Jazz vinyl deals on Amazon UK

Buying jazz vinyl without overpaying

Jazz is the genre where provenance matters most, because so much of the canon was recorded in the fifties and sixties and the tapes have been transferred many times since. The named reissue series exist precisely to solve this: Blue Note Classic and Tone Poet, Verve Acoustic Sounds, Craft OJC and the Impulse! reissues all state their mastering source, and they sound like it.

Against those sit a large number of very cheap European pressings of the same famous albums, sold legally under shorter copyright terms and cut from whatever digital source was available. A £12 copy of a record that normally costs £28 is almost always one of these. They are not fraudulent, but they are not the same record either.

The genuine deals are usually the named series going on offer — the classic reissues discount in cycles, particularly around catalogue promotions, and a Tone Poet at £26 rather than £38 is a real saving on a genuinely good pressing. Mono editions of pre-1958 recordings are often the better mix, and frequently cost less than the stereo.

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