About Beyond The Blue Horizon: George Benson (Speakers Corner) by George Benson:
George Benson was the pupil, Wes Montgomery his teacher! And the sound of the great maestro, who played without the use of a plectrum, is quite unmistakable in this recording produced by CTI Records with George Benson in 1971. Producer Creed Taylor showed good judgement when he teamed Benson up with a small yet supremely talented group of musicians: Jack De Johnette on the drums takes Ron Carter’s bass and Clarence Palmer’s organ on a superb ride. Carter and Benson had met one another briefly during a Miles Davis recording session, but there the drummer was Tony Williams. Here, with Jack DeJohnette participating, the numbers on this LP gain real soul. But the lyrical side doesn’t come too short either: "Ode To A Kudu" demonstrates this particular attribute of Benson’s to perfection. And "Somewhere To The East" proves that he isn’t afraid to experiment. All in all, this is a top album from George Benson’s long and commercially successful career.
Musicians:
- George Benson (guitar)
- Clarence Palmer (organ)
- Ron Carter (bass)
- Jack DeJohnette (drums)
- Michael Cameron, Albert Nicholson (percussion)
Recording: February 1971 at Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ (USA), by Rudy Van Gelder
Production: Creed Taylor
About Speakers Corner
At the beginning of the 90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the situation was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and, of course, Speakers Corner all maintained a mutual, unwritten ethical code: we would only use analogue tapes to manufacture records.
During the course of the present vinyl hype, many others have jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source to master from: CDs, LPs, digital files, MP3s – or employed existant tools from the 80s and 90s for manufacturing.
A digital delay is gladly used when cutting a lacquer disc because tape machines with an analogue delay have become quite rare and are therefore expensive. When cutting the lacquer, the audio signal is delayed by one LP revolution against the signal, which controls the cutter head, and for this a digital delay is very often employed. Of course, the resultant sound signal is completely digital and thus only as good as this delay.
We should like to emphasise that Speakers Corner Records on principle only uses the original master tape as the basis for the entirely analogue cutting of lacquer discs. In addition, the pressing tool is newly manufactured as a matter of principle. We have one digital recording in our catalogue (Alan Parsons / Eye In The Sky“), but even in this particular case we used the analogue tapes for cutting.
We only employ existing tools for manufacturing if an improved result is not forthcoming, e.g. the title Elvis Is Back, which was mastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray, or several titles from our Philips Classics series, which in any case Willem Makkee cut from the original masters at the Emil Berliner Studios in the 90s. It goes without saying that we only used the mother and that new tools were made for our production.
To put it in a nutshell: we can ensure you that our releases are free from any kind of digital effects – excluding the exception above – and that the lacquer discs are newly cut.
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