The Incredible Ira Sullivan

The Incredible Ira Sullivan
Stash Records 1980

1) Lonely Moments (Salz)
2) Our Delight (Dameron)
3) Bernie's Tune (Miller)
4) Kim's Lament
5) I Can't Get Out of This Mood (McHugh, Loesser)
6) On the Seventh Day (Walrath)
7) Satin Doll (Ellington, Strayhorn)

NYC 1980


We have revisited so many Ira Sullivans lately and our previous offerings of this record were flawed so when I saw a slightly worn copy at the store I decided to see if I could coax a reasonable rip out of it. The previous post of this came from a Ron the Jazzman contribution but the actual rip came from his friend billd. The rip was decent but a little noisey and had a few full blown skips that marred it. I carefully cleaned my record twice in the hopes that most of it's problems were dirt and was rewarded with a fairly good and quiet return but with three or four places on each side where skips or sound anomalies were unfix-able.

Now I put on my Dr. Frankenstein lab coat and looked to the old rip from jazzman. Surely the two rips would not have anomalies in the same places! They did not, so after a little time matching up the volumes the cutting leaders so I could match up tracks side by side like two patients on adjacent operating tables. Slowly I marked the areas to be transplanted and the sites to receive them - it is not as hard as you might think if you listen carefully while magnifying the wave in Audacity until you can see the space between breaths and find landmarks that match up on the two waves - it takes good ears and good speakers or headphones but once you get the hang of it it is possible to make imperceptible cut and paste fixes. You may hear a couple other tiny sound bumps here that I didn't choose to fix (I spent most of a day on this) but none of the actual surgery is audible. So what we have here is something of a Frankenstein monster but the good looking elegant one that you can't tell is made of parts.