Nat King Cole Just One Of Those Things 45RPM (2 LP)

Audio Beat Rated 4/5 Music, 5/5 Sound!
Mastered from the Original 3-Track Analog Masters by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray at Acoustech!
Contrasting downbeat ballads with an ironic brassy, upbeat big band attitude, the brilliant and expressive work of vocalist Nat King Cole and arranger Billy May crafted an album of classic songs into a distinctive, pungent experience of love and disillusionment.
On this album from 1957, Nat King Cole collaborates with arranger Billy May, who had already successfully staged Frank Sinatra. Accordingly, the album is also lively and faster than previous recordings, which gives the well-known songs their own charm, but does not mean that you would do without the ballads.
This reissue is the ultimate reworking of the early Nat King Cole recordings by Acoustic Sounds. You almost have the feeling as if you are in the studio with the illustrious troupe and get a wonderful impression of the studio.
In order to be able to carry out this technically at the highest level, the AcousTech Studio had to be refurnished and the sound engineers Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray spent quite a while adjusting the new systems to make the enormous sonority of this re-release possible. Just having a new 3-channel sound head made for a Studer tape machine dragged on for weeks.
They were mixed with the original multitrack tapes from Capitol and thus in a better quality than the master tape previously released for release. However, since these multitrack tapes contain the individual musicians and not all at once, a new recording room had to be constructed to allow a joint playback of the individual channels with proper room reverb. Since the AocustTech Studio is part of the RTI plate pressing plant, part of the production had to be stopped and some corridors closed so that no machine noise or footstep could disturb the re-recording.
Of course, it would have been easier to digitally simulate the reverberation of the Capitol recording room, but this would have lost much of the authenticity of the analog original. It would probably have been authentic to reproduce the dirty jokes and tape errors on the work tapes, but it probably wouldn't do justice to Nat King Cole to pick out those cases in which he had forgotten his lyrics. The sound engineers explained that in the countless hours of tape material, Nat had not hit a wrong note.
This is likely to be the most elaborate restoration of an analogue recording in the history of modern production and the process dragged on for months. However, the sonic result on two LPs with 45 rpm is stunning.
"All of Analogue Productions' Nat "King" Cole releases go the extra mile. They come with well-done booklets that discuss in detail each album's history and the remastering wizardry responsible for their sonics." - Marc Mickelson, www.theaudiobeat.com, 4/5 Music, 5/5 Sound!

Features:

• 180g Vinyl
• 45rpm
• Double Vinyl
• Mastered by Kevin Gray & Steve Hoffman at Acoustech
• Includes essays by Jordan Taylor and Michael Fremer

Selections:

Side A
1. When your Lover Has Gone
2. A Cottage For Sale
3. Who's Sorry Now?
Side B
1. Once in a While
2. These Foolish Things Remind Me of You
3. Just for the Fun of It
Side C
1. Don't Get Around Much Anymore
2. I Understand
3. Just One of Those Things
4. The Song is Ended (But the Melody Lingers On)
Side D
1. I Should Care
2. The Party's Over
3. You'll Never Lnow (Bonus Track)