Sidebar 3: Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.
While editing this review, I got sucked in to an investigation of the two albums Rob mentions in this section: Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! by the Cannonball Adderley Quintet and Ron Carter's Spanish Blue. That investigation led to a story I think is worth sharing.
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! has an interesting history. The liner notes on the original LP claimed it was recorded live at the Club De Lisa, "one of the swingingest spots in Chicago's South Side." The Club De Lisa was a real place—in fact those liner notes were written by one of the club's owners, E. Rodney Jones—but Jones lied: The album was really recorded in Studio A at the Capitol Tower in Hollywood, California, on October 20, 1966, with an invited audience and an open bar to simulate the murmur and clinking of glasses typical of a live jazz club. The illusion was successful: The album won that year's Grammy Award for best instrumental jazz performance.
Rob's CD contains the 1995 remaster, which was produced by Michael Cuscuna. This was the first US digital release. Two previous CDs were Japan-only, as were two later ones.
Assuming Rob was determined to keep listening to physical media—digital, not vinyl—he could seek out one of those later Japanese reissues. The first is a "RVG Special Edition" release, one of a handful of albums Van Gelder (who was huge in Japan) remastered but didn't record. Fifteen years after that, a new, 24/192 transfer was made from original tapes by Capitol Records house engineers. This transfer was the source for the Japan-only SHM ("Super High Material") CD; SHM CDs replaced polycarbonate with a proprietary plastic.
For a while, those 24/192 files were available for download, and possibly streaming, in that brief golden age of widely available master files we took for granted and have now apparently exited—anyway, I tried to find them and failed. None of the usual download sites have them. If you find them, please let me know. I want them.
What streamed version was Rob comparing to his 1995 CD? The metadata accompanying the streamed versions is poor, as it usually is. All streamed and downloadable versions I've found are 16/44.1, and several give 1995 as the recording date. One says 2008. Draw your own conclusions.
As for Spanish Blue, the other album, it was recorded by RVG, in1975, and produced by Creed Taylor. Rob's CD appears to be the first digital issue, from the late 1980s, digitally mastered by Tim Geelan. By reputation, it's thin compared to the early LPs and the CDs that came later. Spanish Blue was remastered in 1995 on King Records, part of their "CTI Masterpieces" series, and again in 2009 by RVG himself for another Japan-only "SHM" CD. RVG's 2009 reissue is thought to be a bit bass-heavy—not a bad thing for a Ron Carter album. There have been two more CD reissues since, also on King Records. The 2013 version is a rare "blue CD," playable on standard CD players but made using Blu-ray technology. Reviews say it preserves more of that CTI sound—laid-back and airy—than RVG's remaster did. It isn't certain, but Rob was probably comparing (CD-rez) files derived from this 2013 transfer with his late-1980s CD, which is not a fair comparison but which validates his case that sometimes physical media isn't better.
Rob streamed Spanish Blue in Canada. I looked for it on US sites; it was difficult to find, for download or streaming. That makes for an interesting observation about the state of recorded music circa 2026, so I'll dedicate a few words to it.
I could not find Spanish Blue on Spotify, Tidal, or Qobuz. I did find it on Apple Music, at 16/44.1. I was able to play it back on the Emerson Digital with no issues. I don't know which remaster it was.
Due to licensing shifts and other legal matters, continued availability of favorite tracks on streaming sites cannot be assumed. Old albums come and go, in various versions. A phrase has been coined for this phenomenon: "digital decay." The first use I could find of the phrase used this way was in the Irish Times in May of last year. Eventually I managed to find the album, in hi-rez, at a torrent site, apparently stolen from the Japanese site e-onkyo.com, which no longer exists: It became the anchor point for Qobuz in Japan. I didn't download it, or whatever it is music thieves do with bit-torrents.
Rob Schryer has hinted that he might get rid of CDs, but all this—the disappearance of hi-rez Spanish Blue in the US market, bad metadata for most streamed music, and the volatility of streamed offerings broadly—makes the case that Rob should hold on to his CDs even though streamed music sometimes sounds better.—Jim Austin
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! has an interesting history. The liner notes on the original LP claimed it was recorded live at the Club De Lisa, "one of the swingingest spots in Chicago's South Side." The Club De Lisa was a real place—in fact those liner notes were written by one of the club's owners, E. Rodney Jones—but Jones lied: The album was really recorded in Studio A at the Capitol Tower in Hollywood, California, on October 20, 1966, with an invited audience and an open bar to simulate the murmur and clinking of glasses typical of a live jazz club. The illusion was successful: The album won that year's Grammy Award for best instrumental jazz performance.
Rob's CD contains the 1995 remaster, which was produced by Michael Cuscuna. This was the first US digital release. Two previous CDs were Japan-only, as were two later ones.
As for Spanish Blue, the other album, it was recorded by RVG, in1975, and produced by Creed Taylor. Rob's CD appears to be the first digital issue, from the late 1980s, digitally mastered by Tim Geelan. By reputation, it's thin compared to the early LPs and the CDs that came later. Spanish Blue was remastered in 1995 on King Records, part of their "CTI Masterpieces" series, and again in 2009 by RVG himself for another Japan-only "SHM" CD. RVG's 2009 reissue is thought to be a bit bass-heavy—not a bad thing for a Ron Carter album. There have been two more CD reissues since, also on King Records. The 2013 version is a rare "blue CD," playable on standard CD players but made using Blu-ray technology. Reviews say it preserves more of that CTI sound—laid-back and airy—than RVG's remaster did. It isn't certain, but Rob was probably comparing (CD-rez) files derived from this 2013 transfer with his late-1980s CD, which is not a fair comparison but which validates his case that sometimes physical media isn't better.
Rob streamed Spanish Blue in Canada. I looked for it on US sites; it was difficult to find, for download or streaming. That makes for an interesting observation about the state of recorded music circa 2026, so I'll dedicate a few words to it.
I could not find Spanish Blue on Spotify, Tidal, or Qobuz. I did find it on Apple Music, at 16/44.1. I was able to play it back on the Emerson Digital with no issues. I don't know which remaster it was.
