Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now
Our Hot Stamper commentary from a long-ago shootout we’d done for the wonderful Helen Humes album Songs I Like to Sing discusses the sonic characteristics we find most commonly associated with the various Contemporary labels.
This Contemporary Black Label Original LP has that classic tube-mastered sound — warmer, smoother, and sweeter than the later pressings, with more breath of life. Overall the sound is well-balanced and tonally correct from top to bottom, which is rare for a black label Contemporary, as they are usually dull and bass-heavy.
We won’t buy them locally anymore unless they can be returned. I’ve got a box full of Contemporarys with bloated bass and no top end that I don’t know what to do with.
UPDATE 2020
This commentary was written a long time ago. There are no boxes full of Contemporary records laying around in the back room. The ones that don’t sound good were sold off years ago.
Like most mediocre-to-bad sounding records we’ve auditioned, they just sit in a box taking up space. All of our time and effort goes into putting good pressings on the site and in the mailings. It’s hard to get motivated to do anything with the leftovers. We paid plenty for them, so we don’t want to give them away, but they don’t sound good, so most of our customers won’t buy them.