Jackson do Pandeiro – Os Grandes Sucessos de Jackson do Pandeiro (1975) 24-96khz vinyl

Jackson do Pandeiro
“Os Grandes Successos de Jackson do Pandeiro”
Released 1975 on Tropicana / CBS Records (01320)
[which was also Columbia – Epic – Sony in Brazil…]

1. Morena Bela
(Juarez Santiago / Onildo Almeida)
2. Tum Tum Tum
(Ari Monteiro / Cristóvão de Alencar)
3. Casaca de Couro
(Rui de Morais / Silva)
4. Lamento Cego
(Jackson do Pandeiro / Nivaldo da Silva Lima)
5. Forró De Surubim
(Antônio Barros Silva / José Batista)
6. Mané Gardino
(Ari Monteiro / Elias Soares)
7. Cantiga Do Sapo
(Buco do Pandeiro / Jackson do Pandeiro)
8. Tem Mulher, Tô Lá
(J. Luna / Zé Catraca)
9. Penerou Gavião
(Jackson do Pandeiro / Odilon Vargas)
10. Sina De Cigarra
(Delmiro Ramos / Jackson do Pandeiro)
11. Chu Chu Beleza
(João Silva / Raimundo Evangelista)
12. Forró Em Campina
(Jackson do Pandeiro)

Tracks 1, 10, 11, and 12 are in stereo
Track 2 through 9 are in mono

This is a rather generic compilation of Jackson’s material released on the CBS subsidiary Tropicana in the mid-70s, without any indication of the provinence of any of the material included on it. It has all the tell-tales of a contractural obligation album, which in the case of Jackson is much less of a straight-forward thing than the phrase suggests. I know much less about his life than I would like (and am still waiting to find myself a copy of his biograpy, O Rei do Ritmo), but one bit of wisdom I’ve collected over the years is that Jackson had a nasty habit of entering into business deals with a record label while still under contract to another.

Thus, around the mid-70s we see Jackson leave CBS/Sony and begin recording for smaller or independent labels like Chantecler/Alvorada or Continental – however, CBS continued to release anthology after anthology of his material, leading me to the impression that he still owed them some albums…

My guess is that, with this particular release called “Os Grandes Sucessos” (The Greatest Hits..) which in fact lacks pretty much all of his biggest hits, they were trying to promote some of his newer material included here by capitalizing on some of his earlier, albiet lesser-remembered hits (many of them released as 78 RPM`s on another US-owned label, which were collected and shared HERE although the links were taken down so quickly I have been too spooked to put up new links). Jackson’s discography is so confusing, and the plethora of labels he recorded for so baffling in number, that I wouldn’t be surprised if the executives Tropicana (and their conglomarate corporate overlords) were counting on this chaos in order not to have to pay out on royalties — there are composer credits here, but absolutely nothing on the publishing rights. A little fishy. And though any single-LP collection of Jackson do Pandeiro is going to lack some favorites, there are obvious glaring omissions here of ANY of the recordings that were synonomous with him as a `household name.` So what we get is a mixture of his lesser-known hits and some songs that I don’t think were ever hits at all — namely, material from recent CBS releases like the LP`s “Sina de Cigarra” and “Tem Mulher, Tô Lá.” All of Jackson’s discography on vinyl is frustratingly rare — and even more frustrating, badly represented on compact disc for someone who represents such a huge part of Brazil’s musical patrimony – that I want to make it clear I am not making a critique of those early 70s albums from Jackson. Because in fact I still have yet to hear them! In that sense, I would have been happier if this had been strictly a collection culled from those early 70s discs, rather than a haphazard, somewhat random stroll through his career.

All that being said, this is still Jackson do Pandeiro and ipso facto a truly enjoyable listen. It includes some of my favorites from him like “Tum-tum-tum,” “Cantigo do sapo” (the best song ever about improvising frogs), and “Lamento cego.” And the newer material is also high-caliber stuff.

Some technical notes of interest for those who care… The chaotic nature of this weird collection presents some challenges for somebody wanting to do a decent digitalization of it. The album mixes songs recorded and mixed in MONO (the majority here) with song in stereo, all of them mastered at different maximum volumes, and seemingly all thrown together without much attention to detail. My solution involved a change from my usual workflow for vinyl digitalization. The first part, the actual vinyl transfer, is identical to the usual; it’s in the editing and post-processing that things get weird:

Vinyl original pressing -> Pro-Ject RM-5SE turntable (with Sumiko Blue Point 2 cartridge, Speedbox power supply) > Creek Audio OBH-15 -> M-Audio Audiophile 2496 Soundcard -> Adobe Audition 3.0 at 24-bits 96khz -> Click Repair light settings, additional clicks and pops removed in Audition ->

-> For tracks 2 THROUGH 9, a second pass in Click Repair solely to use its Stereo->Mono fold-down feature
-> Checking for aditional blemishes in Audition again, and comparing to “false stereo” source for differences

-> Normalizing the amplitude of each track, individually, to 0 decibels.

I’ve been skipping the step of normalizing on a lot of my recent vinyl rips, because I believe one of the great things about vinyl/analog is how much you can turn up the volume on a system before you start to hear distortions, and normalizing everything to 0db kind of defeats this pleasure to my ears. However, the tracks on this compilation are so all-over-the place in terms of their overall levels, I think I’ve actually made an improvement over the original vinyl mastering (or should I say, lack therein).

dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced -> ID Tags done in foobar2000 v.1.0.1 and Tag & Rename.

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