TAJ MAHAL S/T VG++ 1968 Columbia CS 9579 PITMAN JESSE ED DAVIS RY COODER

$

40

Vinyl:  VG++ Play Graded. Sounds Great!  Columbia Labels are Clean and Bright.  This is the audiophile acclaimed 1968 Columbia CS 9579 Release, pressed at Columbia's Pitman, NJ Pressing Plant! Pressing Plant!! The Taj Mahal experience starts here and continues to this day. A National Treasure, this is where he first put his confident stamp on the blues that had an indelible stamp of authenticity on every cut.  Check out Statesboro Blues, Diving Duck Blues, Dust My Broom...not a dud on here!  Along for the ride are notables Jesse Ed Davis, the consummate axeman, and Ry Cooder, whose slide playing was the perfect foil to Taj's steady blues lines.  Check it out with headphones, for the mix is truly cutting edge and masterful.  Iconic Classic from 1968.  Crucial!  allmusic gives it 5 stars!!  

See Review Below!
In the Dead Wax:  Matrices, stamped.  Having no pressing plant code, this denotes the Pitman, NJ Pressing Plant.  Complete Dead Wax information cheerfully provided upon request.

Cover: VG+ (see photos)  Front and back of cover artwork and text are rich, clear and bright, with some ring wear.   Seams and spine are solid and clean, with minimal wear.  No splits.  No writing.  Spine print is crystal clear.
Goldmine Standards.   I play grade every album that I sell on eBay as I have found you can't rate an LP accurately by just visually inspecting an album.  I wipe the dust off of every cover with clean, unscented baby wipes.  I professionally clean the vinyl.

U.S. Shipping:  $4.99 Media Mail.  50 cents additional shipping per additional album, when the shipment is combined.   If you wish to take advantage of my COMBINED SHIPPING deal, simply select your records by clicking on "ADD TO CART" on the main listing page.  Do this for all of your selections and then go to your cart to checkout.  Your combined shipping discount will be computed automatically.  Free domestic shipping if you spend $100 or more!  

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Why buy a first or early pressing and not a re-issue or a ‘re-mastered’ vinyl album? 
First and early pressings are pressed from the first generation lacquers and stampers. They usually sound vastly superior to later issues/re-issues (which, in recent times, are often pressed from whatever 'best' tapes or digital sources are currently available) - many so-called 'audiophile' new 180g pressings are cut from hi-res digital sources…essentially an expensive CD pressed on vinyl.  Why  experience the worse elements of both formats?  These are just High Maintenance CDs, with mid-ranges so cloaked with a veil as to sound smeared.  They are nearly always compressed with murky transients and a general lifelessness in the overall sound.  There are exceptions where re-masters/re-presses outshine the original issues, but they are exceptions and not the norm. 

First or early pressings nearly always have more immediacy, presence and dynamics. The sound staging is wider.  Subtle instrument nuances are better placed with more spacious textures. Balances are firmer in the bottom end with a far-tighter bass. Upper-mid ranges shine without harshness, and the overall depth is more immersive.  Inner details are  clearer.  

 On first and early pressings, the music tends to sound more ‘alive’ and vibrant.  The physics of sound energy is hard to clarify and write about from a listening perspective, but the best we can describe it is to say that you can 'hear' what the mixing and mastering engineers wanted you to hear when they first recorded the music.    

Taj Mahal Review

by Bruce Eder

Taj Mahal's debut album was a startling statement in its time and has held up remarkably well. Recorded in August of 1967, it was as hard and exciting a mix of old and new blues sounds as surfaced on record in a year when even a lot of veteran blues artists (mostly at the insistence of their record labels) started turning toward psychedelia. The guitar virtuosity, embodied in Taj Mahal's slide work (which had the subtlety of a classical performance), Jesse Ed Davis's lead playing, and rhythm work by Ry Cooder and Bill Boatman, is of the neatly stripped-down variety that was alien to most records aiming for popular appeal, and the singer himself approached the music with a startling mix of authenticity and youthful enthusiasm. The whole record is a strange and compelling amalgam of stylistic and technical achievements -- filled with blues influences of the 1930s and 1940s, but also making use of stereo sound separation and the best recording technology. The result was numbers like Sleepy John Estes' "Diving Duck Blues," with textures resembling the mix on the early Cream albums, while "The Celebrated Walkin' Blues" (even with Cooder's animated mandolin weaving its spell on one side of the stereo mix) has the sound of a late '40s Chess release by Muddy Waters. Blind Willie McTell ("Statesboro Blues") and Robert Johnson ("Dust My Broom") are also represented, in what had to be one of the most quietly, defiantly iconoclastic records of 1968.