The Blue Mitchell Quintet Down With It! UHQCD

Numbered, Limited Edition UHQCD!
Playable on any CD player, the Ultimate High Quality CD greatly surpasses all previous CDs before it!
Miami-born trumpeter Blue Mitchell became known for his brilliant style between blues and swing, but also felt completely at home in jazz, R&B and funk. Mitchell was one of the most popular sidemen on Blue Note and made a name for himself in a long line of albums by Lou Donaldson, Jimmy Smith and Jackie McLean. As a member of the Horace Silver Quintet, he participated in several albums that became timeless classics before he began recording albums for Blue Note as a leader. In 1965, for "Down With It!", Mitchell assembled the same dynamic quintet with whom he had recorded "The Thing To Do", his debut album as a leader, the year before – tenor saxophonist Junior Cook and double bassist Gene Taylor, both also members of the Horace Silver Quintet, as well as two young musicians who still had their glittering careers ahead of them: 24-year-old Chick Corea on piano and 22-year-old Al Foster on drums. The band kicks off with "Hi-Heel Sneakers", a song with a lively boogaloo rhythm, while among the other tracks on the album are the rousing "March On Selma" and the beautiful ballad "Alone, Alone And Alone".
As part of the hugely popular Blue Note 85th Anniversary Reissue Series, Universal Music Japan presents the sonically stunning remastering of this jazz classic by the legendary Kevin Gray, who is also responsible for Blue Note US's analog reissues such as "Tone Poet" and "Classic Vinyl" – as a limited Japan-exclusive UHQCD with OBI Stripe. The original recording session for "Down With It!" took place on July 14, 1965 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:

• Blue Mitchell, trumpet
• Junior Cook, tenor sax
• Chick Corea, piano
• Gene Taylor, bass
• Al Foster, drums

Selections:

1. Hi-Heel Sneakers
2. Perception
3. Alone, Alone And Alone
4. March On Selma
5. One Shirt
6. Samba De Stacy