Top Artists – Barney Kessel (leader)

Barney Kessel – Easy Like

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  • 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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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…)

The Poll Winners – Poll Winners Three!

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More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

  • An excellent Contemporary stereo pressing with Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from the first note to the last – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Tubier, more transparent, and more dynamic than most other copies we played, with plenty of that “jumpin’ out of the speakers” quality that only The Real Thing (an old record) ever has
  • Roy DuNann always seemed 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
  • 4 stars: “From 1956-1959, it seemed as if guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Shelly Manne won just about every jazz poll. For their third joint recording, the musicians contributed an original apiece and also performed seven standards. Highlights of the fairly typical but swinging straightahead set include ‘Soft Winds,’ ‘It’s All Right with Me,’ ‘Mack the Knife,’ and ‘I’m Afraid the Masquerade Is Over.'”

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To Swing Or Not To Swing in 1955 with Barney Kessel

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If you’re a fan of Jazz Guitar, this 5 Star All Tube MONO Recording from 1955 belongs in your collection.

Definitely one of the best early Contemporary LPs we’ve ever played – this is why audiophiles love mono.

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 I’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 / Let’s Cook – What a Guitar Sound!

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 Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Barney Kessel

  • Tubey Magic, richness, sweetness, dead-on timbres from top to bottom — this is a textbook example of Contemporary Stereo sound at its best
  • For some reason, the guitar sound from this era of All Tube Chain Recording is seems to have died out with the times – it can only be found on the best of these vintage pressings, and the better the guitar sounds, the more likely it is that the record will win our shootout
  • For those of you who appreciate what Roy DuNann were able to achieve in the ’50s at Contemporary Records, this LP is a Must-Own
  • “[A]n excellent session from guitarist Barney Kessel…matched with vibraphonist Victor Feldman, pianist Hampton Hawes, bassist Leroy Vinnegar, and drummer Shelly Manne.”

We were simply blown away by this pressing. The transparency and clarity are SUPERB, and the amount of Tubey magic is unbelievable! Folks, if you like guitar jazz, do not miss out on this album. I guarantee you will be absolutely knocked out by the sound of this pressing, not to mention the fantastic music!

Barney Kessel comes out SWINGIN’ on this album — he is up for this gig! The energy you hear in his playing is partly the Hot Stamper pressing, of course. When you get a record that has all of its dynamics and transients intact, the musicians just come alive in a way that the typically compressed, dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl reissue cannot begin to communicate. We HATE that reissue sound; it’s the main reason we stopped carrying them.

Where is the life of the music you ask? It’s on the kind of Hot Stamper pressings you are reading about right now. The band is cookin’, and because the pressing is so transparent, so open and spacious, you can hear each and every player’s contribution clearly and effortlessly. The cool air of the studio surrounds every instrument. They’re in a nice-sized room and you can really hear the sound bouncing around, just as you would if you were sitting in with the band.

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Jazz Giant – Is the OJC Really 100x Worse?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

The OJC versions of Contemporary Records are typically thin and somewhat opaque, as well as tizzy up top, the kind of sound one often hears on CDs (and that CD lovers for some reason never seem to notice, or bothered by, who can say?).

Some OJC pressings, however, can be excellent — when you are lucky enough to chance upon the right copy.

The pressings that were mastered and put out by Contemporary in the mid-70s (until they were bought by Fantasy) are almost always superior to the OJCs, but these rules of thumb break down so badly and so often that the only workable approach is just to play as many different copies of the album as you can get your hands on and simply let them sort themselves out sonically.

This of course is exactly how we conduct our shootouts. We make a lot of mistakes, but when all is said and done, we rarely fail to come up with the goods, the goods being phenomenal sounding pressings of important music, pressings that are dramatically superior to any others.

Although we’ve liked the OJC of Jazz Giant in the past, last time around the OJC versions were quite a bit thinner, smaller and less energetic than our real Contemporary stereo pressings. They were a big step down from our killer Shootout Winner.

The notes for that copy read “100x better” if that tells you anything (!)

A clear case of live and learn.

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The Poll Winners – Straight Ahead

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More Ray Brown

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  • Musically, this is by far our favorite Poll Winners record – these guys got back together after 15 years and were eager to prove that they still had their youthful exuberance, and even better chops, which they did have and did prove!
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Kessel in particular is heard in excellent form… Overall this is the best all-around recording by The Poll Winners and is easily recommended to bop fans.”

These guys play with more spunk here than on any other album of theirs I’ve heard. And you have to love those ’70s leisure suits they’re wearing on the cover. I remember my commentary when this record was around, mentioning that Roy DuNann had lost none of his engineering skills in the intervening years either.

This is a very dynamic recording, one of his best. You almost never hear cymbals sound this good on an RVG Blue Note, that’s for sure. The bass definition on this record is amazing — you can really hear Ray Brown pulling and bending the strings of the instrument. He’s tearing it up. (more…)

Barney Kessel / Music to Listen to Barney Kessel By

More of the Music of Barney Kessel

  • Their stuff just doesn’t get any better than this. Tubey Magic, richness, sweetness, dead-on timbres from top to bottom — this is a textbook example of Contemporary sound at its best
  • For those of you who appreciate what Roy DuNann (and Howard Holzer on other sessions) were able to achieve in the ’50s at Contemporary Records, this LP is a Must-Own
  • Unless you already have it, which is doubtful considering how hard it is to find a copy in clean condition
  • Barney Kessel and his five reed players take these standards and make magic with them — for fun, relaxing jazz it’s hard not to love this one

UPDATE 2025

We can’t find any stereo pressings we like anymore. They sound thin, bright and somewhat phasey to us.

We are going to do the next shootout with the mono pressings unless we can find a killer stereo soon.

This vintage Black Label Contemporary Stereo LP from has DEMO DISC QUALITY SOUND. No other copy we played was in a class with this bad boy — it does it ALL.

How can you beat a Roy DuNann recording of five reeds, piano, guitar and a rhythm section that includes Shelly Manne and Red Mitchell? The timbre of the instruments is so spot-on it makes all the hard work and money you’ve put into your stereo more than pay off.

The Demo Disc sound on this copy is really something to hear – all tube, live-to-two-track direct from the Contemporary studio. It’s pretty much everything you want in a recording from this era. I’d love to keep it but when would I have time to play it? I can assure you I will sleep very well knowing that it’s going to a good home. (more…)

Barney Kessel / Workin’ Out – Our Shootout Winner from 2013

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 Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Barney Kessel

This is a 2-pack set of original pressings that gives you wonderful sound for both sides of this great Contemporary album, A++ for the first and A+++ for the second.

There is a catch, however, one that won’t bother some of you at all but will drive a few of you crazy: the side one pressing is in mono and the side two is in stereo. All that mattered to us was that they both sounded great, and a quick flip to the not-so-hot side of either pressing will quickly show you why we paired these up.    

I imagine there are both mono and stereo copies that sound great on both sides, but we sure haven’t been able to find one! Obviously this is not an easy record to come by these days. (more…)

Barney Kessel / Barney Kessel Plays Carmen (Stereo) – Our Shootout Winner from 2014

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This original Black Label Contemporary stereo LP has a STUNNING side two! Barney Kessel Plays Carmen is one of our favorite jazz guitar recordings of all time, and on a copy like this the sound is absolutely KILLER. 

Side Two

White Hot! Clean and clear with great energy and punchy drums. Less compressor distortion, a much bigger stage, and plenty of room around the drums, this is the sound you just never hear on this album.

The horns were the best we heard on any side two — more “real”, full-bodied, and never hard or edgy (which they often are).

Fuller on the piano, and more present, with real top end extension, this is exactly the way this music should sound.

Side One

Good space, clarity and immediacy are this side’s high points. Flip it over to side two to hear what the best copy in our shootout sounds like. (It should blow your mind.) (more…)