I've been having a Dutton afternoon.... The four new titles came today and am finishing up my first listen to 'em all right now. I had never heard any of these albums in any format before. I am familiar enough with Santana and Return to Forever, but had never heard these specific albums. I only knew Pure Prairie League from "Amie" (which isn't featured here) and I had never heard of Jimmy Castor before. My first impressions:
Santana/Coltrane: Nice mix and I really enjoyed the music. It's a side of Carlos' playing that I wasn't aware of. Sort of left-field for him and I like to hear him stretching out. A stellar cast of musicians with him on this one.
Return to Forever: Another great mix, but I am a little less enthusiastic about the music. Don't get me wrong, it's still quite good, I think I just wasn't digging the vocal stuff that much. The playing is of course fantastic. My bias probably comes from loving Romantic Warrior so much. I was hoping I would like this as much. Although I prefer the previous album, this still has many stellar moments.
Jimmy Castor: This is probably my least favorite of the bunch. He's clearly a great player, but the tunes just weren't hitting home with me much. The album is divided into the first half with vocals and the second half all instrumentals. I liked the instrumental stuff more. It's the closest I'll probably ever get to Procol Harum in surround sound. (He covers "A Whiter Shade of Pale".) Of the four new titles, I was also least impressed with the quad mix on this one. Didn't seem to have the separation that the others did.
Pure Prairie League: I wasn't expecting to enjoy this at all. I'm not a big country-rock fan, and "Amie", while in no way a bad song, is just one of those songs that I've heard enough for one lifetime and don't need to ever hear again. First, the mixes here are excellent. Pure discrete 70's goodness. As for the music, I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. A few tunes seem a bit too silly to me, but mostly I think they strike the right balance between country, rock and pop.
Dave, your liner notes are excellent. For someone who is a newbie to all of this music, your words are an excellent introduction to these old LPs.
Mr. Dutton, the mastering on these is quite nice. These 40 year old mixes come to life beautifully on these SACDs.
While I may not get much mileage out of one or two of these, I am more than happy to have purchased them and support DV's efforts. It's great that there's a company willing to dust off the old quad tapes and bring them back to life. Hopefully the series does well enough that DV can eventually afford to issue some titles from the Sony catalog that might be more expensive to license like some of the more popular Santana titles or even the Billy Joel quads.
I need a few more listens and then I will vote in the polls.
Bravo DV!