The Associated Press
A Salina company that opened only six months ago is on the verge of getting a major contract with two Japanese music executives who want to supply historic jazz records to avid collectors in their country.
The Salina Journal (http://bit.ly/nOYq3n ) reports that the Japanese businessmen, one a record label executive and the other a manager and buyer for a chain of Japanese record stores, visited a converted warehouse in Salina on Tuesday to watch workers make nearly 1,000 vinyl copies of five classic jazz albums.
If the initial press run is successful, Kenichi Arai and Koki Hanawa will consider having Quality Record Pressings make vinyl copies of 95 other classic jazz albums for Japanese record collectors, the newspaper reported.
Arai, a strategic and international marketing executive for EMI Music Japan, said he was impressed with the Salina plant.
"It's exactly what we were expecting," he said.
Arai said he searched worldwide for a record pressing plant to reproduce jazz albums from the famed Blue Note label exactly as they were released in the 1950s. That involves each album having a flat edge along the outer rim instead of the standard raised groove guard and a deep-groove indentation around the surface of the label.
The Salina company, he said, was the only pressing plant he found willing or able to fill the request.
The differences don't affect the sound quality, but it's how Blue Note pressed its albums in the 1950s and '60s, Arai said.
Blue Note artists included Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey, Sonny Clark, Kenny Burrell and Donald Byrd.
Chad Kassem of Salina opened Quality Record Pressings in May, after buying and restoring six record presses. He is the owner of Salina record distribution businesses Acoustic Sounds and Analogue Productions and the recording studio/concert hall Blue Heaven Studios.
He wants to market reissued classic recordings for collectors, as well as produce original recordings issued by his record label, APO Records.
"We have four presses currently up and running, and we'll have six running within a month," Kassem said. "I want to have 11 presses running within the next year."
Arai said he was disappointed with Japanese record pressing plants' inability or unwillingness to create albums to his specifications. Then a mutual business acquaintance suggested Kassem's company.
"Chad sent us some samples of his work, and we were quite impressed with the quality of it," Arai said.
Kassem said it was a "big compliment" for the Japanese to choose his company because they have high standards for vinyl pressing.
Kassem's staff also is reproducing the original covers and sleeves for each album. The albums will be sold to Japanese collectors and at record stores in Tokyo and the surrounding area. Arai said the each album would cost the equivalent of about $65 U.S. dollars.
If the initial press run is successful in Japan, Arai said EMI Japan will contract Kassem's company to press 1,000 to 1,600 copies of five more titles in December, and then five more albums every two months for a total of 100 albums.
Information from: The Salina Journal, http://www.salina.com
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/entertainment/music/2011/09/japanese-hire-salina-firm-recreate-rare-records#ixzz1ZZJPdver
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