“A Selection from Tomas Örnberg’s Blue Five & The Swedish Jazz Kings” – Featuring Kenny Davern, Roy Williams & Bob Barnard – Opus 3

“A Selection from Tomas Örnberg’s Blue Five & The Swedish Jazz Kings” – Featuring Kenny Davern, Roy Williams & Bob Barnard – Opus 3 multichannel (4.1) SACD CD 22101, 78:35 *****:
The Swedish audiophile label Opus 3 has kept trad jazz-loving audiophiles very pleased for decades with their series of albums featuring top Swedish players along with guests such as American clarinetist Kenny Davern and Australian trumpeter Bob Barnard. Another guest here is trombonist Roy Williams, who has toured Europe many times. Going back to the LP-only era, Opus 3 has made three albums by the Blue Five and three others by The Swedish Jazz Kings. For this SACD compilation CEO and recording engineer Jan-Eric Persson has taken the original two-channel analog tapes, recorded with the Blumlein single-point stereo mike system, and derived the acoustic information for the surround channels of the 4.0 multichannel SACD, as he has done with several of their classic older recordings.
The recordings were originally made between 1971 and 2001, and 19 tracks of the very full SACD cover the classic jazz of the 1920s and ’30s, with an accent on the Chicago style. The music and styles of such figures as Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet and Clarence Williams are featured on many of the selections. These are not slavish imitations of the originals – the bands bend things to their own styles while preserving the basic classic sounds.  In 1982 the second LP by the Blue Five won the Swedish Grammophone Prize and was also ranked by Jazz Journal International as the best new jazz recording for that year. I happened to have that very album in my vinyl collection and three of the tracks on it were selected for this compilation, providing an interesting comparison.
Black Beauty, a wonderful Ellington number, is one of the three.  Setting up the comparison and equalizing the levels between my turntable and Oppo SACD deck was interesting. The two formats were quite similar, though with a slightly different acoustic. Of course Opus 3‘s LPs were (and still are) some of the very best. They both had the same super wide range, clean sonics and great presence of the instruments. Either could easily demonstrate for most listeners their superiority to the standard 44.1/16bit CD format.  I usually find that on such derived surround channels SACDs it is necessary to turn up the level on the surrounds, because it is usually so low as to be nearly unheard. After doing so, and setting the vinyl playback for decoding via ProLogic II, the results were extremely similar. There was very slightly more ambiance and depth on the SACD vs. the vinyl. However, switching the vinyl to Direct two-channel, there was more presence and a closer sonic for the band. I found that Carver’s Sonic Holography then had a subtle but hearable advantage in creating more spread of the sonic information on the sides and also more depth – usually lost when you try to combine it with pseudo-surround.
TrackList:
01. Mean Blues
(B. Smythe-A. Gillham) -Rec. 1979
02. ‘Tain’t Nobody’s Bizeness if I do
(P. Bradford) -Rec. 1996
03. Black Beauty
(Porter-Grainger-Robbins) -Rec. 1981
04. Gulf Coast Blues
(C. Williams) -Rec 1996
05. New Orleans Stomp
(JL Armstrong-Lil Hardin) -Rec1981
06. There Ain’t no Sweet Man
(F. Ficher) -Rec. 1993
07. Buddy Bolden’s Blues
(J.R. Morton) -Rec1997
08. After My Laughter Came Tears
(Tobias – Turk) – Rec. 1995
09. Georgia Cabin
(Caroley-Bechet) -Rec. 1979
10. Achin’ Hearted Blues
(Williams) -Rec 1979
11. It’s Right Here For You
(D. Ellington) -Rec. 1981
12. Mr. Jess
(B. Green) -Rec. 1996
13. Bienville Blues
(Unknown) -Rec. 1981
14. Please Don’t Talk About Me
(Stept-Clare) -Rec. 1997
15. How Come You Do Me
(Austin-Bergere) -Rec. 1994
16. Let’s Sow Wild Oat
-Rec. 1981
17. Absent Minded Blues
(T. Delaney) Rec. 1993
18. Everybody Loves My Baby
(J. Palmer-Sp. Williams) Rec. 2001
19. Moody Melody
(J. Noone)
– John Henry