Thank you for buying this record. What follows is its documentation: the pressing identified, the matrix / runout transcribed by hand from the dead wax, and the condition as assessed before it was listed. It is yours to keep with the record.

— Paul, Vinyl Curator

King Curtis

Live At Small's Paradise

1966 · ATCO Records SD 33-198 · Stereo · US · LP · 33 1/3 RPM

Pressing details

Label	ATCO Records
Catalogue number	SD 33-198
Year	1966
Mono / Stereo	Stereo
Country	US
Format	LP
Speed	33 1/3 RPM
Genre	Soul/R&B - Jazz-Funk (Live)
Producer	Tom Dowd (supervision)
Musicians	King Curtis (tenor sax, saxello, vocal on "Road Runner"), Willie Bridges (baritone sax), Melvin Lastie (cornet), Cornell Dupree (guitar), Charles Rainey (bass), Ray Lucas (drums); Paul Griffin (piano), not credited on this jacket

Matrix / Runout

Side A:  IS TC-66917-B LW AT 1W
Side B:  IS TC-66918-B LW AT 1W

Condition

Cover: EX
Vinyl: EX

Variant chronology

1966 - US ATCO mono, yellow/blue split AT|CO label (33-198)
1966 - US ATCO mono, white-label promo (33-198)
1966 - US ATCO stereo, purple/tan split AT|CO label (SD 33-198)  <- this copy
1966 - US ATCO stereo, Monarch-pressed variant (SD 33-198)
1968 - US ATCO stereo repress (SD 33-198)
1973 - UK Atlantic reissue (K 30029)
1973 - US Atlantic reissue, Columbia House numbering (KNC 30029)
1973 - Venezuela Atlantic pressing (50.023)
2006 - Worldwide Rhino digital reissue
2013 - Japan ATCO remastered reissue (WPCR-27622)

This Pressing

Original US ATCO stereo pressing (SD 33-198) - purple/tan split AT|CO labels, -B suffix matrix with AT/1W stamper notations consistent with an early pressing.

The Album

King Curtis was already the era's most in-demand R&B saxophonist, a session ace behind the Coasters, the Shirelles and countless Atlantic dates, when ATCO captured him fronting his own road band for a live date at Small's Paradise, the storied Harlem nightclub. The set tours the mid-1960s soul-instrumental landscape - Curtis's own gritty originals like "Preach" and "Soul Theme" sit alongside covers of the day's dance and pop hits, Rufus Thomas's "Philly Dog," the Holland-Dozier-Holland-penned "Road Runner," Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn," and a bristling reading of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind." His touring band - Cornell Dupree on guitar, Melvin Lastie on cornet, Willie Bridges on baritone, Charles Rainey on bass and Ray Lucas on drums - was a tight, funky unit that would go on to seed the first-call New York soul-session scene of the following decade. The album stands as one of the era's definitive documents of black nightclub showmanship, capturing the call-and-response energy, honking solos and dance-floor immediacy that made Curtis's live shows legendary among musicians and audiences alike. It cemented his reputation as a bridge figure between jazz, R&B and soul, and its loose, horn-driven grooves have been cited by generations of soul and funk revivalists as a touchstone of instrumental soul. Critically it has endured as a high point in Curtis's discography, valued as much for atmosphere and band chemistry as for individual solos.

Tracklist

Side 1

1. Tough Talk
2. Philly Dog
3. Preach
4. Blowin' In The Wind
5. Medley: a) Peter Gunn b) Get Along Cindy

Side 2

1. Pots And Pans
2. The Shadow Of Your Smile
3. Road Runner (Vocal)
4. Something On Your Mind
5. Soul Theme

The Label

The label on this copy is the mid-1960s ATCO split design: a magenta/purple upper half and tan/gold lower half divided by a white band carrying the stacked AT over CO lettermark flanking the spindle hole, with STEREO lower-left and ATCO RECORDS lower-right; no ring or lyre logo is present and no deep groove is visible around the spindle. This purple-and-tan livery was ATCO's standard stereo album label through the second half of the 1960s, having replaced the earlier yellow lyre-logo design used from the label's founding into the early 1960s; the contemporary mono pressings of this same title carried the equivalent design rendered in yellow and blue rather than purple and tan. Because the album's original stereo issue was already produced under this exact label design, this copy sits at the head of the stereo pressing line, distinguished from later repressings only by matrix suffix and stamper marks rather than by any change in label artwork.

Fidelity

Recorded live by Atlantic's own team (Tom Dowd supervising, engineers David Braithwaite, Joe Atkinson and Bobby Wright) direct to the ATCO stereo masters used for this pressing, with no separately mastered audiophile reissue of this title to compare against. Collectors on the forums generally regard mid-1960s Atlantic/ATCO in-house New York pressings as solid, warm, dynamic cuts, if occasionally limited by the boominess inherent to a nightclub live recording of the period. This stereo copy, being the first and only significant vinyl issue of substance, sits at the top of the title's available fidelity hierarchy; the contemporaneous mono LP is sometimes preferred by club-soul purists for a punchier, more unified horn sound, and later digital reissues rate as secondary to the original vinyl cut.

Notes

This copy is the original US ATCO stereo issue of SD 33-198, identified by the purple-over-tan split AT|CO label design used on ATCO's stereo album line through the mid-to-late 1960s. The runouts read IS TC-66917-B and IS TC-66918-B with LW AT 1W stamper notations, showing early first-generation -B master suffixes rather than a later re-cut. No deep groove is visible on either label, and no alternate stereo label design exists for this title beyond the parallel mono and promo issues, so the pressing hierarchy for this album turns chiefly on mono versus stereo and stock versus promo rather than multiple label eras.

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