Contemporary Records
Encyclopedia
Contemporary Records was a jazz record label founded by Lester Koenig in 1951
in Los Angeles
. Contemporary was known for seminal recordings embodying the West Coast sound
, but also released recordings based in New York. Under Lester Koenig's supervision, Contemporary recorded such artists as Sonny Rollins
, Ornette Coleman
, Cecil Taylor
, Art Farmer
, Benny Golson
, the Curtis Counce
Group (featuring Harold Land
, Jack Sheldon
, Carl Perkins
and Frank Butler
), Ben Webster
, Benny Carter
, Chet Baker
, Art Pepper
, Phineas Newborn, Jr., Woody Shaw
, Shelly Manne
, Hampton Hawes
, Barney Kessel
and Leroy Vinnegar
.
Koenig maintained extremely high audio standards. He hired Roy DuNann from Capitol Records
in 1956, who, out of the label's shipping room turned studio, turned out some of the best sounding records of the time. DuNann provided some details of his techniques in a Stereophile article nearly 50 years later. He said Koenig provided him with German (Neumann/Telefunken
U-47) and Austrian (AKG
C-12) condenser microphones and he immediately noted the very high output of these microphones, especially close-in on jazz musicians' dynamic playing. DuNann achieved his signature sound—crisp, clear and balanced without distortion or unpleasant "peak presence"—by keeping his microphone setups very simple (generally one per musician) and avoided the use of pre-amplifiers for them. He built a simple passive mixing system that directly fed the electronics of his Ampex 350 and 351 tape machines. Also, DuNann told Stereophile that Contemporary sessions were recorded "dry" (without electronic echo added or in a reverberant room). Sometimes, such as in the case of Sonny Rollins' Way Out West, a plate reverb unit was inserted between the tape machine and the LP
disc cutting lathe. This is why some later LP and CD
reissues of Contemporary albums sound "dry" and "dead" compared to the original LPs mastered by DuNann.
In the mid 1960s the company fell into relative limbo, but limited new recordings were made in the late 1970s including a series of albums by Art Pepper
recorded at the Village Vanguard
club in New York
. After Les Koenig's death in 1977, the label was run for seven years by his son, John, who produced albums by George Cables
, Joe Farrell
, Joe Henderson
, Bobby Hutcherson
, Peter Erskine
, Chico Freeman
and others.
In 1984 Contemporary was purchased by Fantasy Records
, who used the label name themselves for a short time. Most Contemporary titles were reissued by Fantasy. Also, some titles have found new life among today's audiophiles as high-quality LP remasters from Analogue Productions and other audiophile labels. The Fantasy catalog, including Contemporary and its associated labels, Good Time Jazz Records, Society For Forgotten Music and Contemporary Composers Series, was sold to Concord Records in 2004.
Over the years, a number of major figures in the music business worked for Contemporary. Among them were Atlantic Records
executive Nesuhi Ertegun
, writers Nat Hentoff
and Leonard Feather
, producer Joe Boyd
, recording engineer and studio designer Howard Holzer and mastering engineer Bernie Grundman
.
1951 in music
-Events:*January 29 – Nilla Pizzi wins the first annual Sanremo Music Festival with "Grazie dei fiori".*February – The first complete performance of Charles Ives's Second Symphony is given in Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.*March – Alan...
in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. Contemporary was known for seminal recordings embodying the West Coast sound
West coast jazz
West Coast jazz refers to various styles of jazz music that developed around Los Angeles and San Francisco during the 1950s. West Coast jazz is often seen as a sub-genre of cool jazz, which featured a less frenetic, calmer style than bebop or hard bop. The music tended to be more heavily arranged,...
, but also released recordings based in New York. Under Lester Koenig's supervision, Contemporary recorded such artists as Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins
Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins is a Grammy-winning American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St...
, Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
, Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...
, Art Farmer
Art Farmer
Arthur Stewart "Art" Farmer was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. He also played flumpet, a trumpet/flugelhorn combination designed for him by David Monette. His identical twin brother, Addison Farmer Arthur Stewart "Art" Farmer (August 21, 1928, Council Bluffs, Iowa –...
, Benny Golson
Benny Golson
Benny Golson is an American bebop/hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger.-Biography:While in high school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Golson played with several other promising young musicians, including John Coltrane, Red Garland, Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath, Philly Joe Jones, and...
, the Curtis Counce
Curtis Counce
Curtis Counce was an American hard bop and West Coast jazz double bassist. The fruit of his 1956 Contemporary Records studio collaboration with tenor saxophonist Harold Land, trumpeters Jack Sheldon and Gerald Wilson, pianist Carl Perkins and drummer Frank Butler was issued in 2007 on a double CD...
Group (featuring Harold Land
Harold Land
Harold de Vance Land was an American hard bop and post-bop tenor saxophonist. Land developed his hard bop playing with the Max Roach/Clifford Brown band into a personal, modern style. His tone was strong and emotional, yet displayed a certain fragility that made him easy to...
, Jack Sheldon
Jack Sheldon
Jack Sheldon is an American bebop and West Coast jazz trumpeter, singer, and actor. He is a trumpet player and was a comedian on The Merv Griffin Show, as well as the voice heard on several episodes of the educational music television series Schoolhouse Rock.-Biography:Sheldon was born in...
, Carl Perkins
Carl Perkins (pianist)
Carl Perkins was an American jazz pianist.Perkins was born in Indianapolis but worked mainly in Los Angeles. He is best known for his performances with the Curtis Counce Quintet, which also featured Harold Land, Jack Sheldon and drummer Frank Butler...
and Frank Butler
Frank Butler (musician)
Frank Butler was an American jazz drummer. Butler was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but later moved west and was associated in large part with the West Coast school...
), Ben Webster
Ben Webster
Benjamin Francis Webster , a.k.a. "The Brute" or "Frog," was an influential American jazz tenor saxophonist. Webster, born in Kansas City, Missouri, was considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young...
, Benny Carter
Benny Carter
Bennett Lester Carter was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King...
, Chet Baker
Chet Baker
Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...
, Art Pepper
Art Pepper
Art Pepper , born Arthur Edward Pepper, Jr., was an American alto saxophonist and clarinetist.About Pepper, Scott Yanow of All Music stated, "In the 1950s he was one of the few altoists that was able to develop his own sound despite the dominant influence of Charlie Parker" and: "When Art Pepper...
, Phineas Newborn, Jr., Woody Shaw
Woody Shaw
Woody Shaw was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer and band leader, often referred to as the "last innovator" in the jazz trumpet lineage...
, Shelly Manne
Shelly Manne
Shelly Manne , born Sheldon Manne in New York City, was an American jazz drummer. Most frequently associated with West Coast jazz, he was known for his versatility and also played in a number of other styles, including Dixieland, swing, bebop, avant-garde jazz and fusion, as well as contributing...
, Hampton Hawes
Hampton Hawes
Hampton Hawes was an American bebop and hard-bop jazz pianist, recognized as one of the finest and most influential of the 1950s.-Biography:...
, Barney Kessel
Barney Kessel
Barney Kessel was an American jazz guitarist born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA. Generally considered to be one of the greatest jazz guitarists of the 20th century, he was noted in particular for his vast knowledge of chords and inversions and chord-based melodies...
and Leroy Vinnegar
Leroy Vinnegar
Leroy Vinnegar was an American jazz bassist.Born in Indianapolis, the self-taught Vinnegar established his reputation in Los Angeles during the 1950s and 1960s. His trademark was the rhythmic "walking" bass line, a steady series of ascending or descending notes, and it brought him the nickname...
.
Koenig maintained extremely high audio standards. He hired Roy DuNann from Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
in 1956, who, out of the label's shipping room turned studio, turned out some of the best sounding records of the time. DuNann provided some details of his techniques in a Stereophile article nearly 50 years later. He said Koenig provided him with German (Neumann/Telefunken
Georg Neumann
Georg Neumann GmbH , founded in 1928 and based in Berlin, Germany, is a prominent manufacturer of professional recording microphones. Their best-known products are condenser microphones for broadcast, live and music production purposes...
U-47) and Austrian (AKG
AKG Acoustics
AKG Acoustics is an Austrian manufacturer of microphones, headphones, wireless audio systems and related accessories for professional and consumer markets...
C-12) condenser microphones and he immediately noted the very high output of these microphones, especially close-in on jazz musicians' dynamic playing. DuNann achieved his signature sound—crisp, clear and balanced without distortion or unpleasant "peak presence"—by keeping his microphone setups very simple (generally one per musician) and avoided the use of pre-amplifiers for them. He built a simple passive mixing system that directly fed the electronics of his Ampex 350 and 351 tape machines. Also, DuNann told Stereophile that Contemporary sessions were recorded "dry" (without electronic echo added or in a reverberant room). Sometimes, such as in the case of Sonny Rollins' Way Out West, a plate reverb unit was inserted between the tape machine and the LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
disc cutting lathe. This is why some later LP and CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
reissues of Contemporary albums sound "dry" and "dead" compared to the original LPs mastered by DuNann.
In the mid 1960s the company fell into relative limbo, but limited new recordings were made in the late 1970s including a series of albums by Art Pepper
Art Pepper
Art Pepper , born Arthur Edward Pepper, Jr., was an American alto saxophonist and clarinetist.About Pepper, Scott Yanow of All Music stated, "In the 1950s he was one of the few altoists that was able to develop his own sound despite the dominant influence of Charlie Parker" and: "When Art Pepper...
recorded at the Village Vanguard
Village Vanguard
The Village Vanguard is a jazz club located at in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. At first, it also featured other forms of music such as folk music and beat poetry, but it switched to an all-jazz format in 1957.-History:Over 100 jazz...
club in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. After Les Koenig's death in 1977, the label was run for seven years by his son, John, who produced albums by George Cables
George Cables
George Andrew Cables is a jazz pianist, born November 14, 1944 in New York City.He has played with Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, and others.His own recordings include the 1980 Cables Vision with Freddie Hubbard among others....
, Joe Farrell
Joe Farrell
Joseph Carl Firrantello , known as Joe Farrell, was an American jazz saxophonist and flutist. He is best known for a series of albums under his own name on the CTI record label and for playing in the initial incarnation of Chick Corea's Return to Forever.-Biography:Farrell was born in Chicago...
, Joe Henderson
Joe Henderson
Joe Henderson was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. In a career spanning more than forty years Henderson played with many of the leading American players of his day and recorded for several prominent labels, including Blue Note.-Early life:From a very large family with five sisters and nine...
, Bobby Hutcherson
Bobby Hutcherson
Bobby Hutcherson is a jazz vibraphone and marimba player. His vibraphone playing is suggestive of the style of Milt Jackson in its free-flowing melodicism, but his sense of harmony and group interaction is thoroughly modern...
, Peter Erskine
Peter Erskine
Peter Erskine is an American jazz drummer and composer. He has enjoyed a long and successful career as a session drummer, recording and touring with many famous jazz and rock artists, including Steely Dan and Weather Report...
, Chico Freeman
Chico Freeman
Chico Freeman is a modern jazz tenor saxophonist and trumpeter and son of jazz saxophonist Von Freeman...
and others.
In 1984 Contemporary was purchased by Fantasy Records
Fantasy Records
Fantasy Records is a United States-based record label that was founded by Max and Sol Weiss in 1949 in San Francisco, California. They had previously operated a record-pressing plant called Circle Record Company before forming the Fantasy label...
, who used the label name themselves for a short time. Most Contemporary titles were reissued by Fantasy. Also, some titles have found new life among today's audiophiles as high-quality LP remasters from Analogue Productions and other audiophile labels. The Fantasy catalog, including Contemporary and its associated labels, Good Time Jazz Records, Society For Forgotten Music and Contemporary Composers Series, was sold to Concord Records in 2004.
Over the years, a number of major figures in the music business worked for Contemporary. Among them were Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...
executive Nesuhi Ertegun
Nesuhi Ertegun
Nesuhi Ertegun was a Turkish record producer and executive of Atlantic Records and WEA International.-Background:Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Nesuhi and his family, including younger brother Ahmet, moved to Washington, D.C...
, writers Nat Hentoff
Nat Hentoff
Nathan Irving "Nat" Hentoff is an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media and writes regularly on jazz and country music for The Wall Street Journal....
and Leonard Feather
Leonard Feather
Leonard Geoffrey Feather was a British-born jazz pianist, composer, and producer who was best known for his music journalism and other writing.-Biography:...
, producer Joe Boyd
Joe Boyd
Joe Boyd is an American record producer and former owner of the Witchseason production company. Boyd was instrumental in launching the careers of Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, and The Incredible String Band.-Career:...
, recording engineer and studio designer Howard Holzer and mastering engineer Bernie Grundman
Bernie Grundman
-Biography:He is most known for his mastering work and his studio, Bernie Grundman Mastering, which he opened in 1983 in Hollywood. The studio, which includes engineers Chris Bellman, Patricia Sullivan and Brian Gardner, mastered 37 projects which received Grammy Award nominations in 2005.Grundman...
.