LATEST ADDITIONS

One of my favorite things about this pastime is the modesty of its aims. Despite the sometimes-astronomical sums spent on gear, and the small handful of drama queens who populate various corners of this hobby, all we're doing is trying to enjoy recorded music at home. No one here is reversing planetary warming or solving the Riemann hypothesis. The sole purpose of the pursuit we write about in these pages is to please, enlighten, and entertain. I like that about it.

This means that aesthetics matter. During a recent trip to Japan, I found myself marveling at the many vintage audio components used in both public listening spaces and people's homes, and the high prices these meticulously restored devices command. I found many of them lovely, the patina of age only adding to their allure. In the West, where we believe in eternal progress, it's common to ask whether these components' performance is up to contemporary standards. "Sure, it looks cool, but how does it sound?" we might ask, as though the physical beauty of the gear is a distraction or, worse, a ploy. Recall the old audiophile joke about the initials of the design-forward Danish manufacturer Bang & Olufsen standing for "beauty only."

"But it is the wildest, most incredible music story of all time and I'm at least mildly flattered that I played a miniscule part in it.

I'm even more pleased that it's all behind me."

—Dave Dexter Jr. From his autobiography, Playback

It's almost too easy to make Dave Dexter Jr. the villain in the story of the Beatles' fumbled introduction to America. A devoted denigrator of rock'n'roll who thought it was a passing fad meant for the kiddies, and who also thought John Lennon played "lousy harmonica," he was just one of the many older music fans who were sure that Elvis Presley's hips had been a corrupting influence on America's youth, not to mention on good music.

The head of International A&R at Capitol Records, then owned by the UK's EMI, Dexter was no fan of British acts in general. He also turned down Manfred Mann, The Animals, The Yardbirds, and The Hollies.

Although King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band was indubitably led by Joe Oliver himself, this deluxe box set, marking the centennial of the band's recorded debut, focuses on its second cornetist, Louis Armstrong, who was making his own debut. These landmark jazz recordings, nearly the first by a black band from New Orleans, had a profound impact on the jazz that came afterward. They were recorded acoustically, without the use of electricity, and previous reissues have suffered from terminal murk, to the point that individual horn lines could hardly be discerned. Richard Martin and the Archeophone label have done an outstanding job of restoration, rendering the instrumental parts with remarkable clarity.