The Weavers
The Weavers' Almanac

*NOTE: This record was not noisy enough to rate our M-- to EX++ grade, but it's not quite up to our standards for Mint Minus Minus either. If you're looking for quiet vinyl, this is probably not the best copy for you.

What did we listen for on this album? Pretty much the same things we listen for on most albums (with the exception of Whomp Factor I suppose; acoustic guitars, banjos and voices don’t produce much whomp).

Obviously you need transparency to allow all the vocal and instrumental parts to be heard clearly. There is not a trace of phony Hi-Fi sound anywhere to be found on the album, so finding a copy with the most information in its grooves is our main goal.

On phony records a bit of smear or opacity can actually be a good thing. Here we want none.

This vintage Vanguard 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 The Weavers' Almanac 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 1962
• 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.

All Tube

Some copies are going to be thick and opaque to some degree. Such is the nature of vinyl. More often than not some of the transient information is smeared, making the banjo and guitar lose their pluck and voices their breathiness. This recording is all tube — a single microphone with tube preamp, a tube tape recorder, an all-tube mastering chain; it’s tubes, more tubes and nothing but tubes, which means that there is plenty of Tubey Magic and warmth.

Fortunately, on this copy these qualities do not come at the expense of clarity and transparency. The best copies give you plenty of both.

Having done this for so long, we understand as well as anyone that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition). The music is not so much about the details in the recording, but rather in trying to recreate solid, palpable, real people singing and playing live in your listening room. The best copies had an uncanny way of doing just that.

What We're Listening For On The Weavers' Almanac

• 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.

Years

It took years to find enough clean copies to do this shootout, so Weavers fans and folk fans in general are here forewarned that we are probably not going to be in a position to do another shootout for this wonderful album for a very long time. If we get lucky in our record hunting things may change, but for now it looks like this is it.

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

• When The Stars Begin To Fall
• We’re All Dodgin’
• Brother Can You Spare A Dime
• Jackhammer John
• A-Walking And-A-Talking
• Rally Round The Flag

Side Two

• Fight On
• Bill
• Get Along Little Dogies
• True Religion
• Which Side Are You On
• Bye, Baby, Bye

Ace Records

“The Weavers’ Almanac” is a studio album the group cut a little while before they disbanded for the final time in 1963. By this time Pete Seeger had been replaced by Erik Darling, although he would very soon depart to form his new trio the Rooftop Singers. The other founding members – Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert – remained working until the following year with Bernie Krause. By 1963 the worst excesses of McCarthyism had passed but the Weavers remained committed to delivering songs that drew from their concerns, several of which can be found on this album.

The 12 songs here cover different aspects of the American story. To quote Studs Terkel’s notes in the booklet, “They are pieces of a history, mementos of trial, tribulation, laughter and survival.”

The tribulation is most keenly felt on ‘Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?’, which reflects the Great Depression of the 30s, and ‘Which Side Are You On’, which documents the struggles for union recognition in the mining industry. To balance these social concerns, there is humour with ‘We’re All Dodgin’’ and ‘Bill’, both underlining the importance of laughter in life.

Then there is an updating of Woody Guthrie’s ‘Jackhammer John’, a song derived from an early minstrel tune, harking back to the 1860s when songs such as ‘Rally Round The Flag’ were part of the revival of the Union armies in the Civil War. To modern ears the most striking songs here are those sung by Ronnie Gilbert. Her clear and expressive voice on ‘When The Stars Begin To Fall’, ‘A-Walkin’ And A-Talkin’’ and the gentle lullaby ‘Bye Baby Bye’ rivals any female folk singer.

Perhaps the best summation of the group is found on ‘Fight On’, a simple song to inspire people to continue striving for a batter life for all. Although the group was soon to disband, it was a message the members kept fighting for as they went their separate ways.

Hearing the group singing a studio album is a different experience from listening to their live recordings, but richly rewarding. Their ranks contained so much songwriting, playing and singing talent that it can take an album like this to be fully appreciated.