Joe Cocker
Self-Titled

Great sound for this rockin’ soul album with two live tracks. Just listen to the drums on "Black-Eyed Blues" -- the way the percussion and bass mingle sonically with Alan White’s skins takes this listener right into the room where the magic happened.

This vintage A&M pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Joe Cocker Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1972
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

Classic Tracks

On side one, three out of five you know or should know: "Pardon Me Sir," "High Time We Went" and "Black-Eyed Blues."

On side two, three out of four you know or should know: "Midnight Rider," "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" and "St. James Infirmary."

What We're Listening For On Joe Cocker

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Side One

• Pardon Me Sir
• High Time We Went
• She Don't Mind
• Black-Eyed Blues
• Something To Say

Side Two

• Midnight Rider
• Do Right Woman
• Woman To Woman
• St. James Infirmary

Rolling Stone Review

The Cocker vindication? Well, he has in effect answered all his critics in the only way he knows, for he is essentially a doer, not an articulator, and the demarcation provided by the two sides of the new album explains it all most competently: side one being the musical rap/commentary, and side two the down-home roots blues. "'Cos that's the only thing I know," he shrieks frantically, and there it is - the sole statement of self-explanation and definition that he really needs. Firmly establishing himself in gear at this early stage of the game leaves him both scope and time to get down to what he obviously feels to be the important business of side two.

"Woman To Woman," probably the most commercial track on the album, is rawhide, rawhard, core-music -- real roots, although rarely produced in such a blitz-like fashion by the White Purveyor. Transubstantiation, maybe? Anyhow, the gutsy conclusion to all this powerhouse blues is, naturally and most appropriately, "St. James' Infirmary" -- what better gift to leave you with? "We're gonna do a blues," he tells 'em, "a blooooooooz," and off they go, Isidore on skins, Hubbard ringing out the dues on upright lead, and the rest of the assortment in fine mettle. With "St. James' Infirmary," Joe Cocker has moved into a whole different sphere of musical activity, far distant from the rip-roaring anarchism of the Mad Dogs.

This album is, when all be said and done, riddled with meaningful soul. It is damned easier than ever right now to penetrate the depths of Cocker's music, so damned easy that it worries me. He is close to performing like a veteran on this album, as if already past his peak. Well, and so Cocker has passed this particular obstacle with Dope-Flying colors, but then the whole game is just a series of obstacles... If he somehow forges the strength to rise above the dark negativism of his Detractors, then we, the real Cocker lovers, know he can make it.

Even without a little help...

- Tony Franklin, Rolling Stone, 3/1/73