Contemporary Records
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Contemporary Records was a jazz record label founded by Lester Koenig in 1951 in Los Angeles. Contemporary concentrated on the "cool" West Coast sound (not all of which was really "cool"). Recorded for the label were artists such as Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, the Curtis Counce Group (featuring Harold Land, Jack Sheldon, Carl Perkins and Frank Butler), Ben Webster, Art Pepper, 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 50's and 60's. 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, and Koenig died in 1977, 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.
Contemporary was purchased by Fantasy Records in 1984, who used the label name themselves for a short time. Most Contemporary titles were remastered by Fantasy, both for LPs and CDs. Also, some titles have found new life among today's audiophiles as high-quality LP remasters from Analogue Productions.
