about<br/>CONTEMPORARY RECORDS
Lester Koenig before the HUAC, 1951.
Contemporary Records was founded in 1951 by screenwriter Lester Koenig, who had around this time been blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee for refusing to point fingers at industry colleagues. With Hollywood closed to him, he turned to his other passion: music. He’d been dabbling in jazz recording since the early 1940s, but with some movie money now in the coffers, he went full-steam into the record business.
Down Beat, April 22, 1953
He intended Contemporary as a classical off-shoot to his established Good Time Jazz shingle. This grew to include contemporary jazz when, in 1953, he volunteered to distribute an LP for Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars. Interest grew and the accidental label began attracting west-coast players — Rumsey, Shelly Manne, Barney Kessel, Lennie Niehaus — and releasing 78s and 10-inch LPs.
Seeing wider acceptance of the 12-inch disc in 1955, Contemporary plotted an ambitious path and released more than 70 12-inch LPs before the end of the decade. It became identifiable by an oft-amusing sunny west coast jacket aesthetic, which belied a staunch roster of talent inside: Manne, Kessel, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes, Cecil Taylor, André Previn.
Its real success was, beneath any perceptions, built on preserving product quality. A&R, recording, mastering, pressing, design— all of these were carefully considered and maintained.
Within that, Les Koenig held a particular fussiness for the details of sound. After years lugging a case of European mics around town, he built his own studio in late 1955, transforming the office stockroom at 8481 Melrose Place into a mythical space on par with the Van Gelders’ Hackensack parlor or the 30th Street church (yeah I said it).
Key engineering hires Roy DuNann and Howard Holzer built a companion mastering room in 1958, and the Koenig outfit — soon registered as Contemporary Records, Inc. — positioned itself on the forefront of stereo sound.
The control room at 8481 Melrose, late 1950s. L to R: Roy DuNann, Lester Koenig, and assistant Barbara London.
Photo provided by John Koenig to JazzTimes.
Contemporary Inc. trotted faithfully into the turbulent sixties jazz market and picked up non-slouches Teddy Edwards, Phineas Newborn Jr., and Jimmy Woods to mingle among other legends & newcomers. It continued fetching Art Pepper recordings from the shelf year by year, with no mention that the dude was actually behind bars at San Quentin on (another) heroin beat.
Despite batting at a high musical average, the label’s output declined and essentially bottomed out by mid-decade. The business shifted gears and began hiring out its reputable mastering studio to stay alive. With clients like A&M and Elektra sending tapes their way, stay alive Contemporary did indeed, and the label returned to shelves with a forward-looking vengeance in the late 1960s and early 70s.
Lester & John Koenig. (photo credit: Bret Lopez, 1972)
Lester died unexpectedly in 1977, at age 59, with several recordings still in the can. His son John Koenig immediately took up the mantle and wrapped up his father’s work before embarking on a producing journey of his own. Stalwarts like Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, and Bobby Hutcherson entered into the Contemporary spotlight during these years, as did newer talents of George Cables, Peter Erskine, and Jay Hoggard. This version of Contemporary continued until, in 1984, the Koenig family sold the label to Fantasy Records, which continued capturing jazz under the Contemporary name while stewarding the Koenig catalog.
In the history of jazz, Contemporary stands as a unique example: a family-owned small business that achieved at the highest level and survived for more than three decades without changing focus or selling out its own taste. As artists and label contemporaries have repeatedly attested to, the label was about its business and treated artists with respect.
Today, Contemporary gets plenty of attention for the audiophile appeal of its early-era titles. This applies to the raw recordings, which have been remastered and reissued repeatedly, as well as vintage pressings, which hold up among ardent ’philes as some of the greatest mastering work ever put to plastic. Those discs, which were Contemporary’s primary deliverable throughout its original life, are really the best window into the label’s history. So that’s how I choose to approach the label as a study: through its vinyl.
Sources
Gioia, Ted. “The Four Comebacks of Art Pepper.” Honest-Broker.com, The Honest Broker, 5 Oct. 2022, www.honest-broker.com/p/the-four-comebacks-of-art-pepper. Accessed 11 Nov. 2024.
Amorosi, A. D. “The Sound of Contemporary Records.” JazzTimes, 8 Apr. 2022, jazztimes.com/features/profiles/the-sound-of-contemporary-records/. Accessed 12 Nov. 2024.