Contemporary – Reviews and Commentaries

Don’t Skip the OJC of Carl’s Blues

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Available Now

UPDATE 2025

The OJC pressings we played recently had much better sound than we described back in 2019 when our original highly-critical review was posted.

We told our customers to skip the OJC, but that turned out to bad advice as the right OJC pressings can be awesome sounding.

Seems we were dead wrong about this pressing. Live and learn is our motto, for this very reason.

And we don’t mind admitting to past mistakes, as that is a clear sign of progress.

Reviews R Us

We’ve easily played more than a hundred OJC pressings, and here are reviews for some of the ones we’ve auditioned to date:

To be fair, we may have only had one copy of some of the OJC pressings we reviewed. Perhaps another copy would have sounded better, but we are so familiar with the sonic shortcomings of this series that one bad sounding copy was all we cared to bother with.

It would be hard to justify the time and expense of chasing after records that are unlikely to be much better than the copy we already know to have bad sound. That’s just the reality of the record business. There are so many good records that need auditioning, why bother with the second- and third-rate ones? (We’ve actually played less than 1% of all the newer Heavy Vinyl reissues for the same reason.)

(more…)

Listen for the Room Around this Drum Kit

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Barney Kessel Available Now

We highly recommend you make every effort to find yourself a copy of this album and use it to test your system. The right pressing can be both a great Demo Disc and a great Test Disc.

The best Hot Stamper early pressings have the Tubey Magic we’ve come to expect from Contemporary circa 1958, with that warm, rich, full-bodied sound that RVG often struggles to get on tape. (But when he’s good he too is hard to beat.)

However, some pressings in our shootout managed to give us an extra level of transparency and ambience that most of the original pressings we played could not.

(more…)

This Early Stereo Black Label Pressing of My Fair Lady Sounded Great

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

The piano sounds lifelike right from the start, a beautiful instrument in a natural space, tonally correct from top to bottom.

This copy makes it clear that this is an exceptional Demo Disc quality recording for Contemporary, and that’s saying a lot.

It’s all tube, live-to-two-track direct from the Contemporary studio. It’s pretty much everything you want in a recording from this era.

How can you beat a Roy DuNann piano trio recording? We have a good supply of Hot Stamper pressings of great jazz piano recordings, but the ones we offer on Contemporary set a standard that few other labels have ever been able to meet.

(more…)

Looking Ahead! – Live and Learn

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Available Now

The Contemporary Yellow Label stereo reissue from the 70s we played way back when, probably fifteen or twenty years ago, was a good record, but not nearly as good as some of the other Contemporary pressings we’d come across since we began collecting them in the early 90s.

(Yes, we admit, we got a late start, but by the time 1995 rolled around we knew just how good this label’s records could sound, something that not everybody else did.)

Live and learn is our motto — and that approach turns out to be a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels.

Experimenting with records is the only sure way to learn about them.

Our notes for the copy we put up years ago:

Another wonderful Contemporary LP. This Yellow Label Stereo pressing was a nice step up from most of what we heard, earning an A++ on side one and an A+ on side two. Side one was particularly good — the bottom end is superb, the vibra-harp sounds great and the piano has good weight. There’s lots of energy and the overall sound is big and open.

Side two was clean, clear and transparent but not quite as dynamic as side one.

Not an easy record to come by, and they usually don’t sound this good when you manage to track one down.

A top quality pressing of the album is a very different animal, a jazz Demo Disc of the highest order.

(more…)

Thoughts on One of the Most Dynamic Contemporary Recordings

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Art Pepper Available Now

This commentary was written in 2008.

Intensity is right — this is some SERIOUSLY GOOD SOUNDING alto saxophone led quartet jazz. AMG was right to give this one 4 1/2 stars — the musicianship is top notch and Pepper’s playing is INSPIRED throughout. 

The real surprise was how well recorded this album from 1963 is. I can’t recall a more DYNAMIC Contemporary. Pepper’s sax gets seriously LOUD in some passages. This is very much a good thing. Not only is he totally committed to the music, but the engineers are getting that energy onto the record so that we at home can feel the moment to moment raw power of his playing.

(Pepper was famous for saying that his playing is best when he just plays whatever he feels in the moment, and this record is the best kind of evidence for the truth of that claim.)

Of course, since this is a Roy Dunann recording, all the tubey magical richness and sweetness are here as well, but what is surprising is how transparent, spacious and clear the sound is. Some of Roy’s recordings can sound a bit dead (recording in your stockroom is not always the best for spaciousness) and sometimes are a bit thick as well. Not so here. But it should be pointed out that we liked what we heard from a previous shootout too.

Last time around we wrote:

This record has superb sound: you can actually hear the keys clacking on the man’s alto. And that sort of detail does not come at the expense of phony brightness as it would with your typical audiophile recording. The tonality of the sax, drums, and bass are right on the money, exactly the way we expect Roy DuNann’s recording to be.

This time around we got more extension out of the cymbals. Either these copies are better, were cleaned better, or were helped quite a bit by our new Townshend SuperTweeters. (Probably the last two more than the first one.) (more…)

Audiophiles Should Skip Swingin’ the ’20s on OJC

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

This album is fairly common on the OJC pressing from 1988, but more recently we’ve found the sound of the OJC pressings we’ve played seriously wanting. They have the kind of bad reissue sound that plays right into the prejudices of record collectors and audiophiles alike, the kind for whom nothing but an original will do.

They were dramatically smaller, flatter, more recessed and more lifeless than even the worst of the ’70s LPs we played. (We tend to like those, by the way.)

The lesson? Not all reissues are created equal. Some OJC pressings are great — including even some of the new ones — some are awful, and the only way to judge them fairly is to judge them individually, which requires actually playing a large sample.

Since virtually no record collectors or audiophiles like doing that, they make faulty judgments – OJC’s are cheap reissues sourced from digital tapes, run for the hills! – based on their biases and reliance on inadequate sample sizes.

You can find those who subscribe to this approach on every audiophile forum there is. The methods they have adopted do not produce good results, but as long as they stick to them, they will never have to worry about discovering that inconvenient truth.

(more…)

Andre Previn – These Two OJC Pressings Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Recordings Available Now

The mastering choices of the cutting engineers for these two recordings did them no favors.

Like so many of the early OJC pressings we’ve played over the years, we found that both of these reissues tended to be somewhat thin tonally, with a brittle top end, which can clearly be heard in the tizzy quality of the cymbals.

This is not remotely the right sound for a vintage Contemporary recording.

When doing the shootouts for these albums, warmth turned out to be key to the sound of the best copies.

When the piano sounds warm and smooth, everything else in the recording seems to fall into place.

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “The whole house lights when up I turn this up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Art Pepper Available Now

Our good customer Michel wrote to us about his experience playing one of our records.

Hi Tom,

At 2 a.m. last night and again today, I simply cannot get over just how darn good the sound is on this 2.5 side 2
of the stereo Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section.

Truly, a magical experience indeed. The whole house lights up when I turn this copy up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe,
near and far.

All the other copies I had … no comparison at all.

One simply doesn’t know until one knows. That’s the crux of the biscuit as they say.

I sure do love my BR records!
Cheers,
Michel

Michel,

Thanks again for writing. I wish more audiophiles could have the kind of experience you apparently had with that killer copy of Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section you ordered.

As you say, your other copies could not hold a candle to the properly-cleaned, properly-mastered and properly-pressed copy we sent you.

And the Heavy Vinyl pressing that Chad and Bernie made is an insult to the record buying public.

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “The whole house lights up when I turn this copy up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe, near and far.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Art Pepper Available Now

Our good customer Michel wrote to us about his experience playing one of our records.

Hi Tom,

At 2 a.m. last night and again today, I simply cannot get over just how darn good the sound is on this 2.5 side 2
of the stereo Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section.

Truly, a magical experience indeed. The whole house lights up when I turn this copy up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe,
near and far.

All the other copies I had … no comparison at all.

One simply doesn’t know until one knows. That’s the crux of the biscuit as they say.

I sure do love my BR records!

Cheers,
Michel

Michel,

Thanks again for writing. I wish more audiophiles could have the kind of experience you apparently had with that killer copy of Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section you ordered.

As you say, your other copies could not hold a candle to the properly-cleaned, properly-mastered and properly-pressed copy we sent you.

(more…)

Getting the Balance Right on Mean to Me

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now

Mean to Me is a favorite test track for side one, with real Demo Disc quality sound. We credit it with helping us dramatically improve our playback.

Roy DuNann at Contemporary was able to get all his brass players together in one room, sounding right as a group as well as individual voices.

The piano, bass, and drums that accompany them are perfectly woven into the fabric of the arrangement.

What makes this song so good is that when the brass really starts to let loose later in the song, with the right equipment and the right room, you can get the kind of sound that’s so powerful you could practically swear it’s live.

Helen was recorded in a booth for this album, and her voice is slightly veiled relative to the other musicians playing in the much larger room that of course would be required for so many players.

When you get the brass correct, the trick is to get her voice to become as transparent and palpable as possible without screwing up the tonality of the brass instruments.

The natural inclination is to brighten up the sound to make her voice more clear.

But you will quickly be made painfully aware that brighter is not better when the brass gets too “hot” and starts to tear your head off.

The balance between voice and brass is key to the proper reproduction of this album.

Once you have achieved that balance, tweak for transparency while guarding against too much upper midrange or top end. Which also means watch out for audiophile wires that may have fooled you into thinking they were more resolving when actually they were just peakier in some portion of the frequency range.

(more…)