Contemporary

Art Pepper / Living Legend

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More Jazz Recordings featuring the Saxophone

  • Stunning sound throughout this vintage Contemporary pressing, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from first note to last
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “very natural + roomy + relaxed”…”3-D + rich”…”sax jumps out [of the speakers]”…”sweet + rich + breathy”
  • Both of these sides are a textbook example of the Contemporary sound we love here at Better Records: rich, warm and lively, with superb clarity throughout
  • Which means that well into the 70s, Contemporary was still at the top of their game, and well ahead of most of the jazz label competition
  • Pepper’s saxophone sound is right on the money – breathy and airy with clearly audible leading edge transients
  • Speaking of transients, listen for the powerful kinetic energy produced when Shelly Manne whacks the hell out of his cymbals
  • This is only the second copy of this title to hit the site in years – finding them in audiophile condition is getting harder (and more expensive) than ever these days
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear just how incredible sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting stitches and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 stars: “After 15 years filled with prison time and fighting drug addiction, Pepper was finally ready to return to jazz. Accompanied by three of his old friends (pianist Hampton Hawes, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Shelly Manne), Pepper … shows a greater emotional depth in his improvisations and was open to some of the innovations of the avant-garde in his search for greater self-expression.”

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Art Pepper – …The Way It Was

More of the Music of Art Pepper

  • A vintage Contemporary pressing of previously unreleased material with superb Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides
  • It’s airy, open, and spacious with superb clarity and an extended top end – the beautiful reading of “Autumn Leaves” on side two has Demo Disc quality sound, with Pepper really pouring his heart into it
  • Included are three tracks left off some of Pepper’s best albums on Contemporary – Meets the Rhythm Section, Intensity and Gettin’ Together
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Despite his very erratic lifestyle, altoist Art Pepper never made a bad record. The first four titles team together Pepper with tenor-saxophonist Warne Marsh for generally intriguing explorations of four standards… this album finds Art Pepper in top form.”

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Barney Kessel – Vol. 3: To Swing Or Not To Swing

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More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

  • Boasting seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish, this early Contemporary MONO pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Vol. 3, To Swing Or Not To Swing you’ve heard – reasonably quiet vinyl too
  • Tubey Magic, richness, sweetness, dead-on timbres from top to bottom – this is a textbook example of Contemporary sound at its best
  • For some reason, the guitar sound from this era of all tube chain recording seems to have died out with the times – it can only be found on the best of these vintage pressings
  • 5 stars: “The unusual repertoire on this set … would by itself make this bop/cool set noteworthy. Add to that a very interesting lineup of players (trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison, Georgie Auld or Bill Perkins on tenor, pianist Jimmy Rowles, the rhythm guitar of Al Hendrickson, bassist Red Mitchell, and Shelly Manne or Irv Cottler on drums) … and the overall result is a recording highly recommended to fans of straight-ahead jazz.”
  • If you’re a fan of jazz guitar, this all tube MONO recording from 1955 surely belongs in your collection

Man, this music is a blast when it sounds this good. I don’t think there’s a whole lot you could do to make this music sound any better! It’s one of the best early mono Contemporary LPs we’ve ever played. It’s so Tubey Magical. Kessel’s guitar sound is out of this world.

The music here matches the sound for excellence. The whole band just swings. There’s a real old rag-timey feel to the songs. Look at this list of all-star players: Harry Edison, Jimmy Rowles, Red Mitchell and Shelly Manne — this is some serious jazz talent.

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Barney Kessel – Easy Like

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More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

  • Both sides of this vintage Contemporary pressing were giving us the rich, sweet and tubey MONO sound we were looking for, earning INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • Roy DuNann (at the console on select tracks, with Val Valentin handling engineering duties on the others) always seems to get phenomenally good sound out of the sessions he recorded – amazingly realistic drums in a big room; Tubey Magical guitar tone; deep, note-like string bass, and on and on
  • For some reason, the guitar sound from this era of All Tube Chain Recording seems to have died out with the times – it can only be found on the best of these vintage pressings, and, as you may imagine, the better the guitar sounds, the more likely it is that the record will win our shootout
  • If you don’t have an electric guitar jazz record with this kind of off-the-charts Tubey Magical sound, maybe it’s time you got one
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…features Kessel in boppish form with quintets in 1953 and 1956 featuring, either Bud Shank or Buddy Collette doubling on flute and alto. Kessel shows off the influence of Charlie Christian throughout the performances, with the highlights including ‘Easy Like,’ ‘Lullaby of Birdland,’ ‘North of the Border,’ and the accurately titled ‘Salute to Charlie Christian.'”

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Shelly Manne and His Men / At The Blackhawk Vol. 1 – Live West Coast Jazz in 1960 Is Hard to Beat

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More Contemporary Label Jazz

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this vintage stereo pressing will be very hard to beat – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Side one has the best condition grade we give out, Mint Minus – there may not be another record on the site with vinyl that quiet!
  • This is West Coast Jazz at its best, and if anyone can capture the realism of a live jazz club, it’s the engineers and producers at Contemporary
  • Each instrument here sounds right – the piano is weighty and percussive; the drums are punchy, and the brass has lovely leading edge transients
  • We were surprised that Volumes One and Four had much better sound than Two and Three
  • Until we can crack the code for those other two titles, don’t expect to see them on the site
  • If you’re a fan of live jazz, this Contemporary from 1960 belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1960 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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Andre Previn & His Pals – West Side Story

Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Contemporary Jazz

  • Previn’s stellar piano trio finally returns to the site with jazzy interpretations of the best songs from West Side Story, with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout
  • You win shootouts with this kind of All Tube Analog sound – warm, natural, lively and clear, with solid support down low, a nicely extended top and a huge three-dimensional soundfield
  • We had pressings on the black label, on the green label, and on the yellow label, and the person who ends up with this fantastic copy will know for sure which label sounds best, because he will be the owner of the best sounding copy
  • Andre Previn and his friends take eight classic tunes from West Side Story – it would be hard to imagine having better material to work with in a jazz setting
  • 4 stars: “The last of a series of showtune albums recorded by the trio finds the all-star group focusing on the music of West Side Story… As usual, the melodies are treated respectfully yet swingingly, and Andre Previn in particular excels in this setting. Recommended.”

One of Previn’s best piano trio records, this album was recorded in 1959 by Roy DuNann while at the height of his engineering powers.

The two Must Owns from his many sessions at Contemporary are this album and Bells Are Ringing. We are not aware of any of his jazz piano albums on other labels being much better than passable and most are not worth picking up at any price. Believe me, we’ve tried. The one exception I can think of is Four to Go on Columbia. It’s pretty good. Not in the same league as his Contemporary recordings by a long shot, but better than most of his output from the ’60s.

For both the albums mentioned above the Black Label originals in stereo are the best way to go, but finding them in clean audiophile playing condition is no walk in the park, which is the main reason it takes us about four years to do a shootout for either title.

The Piano Is Key

On the best copies of the album, the sound of the piano is solid, full-bodied, with both weight and warmth, just like the real thing. The copies of the album with a piano that sounded lean or hard always ended up having problems with the other instruments as well. (This should not be surprising; the piano was designed to be the single instrument most capable of reproducing the sound of an entire orchestra.)

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Art Pepper / Meets The Rhythm Section

More Art Pepper

More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

  • A vintage Contemporary pressing that was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Many consider this to be the best record Art Pepper ever made, along with Art Pepper + Eleven, and I agree completely
  • The Contemporary stereo sound here is completely natural in all respects – rich, warm, and smooth, in short, the sound we love
  • Recorded in 1957 (the same year as Way Out West) by the legendary Roy DuNann, the sound of the better pressings is absolutely superb
  • 5 stars: “… this recording convinced [Pepper] that emotion was the paramount impulse of jazz performance… a diamond of recorded jazz history.”
  • This is a Must Own jazz album from 1957 that belongs in every jazz-loving audiophile’s collection

Many consider this to be the best record Art Pepper ever made, along with Art Pepper + Eleven, and I agree completely.

This one has many of the qualities of the better black label originals, without their bad vinyl and bloated bass. We get black label original Contemporary pressings in from time to time, but few of them are mastered right and most never make it to the site.

Some are pure muck. Some have bloated bass that is hard to believe. Don’t buy into that record collecting slash audiophile canard that Original Equals Better. That’s pure BS. It just doesn’t work that way, and anyone with two good ears, two good speakers and a decent-sized record collection should know better.

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Barney Kessel – Some Like It Hot

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 Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Barney Kessel

  • Kessel’s brilliant 1959 large group outing is back on the site for the first time in years, here with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides of this vintage Contemporary pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • With Tubey Magic, richness, sweetness, and dead on tonality from top to bottom, this is a textbook example of Contemporary’s sound when it’s really working
  • Skip the OJC on this title – some sides of the copies we played were good, but make no mistake, there is world of difference between those sides and the Hot Stamper pressings we are offering on our site
  • An All Star West Coast lineup came together for this one: Art Pepper (on sax and clarinet!), Shelly Manne, Joe Gordon and others
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Such tunes as ‘I Wanna Be Loved by You,’ ‘Runnin’ Wild,’ ‘Down Among the Sheltering Palms,’ and ‘By the Beautiful Sea’ are given fairly modern arrangements…”
  • Some Like It Hot is one of those albums with one and only one set of very special stampers that always win the (few) shootouts we’ve been able to do

This copy is spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience. The liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny. This is vintage analog at its best, so full-bodied and relaxed you’ll wonder how it ever came to be that anyone seriously contemplated trying to improve it. (more…)

Hampton Hawes – All Night Session, Vol. 3

More Hampton Hawes

More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

  • Exceptional Demo Disc Sound on this STUNNING Contemporary Stereo LP boasting top grades on both sides
  • This is a textbook example of Contemporary sound at its best, with Tubey Magic, richness, sweetness, dead-on timbres from top to bottom thanks to the engineering brilliance of Roy DuNann and producer Lester Keonig
  • The last of three albums of material recorded by Hawes, guitarist Jim Hall, bassist Red Mitchell, and drummer Eldridge “Bruz” Freeman on the night of November 12 and into the morning of November 13, 1956
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…contains three spontaneously improvised variations on the blues, one very cool extended rendition of Duke Ellington’s ‘Do Nothin’ ‘Till You Hear from Me’ and a strikingly handsome treatment of Harold Arlen’s ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.’ The briskly paced ‘Blues #4’ is especially progressive and exciting.”
  • “It’s hard to put into words how good it feels to play jazz when it’s really swinging…I’ve reached a point where the music fills you up so much emotionally that you feel like shouting hallelujah — like people do in church when they’re converted to God. That’s the way I was feeling the night we recorded All Night Session!” – Hampton Hawes

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Phineas Newborn, Jr. – A World of Piano!

More Phineas Newborn, Jr.

More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

  • One of the most musically impressive jazz piano recordings we’ve played in years – Newborn’s improvisational skills are operating at a very high level
  • The team of Roy DuNann and Howard Holzer insure that everything you want in an Audiophile Quality piano trio recording is here
  • If you don’t have any Phineas Newborn albums in your collection, this is definitely the place to start
  • 5 stars: “Phineas Newborn’s Contemporary debut (he would record six albums over a 15-year period for the label) was made just before physical problems began to interrupt his career…. He performs five jazz standards and three obscurities by jazz composers on this superb recital…”

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