This is a Recording

When I was eight years old, The Very Best of Fats Domino , aka Play It Again, Fats , was my favourite album. Of all my parents' records it was the one I liked best. Nostalgia prompted me to buy CD compilations of Domino's hits in the '90s and '00s, but none of them sounded quite right, and what I came to realize was that I wanted to hear those specific songs, in that order, and on vinyl. Luckily it must have been a popular compilation, as I've found a few copies in charity shops over the past decade, buying one for myself, and another, with a different cover (the latter the same as my Dad's old copy) for my sister, who remembered the album no less fondly than I did. This is glorious music that I dearly love. My Dad maintains that Fats invented rock'n'roll, and he certainly had a claim worth staking, with the supercharged boogie of the opening track 'The Fat Man', dating back to December '49 (if it's not rock'n'roll then it's...

Sassy Sings is a 1966 compilation LP collecting tracks by the great Sarah Vaughan recorded in 1946 and '47. Given those dates, it's not surprising that the sound quality isn't the best. 'September Song', which in all likelihood would have sounded exquisite to those lucky few present at the time, presents those of us in posterity with a need to make allowances for something that sounds like it was taped in a subway tunnel. The closing track - 'The One I Love (Belongs To Somebody Else)' - gives one the impression that the microphones were in a room across the hall from the one where the musicians were playing. The recording quality of some of the other tracks isn't so bad, but the fidelity is never high. Moreover, my copy of the record is hardly in pristine condition, and the pops & crackles from it don't help matters. Despite all that, some of the tremendous amount of light & warmth in these performances does still frequently shine through. V...