2025-03-05
22 分钟My name is Ben Cesario and I write about music for the New York Times.
Years ago, I bought a record through the mail.
It was a jazz record from the 1950s by a singer named Helen Merrill.
And when I got this record,
I put it on and I could not believe how beautiful and clear and present it sounded.
It was a vinyl record and it sounded better than any CD I had ever heard, any digital source.
And I remember looking at the stickers on the COVID and this was made by some company in Kansas.
I looked it up and I learned
that this was from a company called Acoustic Sounds that's run
by a very colorful guy named Chad Kassum,
and he runs a little empire of vinyl.
Over the last few years, this company, Acoustic Sounds,
has made a flood of records that have gotten a lot of notice, including some by Miles Davis.
He made a deluxe version of Kind of Blue, the classic 1959 jazz album.
Chad Kassum, he has customers all over the world.
A lot of them are record collectors who are always on this hunt for the newest, best reissue.
And part of the draw is that he only uses the artist's original master recordings.
No copies, no re recordings, no digital sources.
I realize I had to go to Salina, Kansas, so in December I made my way there.
And in the article I'm about to read to you, I tell more of Chad Kassam's story,