Great female voices

Ozzy - Have you listened to the Rhiannon Giddens album? That's what we're talking about here.

The songs Rhiannon sings are my favorite on the New Basement Tapes' Lost on the River album. That's a nice one to pick up too if you guys missed it. Also check out the documentary that shows the making of the album.

Ozzy, yep T-Bone has no audiophile sensibilities, unfortunately. My comment about him was in reference to his musical abilities, not the audio quality of the music he makes. I can't think of a single producer in Pop music who makes great music with great sound, but I have no doubt that statement will be contested shortly.

Actually, I just thought of one example of what some consider good Pop music with great sound---the Cat Stevens album Tea For The Tillerman, produced by Paul Samwell-Smith, bass player of The Yardbirds. But that was, what, forty years ago? And I have no evidence that the sound of that album was the result of Paul's efforts at achieving "great" sound, or was instead the product of Paul's engineer (I don't have the LP handy to look for his name) alone.

Another is a song on a Gordon Lightfoot early 70's LP. Walter Davies (the creator of the Last line of record care products) had a retail Hi-Fi store in the 70's, and I just happened to be making my first visit to it the day that Bill Johnson was as well, bringing with him a full ARC system to initiate Walt becoming an ARC dealer. Walt played "Me and Bobby McGee" on the system (a Thorens 125, with a Decca Blue cartridge mounted on a prototype ARC tonearm that never made it into production, an SP-3 pre-amp, and a pair of Magneplanar Tympani T-1's bi-amped with a D-75 and D-51. The year was 1972, and that was THE system to have at the time), and Bill said "Hey, that IS a good sounding record. What is that?". Walt gave him the record to take back to Minnesota with him. I've used it ever since as demo material---the sound is indeed good, and I kinda like Gordon's version of the song, of which he is the writer.

As a young audiophile (I got my first serious system at age 22), I briefly fell into the trap of playing records that made my system sound good---music in the service of sound. That is a shallow, empty experience. I quickly tired of it, and have ever since considered good sound a bonus. Superior Hi-Fi is that which deepens the listener's connection with the music played on it, even if the sound per se of the recording is not particularly good.