Ike Quebec Heavy Soul UHQCD

Numbered, Limited Edition UHQCD!
Playable on any CD player, the Ultimate High Quality CD greatly surpasses all previous CDs before it!
According to many critics, there is no more fitting album title in the entire history of music than "Heavy Soul", the great classic of the famous tenor saxophonist Ike Quebec, which was released in 1961. This record marked the comeback of a jazz musician who played an important role in the history of Blue Note. By the 1940s, Quebec had recorded several '78 records for Alfred Lion and worked as a talent scout who encouraged Lion to pick up some of the rising stars of the nascent bebop scene at the time, including Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. In 1959, Lion began to introduce the music of Quebec to jazz fans with a series of jukebox singles. These were very successful and inspired Lion to bring the saxophonist back into the studio to record a full album. In November 1961, Quebec brought a four-piece band consisting of organist Freddie Roach, double bassist Milt Hinton and drummer Al Harewood to Rudy Van Gelder's recording studio. The eight pieces that were created in this memorable recording session formed a real master class in soul-jazz!
Quebec's powerful tenor saxophone sound expresses a wide range of feelings and moods, ranging from the driving swing rhythms of original tracks like "Acquitted" and "Que's Dilemma" to slower, thoughtful pieces like "Just One More Chance," "Brother Can You Spare A Dime," and "I Want A Little Girl." A remarkable rendition of "The Man I Love" leads to the brilliant title track, which is bursting with soul, but it's only the conclusion of the album that is the real triumph: Roach and Harewood form an extremely reliable rhythm section, while Quebec and Hinton sing a duet in an enchanting rendition of "Nature Boy" that reverberates in the listener's soul long after the last note.
In the course of the extremely popular "Blue Note 85th Anniversary Reissue Series", Universal Music Japan presents the sonically impressive remastering of this jazz classic by the legendary Kevin Gray, who is also responsible for the analog reissues of Blue Note US such as "Tone Poet" and "Classic Vinyl" – as a limited Japan-exclusive UHQCD with OBI-Stripe. The original recording session for "Heavy Soul" took place on November 26, 1961 at Rudy Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
UHQCD stands for Ultimate High Quality Compact Disc and is a joint development of the Japanese CD replication company Memory-Tech and the Audio Quality CD Company from Hong Kong. UHQCDs, unlike conventional CDs, are not pressed from polycarbonate, but cast from a photopolymer and cured with UV light. To protect the softer photopolymer from scratching, another layer of high-purity polycarbonate is applied. The combination results in a significantly reduced reflection of the laser light inside the CD and an unrivalled precise edge transition between pits and lands of the CD. UHQCDs are 100% compatible with normal CD players. Musically, the result is a sound that is strongly reminiscent of analog master tapes.
While Universal Music Japan's first UHQCD series relied on the DSD data of previous SHM-SACD releases, albums that had not previously been released as SHM-SACD are now being released with increasing popularity. Typically, the master tapes of the Universal Archive are re-converted to DSD for this purpose. UHQCDs are ideal for music lovers who want to get as close as possible to the sound of the recording, but do not have a SACD player.

Features:

• Numbered, Limited Edition
• Made in Japan
• Superior Crystal Sound
• Ultimate High Quality CD
• XRCD-Like Luxury Digipak
• Playable on conventional CD players

Musicians:

• Ike Quebec, tenor sax
• Freddie Roach, organ
• Milt Hinton, bass
• Al Harewood, drums

Selections:

1. Acquitted
2. Just One More Chance
3. Que's Dilemma
4. Brother Can You Spare A Dine
5. The Man I Love
6. Heavy Soul
7. I Want A Little Girl
8. Nature Boy