“I've long been a fan of Pablo Records—named, by the way, after the most famous Pablo of them all, Pablo Picasso—but then I'm an audiophile and not a jazz maven. For the latter, the recordings of Norman Ganz's second major company, founded in 1972–73 (10 years after Ganz sold the celebrated catalogue of his first enterprise, Verve Records, to MGM), are the quintessence of Old Hat.

“It is true that Granz began making LPs of mainstream jazz musicians on Pablo, including three he counted as clients of his side-gig entertainment agency: Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, and Joe Pass. Within the first few years, he added other great old timers like Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Milt Jackson, and Duke Ellington to his Over the Hill Gang.

“Yes, most of Pablo’s artists were no longer the jazz avantgarde. And, yes, some (not all) of them were arguably past their performing prime, though you’d have a hard time convincing me that Ellington’s sprightly youthful keyboard work and Ray Brown’s phenomenally dexterous bass playing on This One’s for Blanton! (titled after Ellington’s bass player, Jimmie Blanton, who, before his untimely death in 1942, almost singlehandedly changed the standup bass from a 4/4 timekeeper into a featured solo instrument), or the lyrical tirando of Joe Pass’ Gibson ES-175 guitar on Duke’s Big 4, or the thrilling slam and ensemble timbre of Basie’s big band on 88 Basie Street are the work of has-beens.

“You would also have a hard time convincing me to write off the sound of Pablos, which were originally engineered by the likes of Val Valentin and Allen Sides in state-of-the-art studios such as Oceanway and have been remastered from the mastertapes and the original metal parts at 33rpm on very quiet 180-gram vinyl by folks like Kevin Gray, Doug Sax, and Stan Ricker.

“How do the remasters sound? In a word, phenomenally good. Good enough, in fact, for me to add all these LPs to our next Super LP List and one of them — This One’s for Blanton! — to the highly select Best of the Bunch section. While the cartridge (DS Audio’s Grand Master EX) and the electronics I’m using (Vitus SL-103 linestage and SM-103 Mk.II Class A monoblocks fed by Soulution’s fabulous 757 deemphasis preamplifier) aren’t hurting the sonics, I can say with certainty that Ray Brown’s standup bass has never-before sounded this three-dimensionally complete, with ravishingly beautiful density of tone and texture, deep-reaching power, and a definition of pitch that is startingly realistic. Ditto for Duke’s grand piano, which is so harmonically rich and full that it, too, sounds (and almost looks) as if it’s “there” in the room with you  — the opposite of the bright, thinned-down, skeletal piano tone that you so often hear on close-miked jazz, pop, and classical recordings.

“While there is absolutely nothing wrong with and a good deal that is absolutely right about Pablo’s original pressings, these Pablo reissues from Chad Kassem’s Analogue Productions are better in every way save one. Since that one can (and must be) corrected by Chad (or by you, if you have a fattish pen, or preferably, a tapered reamer), it is not a deal-breaker. To wit, the center holes of every one of the five AP Pablos sent to me were too small (by a considerable amount) for the spindle of my Clearaudio Master Innovation turntable. Perhaps, this problem only affected early pressings, but it is something, as noted, that must be addressed. That issue aside, AP’s Pablos are well worth purchasing. At the moment, 15 titles have been announced, of which I’ve auditioned five (Duke’s Big 4, This One’s for Blanton, 88 Basie Street, Farmer Market Barbeque,and The Alternate Blues). Since I have no reason to think that the 10 I haven’t yet heard are any less terrific-sounding than the five I have (they certainly were in their original Pablo pressings), I recommend all of them for your delectation. No, you’re not going to get Miles or Coltrane or Ornette or Monk at their groundbreaking best, but you are going to get still-great artists performing timeless classics in sound that is hard to better.” — Jonathan Valin, “Pablo Redivivus: The Analogue Productions Vinyl Reissues” The Absolute Sound, October 2024