Contemporary Records box set is NICE!

[Allan Songer]

I gave this box set to a a friend of mine for Christmas and was over at his place this afternoon where we listened to about 2 hours worth--this is a KILLER box set and even though I would have made some differenct choices, this is a VERY nice retrospective of one of THE great independent jazz labels!

Contemporary Reocrds was founded by Les Koenig in 1951. Les was a maniac when it came to quality--both in terms of the music and the reording. His records sounded so good that Capitol Records ended up hiring Les to master many of their recordings in the mid to late 1950's. One of the reasons these records sound so good is recording engineer Roy DuNann, whose work is second to none--and I'm including Rudy van Gelder! Koenig also had quite an ear for talent and his roster spanned the gamut of modern jazz from the "light" jazz of Barney Kessel and Andre Previn (who is STILL one of my favorite pianists--I don't care what ANYONE says, dammit!) to the smoking hot bop of Sonny Rollins, Art Pepper, Curtis Counce, Harold Land and Phinneas Newborn. Koenig also signed avant garde artists Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman. Prince Lasha and Sonny Simmons. Conetemporary was also home to one of my all time favorite tenor men, the late, great Teddy Edwards.

By the mid-1970's the label was only releasing a handful of records per year and finally faded away after Les Koenig's death and by the early 80's was swallowed up by Fantasy.

Anyway, this is a great box set and certianly worth the money. For those of you who enjoyed the Blue Note compilation I reccomended a while back, I suggest you buy this set as well. You'll thank me for it.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00023GFQI/104-4301206-3671129?v=glance&s=music&vi=samples#disc_1

[Dflip]

For your information:

http://www.fantasyjazz.com/html/contemporary4441_sp1.html $65

[coda]

neat box set, excellent musical content from beginning to end.