Fifth and Ultimate Version,” is in UltraHD, the format Winston believes as far advanced as conventional compact discs can go. What’s more, the new set contains a third disc of tunes that recording engineer Gert Palmcrantz discovered in his archives in 1990, later released as Jazz at the Pawnshop 2, plus a DVD of interviews. In terms of sound and substance, Winston’s latest UltraHD set is, indeed, the best yet issued. Unless you want to argue the superiority of vinyl over silver disc, which is another story entirely.

So, what’s the fuss all about? Jazz at the Pawnshop is some pretty good jazz in some pretty astounding sound. The album’s producer and engineer visited one of Sweden’s most-celebrated jazz venues, the Stampen (or The Pawnshop because of a pawnshop that used to be there), and found its acoustics ideal for recording. Then they set up their equipment to record live several of Sweden’s most-celebrated jazz musicians, a quintet that included Arne Dominerus, alto sax and clarinet; Bengt Hallberg, piano; Larss Erstrand, vibes; Georg Riedel, bass; and Egil Johansen, drums. After two evenings of recording, they came out with tapes of some of the best and most realistic-sounding jazz that anyone had ever heard. The subsequent LP and CD releases took off among audiophiles eager to demonstrate just how accurate their stereo equipment was when playing back music that live would have been largely unamplified.

The three discs in the LIM set contain six music tracks each and a couple of introductions. The numbers run high to jazz standards, starting with Philip Braham’s “Limehouse Blues.” The quintet play well together, with Dominerus’s sax tending to dominate the ensemble but with plenty of room for the other members to shine and solo as well. Because it’s live, in the background we hear quite a lot of room noise, the clinking of glasses, shuffling of feet, occasional applause, audience comments, and conversation. One goes into Jazz at the Pawnshop for the music, certainly, but also for the vivid sound, which involves experiencing the ambience of the small club itself.

And so it goes throughout the eighteen selections, like the traditional “High Life,” Louis Armstrong’s “Struttin’ with Some Barbeque,” Johnny Hodges’s “Jeep’s Blues,” George Gershwin’s “Lady Be Good,” Charlie Parker’s “Barbados,” Morgan Lewis’s “How High the Moon,” Matt Dennis’s “Everything Happens to Me,” Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow,” Charlie Parker’s “Now’s the Time,” Duke Ellington’s “In a Mellow Mood,” Bill Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train,” and Harry Warren’s “Jeepers Creepers,” among others.

The package concludes with a DVD containing brief interviews with two of the music’s participants:  Lars Estrand and Georg Riedel, the interviews playable with or without subtitles.

In keeping with the importance of such an undertaking, LIM have packaged the four-disc set rather elaborately. The glossy, hard-cardboard case opens up in four sections, an inner sleeve fastened to each segment, within which lie the discs, each in its own static-free liner, the whole affair further housed in a handsome slipcover. The only trouble with this arrangement is that it leaves no place for the thirty-page booklet insert except loose inside. Open up the package, and you’re likely to have the booklet fall in your lap. Apart from that minor oversight, it’s a nifty layout.

Producer Jacob Boethius and recording engineer Gert Palmcrantz made the album on location at the Stampen (Pawnshop) Jazz Club in Stockholm, Sweden in December of 1976. The club’s excellent acoustics and the simplicity of the miking probably led to the results that have been pleasing audiophiles all these years: Neumann U47, KM56, and M49 microphones, two Dolby A361 noise-reductions units, two Nagra IV recorders, a Studer mixing board, and two old Ampex loudspeakers with built-in amplifiers. Remarkable, given that sonically this antique array puts most of today’s state-of-the-art digital equipment to shame.

I had on hand the original Proprius set from AudioSource, CDP 7778/9, for comparison, putting one Proprius disc and one LIM disc into separate CD players (Sony and Yamaha), adjusting for output and switching them out occasionally to be sure I was listening to the sound of the discs and not the machines.

The first thing I noticed was that both the Proprius and LIM exhibit an outstanding dimensionality, space, and air. You can hear in and around the instruments in a most convincingly lifelike manner. Both display exemplary transient quickness, too, and strong dynamic impact. Where the new LIM scores over its rival is in its overall greater smoothness, marginally superior, more-truthful warmth, more-extended high-end response, and tauter, crisper bass. These characteristics lend the LIM product an upper hand in listenability as well as naturalness. Then, after a while I could sense that the LIM rendered a more potent force on drums and displayed slightly wider dynamics. The more I listened, the less of a contest it became, with the LIM sounding better to me in almost every sonic category. Given the already high quality of the Proprius discs, that's quite a compliment to the LIM. Of course, we should not expect less, given the extremely high cost of the new LIM set, but maybe that's yet another story. 

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

Contact Information

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@gmail.com

Readers with impolite, discourteous, bitchy, whining, complaining, nasty, mean-spirited, unhelpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@recycle.bin.

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa