Dexter Gordon & Slide Hampton A Day In Copenhagen Master Quality Reel To Reel Tape (2Reel)

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With his big, warm, round-toned sound, sophisticated phrasing, and hip quotes, Dexter Gordon was one of the major forces on the tenor saxophone from the mid-1940's until his death in 1990. Gordon was cited by both Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane as a major influence on their playing. Dexter moved to Europe in the early 1960's, settling in Copenhagen, Denmark. During this period, he usually played and recorded backed by a piano trio, so, with two horns joining him, this album is special. One of the great modern jazz trombonists, Slide Hampton is also a composer/arranger of note. Three of the compositions and all of the arrangements on the album are his. The classy Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece completes the front line. The rhythm section includes two jazz giants with whom Gordon played at Copenhagen's famous Club Montmartre, fellow American expatriate pianist Kenny Drew and Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. Drummer Art Taylor was brought in from Paris to complete the all-star rhythm section. Slide's minor "My Blues" starts off the set with a bright, upbeat Dex showing he had been listening to Trane and Rollins as much as they had been to him. Everyone gets a chance to blow on this one. Normally a ballad, "You Don't Know What Love Is" glides along at a medium clip; Slide states his intention was to keep the feeling that Billie Holliday and Miles Davis had in their versions. Hampton's "New Thing" is actually straight-ahead hard-bop, with Dexter once again shinning out front. On "What's New", Slide changes what is normally a ballad into something special; this time a medium-tempo 12/8 with some beautiful solos by all three horns. Dexter reserves "The Shadow Of Your Smile" for himself and the trio, giving the ballad a breathtakingly lush rendition. The set ends with "A Day In Vienna", Slide's richly voiced tribute to the Austrian Radio's Jazz Workshop.

All Music calls the album an "...excellent sextet session. The other soloists are fine but Gordon easily dominates the set."

An outstanding album by one of jazz's great tenor saxophonists.

DOES HORCH HOUSE DO ANY KIND OF REMASTERING DURING THE COPYING PROCESS?
Absolutely not! Why mess with the best? The whole point of what they do lies in capturing the magic of the original analogue master tape in its purest, most faithful form possible.

'Remastering' can be compared to using computer software to edit an original photograph. The benefits are that you can remove unwanted marks or noise, clean things up, remove distortion and boost clarity. The downside is that in doing so, you often lose the natural essence of the original and the result can seem rather synthetic, lacking in real life character.

The unfortunate fact is that tapes, like photographs, do tend to age over time, and most analogue masters are now between 30-80+ years old.

So Horch House undertake a painstaking 'soft refurbishing' process, which is key to recapturing the original quality of a master tape.

CAPTURING THE MAGIC OF MASTER TAPE
How exactly does Horch House translate an original analogue master tape into faithful copies on reel-to-reel tape and vinyl records?

They use a process that's been meticulously researched and developed by their expert team of sound engineers, with input from some of the world's leading specialists.

The first step is to carefully assess the sound quality of the original master tape, which their experts do in great detail. The unfortunate fact is that tapes do tend to age over time, and most analogue masters are now between 30-80+ years old. What they're looking to do, therefore, as an integral part of their copying process, is to restore the sound quality back to its original level. They want you to hear exactly what the first sound engineers heard (and indeed the musicians themselves), on the day that the original recording was made. This is in stark contrast to any kind of 'remastering', which they most definitely do not do! They're not looking to 'improve' the recording in any way, but rather to return it as closely as possible to its full original beauty.

They call this their 'soft refurbishing' process.

HOW CLOSE ARE HORCH HOUSE COPIES TO THE ORIGINAL MASTER TAPES?
Horch House believe that they're as close as it's possible to get - not simply to the master tape in its current condition, but to that master tape's original condition. Thanks to their detailed 'soft refurbishing' process, their master tape copies could, in a sense, now be considered as better than the current originals because they've been lovingly restored to deliver the same sound quality that the originals had on the day they were first recorded.

WHAT ABOUT COPYRIGHT? ARE MASTER TAPE COPIES LEGAL?
All Horch House master tape copies are fully authorized, licensed and approved by the relevant record label/music publisher.

** It is standard practice in all recording studios to keep the tape "tail out". This reduces "pre-echo" and it means that the tape should be placed on the right hand side of the recorder, re-wound and then played.