SHM-CD of the Month - "Fuse One"

SHM-CD of the Month
Fuse One: "Fuse" (CTI) 1981

Rating:
**** (musical performance)
***** (recording, mixing & remastering)

Produced by Creed Taylor
Recorded by Rudy Van Gelder @ Van Gelder Studios, Tom Vicari @ Westlake Audio & Evergreen Studio, and Jack Malken & Michael Barry @ Secret Sound Studios
Mixed & Digitally Remastered by Rudy Van Gelder @ Van Gelder Studios
Cover Photo: Creed Taylor
Album Design: Ed Caraeff

Featuring: John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, Stanley Clarke, Will Lee, Joe Farrell, Ronnie Foster, Jeremy Wall, Jorge Dalto, Victor Feldman, Don Grusin, Suzanne Cianni, Leon "Ndugu" Chancler, Tony Williams, Lenny White, Michael Epstein, Paulinho da Costa, Roger Squitero, Hugh McCracken, David Nadien, Jonathan Abramowitz, Gerald Tarack, John Pintaville, Charles Libove, Barry Finclair, Jan Mullen, Max Ellen, Richard Sortomme, Charles McCracken
Legendary engineer Rudy Van Gelder (RVG) & the no less legendary producer Creed Taylor were pictured at Van Gelder Studio, in NJ, during the remastering sessions of the CTI albums that were released in Japan, in the "CTI RVG SHM-CD Series" distributed by King Records.
The above shot (reproduced in all the OBI strips attached to this SHM-CD series) was done by another dear friend, the great NY-based Japanese photographer Takehiro Tokiwa, with whom Arnaldo DeSouteiro had the honor to work some years ago, when Tokiwa-san was invited to do the pics for the Asian issue of Paula Faour's debut album on JSR (Jazz Station Records), "Cool Bossa Struttin'."

For the very first time, 20 CTI titles from the 70s acame out on SHM-CD format (some of the albums from the 60s, from the A&M/CTI era, had appeared before, such as Wes Montgomery's best-selling "A Day In the Life").
AND, also for the first time ever, such albums were digitally remastered, in 2009!, by the man who recorded most of them during the CTI heyday in the early 70s, the wiz Van Gelder, under the direct supervision of Creed Taylor!!!
The liner notes were written by Arnaldo DeSouteiro, Ira Gitler, Leonard Feather, Toshio Handa, Shoich Yui and Masa Asanishi.
The booklets preserve the original LP artworks, done mostly by the unmatched team of Pete Turner (front cover photos) and Bob Ciano (album design).

There's one big mistake in this particular Fuse One item, though. Track # 2, Bedrich Smetana's "Waterside" is credited to Santana! Jesus!
*********
All previous CTI CDs released in Japan in the past 25 years had been remastered at King Studios by such engineers as Seiji Kaneko and Kuniaki Takahashi, sometimes under Arnaldo DeSouteiro's supervision; and all the CTI CDs released in the USA and Europe by Sony had been remastered by experts like Tim Geelan and Mark Wilder, with whom DeSouteiro worked respectively in the first domestic releases of such titles as Deodato's "In Concert - Live at Felt Forum" and Jobim's "Stone Flower."