from Mono to <i>Stereo Records</i>
Lester Koenig saw stereo coming and waited patiently for its arrival. In the meantime, he set himself up for future success.
In late 1955, he hired Roy DuNann to man the studio at 8481 Melrose and equipped him with two Ampex machines, both of them mono. So everything captured over the next several months was in mono-only. That was until mid-1956, when signs of signs of a real stereo future began to peek over the horizon. Les acquired an Ampex 350-2P two-track tape deck… and everything changed.
DuNann split the passive mixer signal to both full-track and two-track decks, resulting in two separate sets of session tapes. Mono tapes were cut, assembled, and put into service for LPs right away; the stereo tapes meanwhile sat unused. So what was the ambition here? Seemingly, it was to target the budding consumer tape market.
Contemporary Tape
The GTJ & CR News Vol. 2, No. 2: May 1957
Lester Koenig clearly liked building sublabels. Few of them survived long-term, but the frequency with with he launched and scrapped these initiatives shows how probing and flexible he was.
In 1957, with a small but growing catalog of stereo recordings in his bag, he founded sublabel Contemporary Tape to attack the stereo tape market.
It launched with six titles that May, CT-1 to CT-6. These were 2-track stereo on 7-inch reels, and available in either stacked format (the two channels in time with each other, read by concurrent group heads) or staggered (channels out of time with one another). To fit full LP-length programs on a single tape, Contemporary used “extra-long play” stock which carried a premium price point: $11.95.¹ This was more than double the price of a mono LP, and comes to about $135 in October 2024 dollars when adjusted for inflation.
Only seven Contemporary LPs had actually been recorded in stereo and released on (mono) vinyl by this point. So Les & co. picked an even six for the tape venture. Way Out West drew the short straw.
Looking back, it’s a bit strange to see among the picks Curtis Counce Group, which would not receive a stereo vinyl release until a decade later. This also challenges any connection between the Contemporary Tape tapes and the cutting assemblies used to cut stereo lacquers in later years. Curtis Counce Group (aka Landslide) was assigned stereo tape numbers LKS 229 and LKS 230 which point to assembly around 1961-62. Barring some sort of mishap that voided an earlier 1957 stereo assembly of this material, we can (maybe) infer that these Contemporary Tapes used down-generation source reels which left them separate from the vinyl enterprise, which — we know from sources like John Koenig and Bernie Grundman — used actual two-track session tapes to cut LPs.
Of note, perhaps, is the strange mono splice-in that occurs 8:20 into track B2 “Sarah” on the eventual stereo master tapes of Landslide, as heard on every stereo vinyl and digital release. Does the same occur on Contemporary Tape CT-3? Inquiring mind wants to know.
Alas, these tapes are pretty rare. Discogs has four listed; twelve there should be in total between stacked and staggered variations. I was able to pick up a “stacked” copy of CT-2 Music to Listen to Barney Kessel By… which I still have no ability to play.
Contemporary Tape left these six titles behind and disappeared like a shooting star. Contemporary would later return to the reel-to-reel market with 4-track Ampex tapes in the early 1960s, by which point the CT sublabel was long gone.
Stereo Records
Ad in The Billboard, May 12, 1958
The development of the stereo LP I’ve covered in some depth in Mastering History Vol. 2. When the “45-45” disk finally arrived, Les Koenig introduced yet another imprint — Stereo Records — to collect stereo variants from his ever-fluid stable of brands. The naming is quaint and kind of amusing in hindsight, like a company today naming itself “AI Software” or “Electric Cars.” Sure enough 1958 ads for the sublabel actually note “trade mark registration applied for.”
I’m not sure how far-reaching a trademark like this would have been. Would other labels have been barred from printing “Stereo” on their disks? If so, 1958 feels way late to make such an attempt, as the term was already in common use across several technologies and other labels had begun using it in relation to vinyl.
In the end, Stereo Records survived less than a year. If it was built with the actual expectation of owning the word “Stereo,” that quick fate seems predestined. Though it may make more sense to view this as an elaborate trial balloon for the format, intended to suss out the market’s viability while shielding the main labels. Once it became clear that stereo was seaworthy, the company re-adjusted and positioned it beside mono as a parallel workstream.
Koenig was, again, a careful businessman. Even if trailblazing, he proceeded with caution.
Intentions aside, Stereo Records dropped a prolific 30 titles in its short life. 20 of those were pulled from the Contemporary 3500 modern jazz series, with the other 10 collected from Good Time Jazz, the Contemporary Composers Series, and the Society for Forgotten Music.
These were delivered in several batches, starting in May 1958:
S7001 to S7006: May 1958²
S7007 to S7014 : c. June 1958²
S7015 to S7023: c. October 1958³
S7024: January 1959⁴
S7025: February 1959⁵𝄒⁶
S7026 to S7030: March 1959⁷
Let’s examine Stereo Records design. For center labels, all titles were shifted onto glossy black stock and printed with gold ink, adopting the color scheme previously used by the C5000 “Popular” series.
‘Stereo Records’ was arced around top, leaving a sizeable bottom space for stereo warning text. And, unlike the mono LPs, space was made for the company address.
Jackets were also updated (you can find a more thorough exam in Jacket Design). Each old mono design required custom translation, so unique changes were made to each depending on existing elements. If the Stereo Records name wasn’t clear enough, the giant STEREO bubble overlaid on most titles was certainly unmissable:
Menwhile a lamentfully small handful of titles were translated with a subtler hand:
After May 1959, new stereo title were absorbed it their mono home labels (Contemporary, GTJ, and SFM). Jacket design was revised to a “banner” format that could cover both mono and stereo (again, Jacket Design), which embodied the wider push to “hybridize” the record-making process. Months earlier, for example, a “hybrid” change was instituted at the recording level such that one set of two-track tapes could serve as masters for both mono and stereo lacquers (see The 50-50 Line & the End of Mono Recording).
And what became of Stereo Records? It never saw another new title, but most of the titles already in its roster kept Stereo Records branding for many years hence.
Some titles were redesigned away from the SR label quickly, in 1959-60 (My Fair Lady, Pal Joey, Gigi, Music to Listen to Barney Kessel By).
Others not until the mid-late 1960s (Way Out West, Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, The Poll Winners).
And an elite handful clung to their SR branding all the way into the early 1970s (Jazz Giant, Peter Gunn, Portrait of Art Farmer).
Some titles (Double Play, Four!, Listen to Music to Red Norvo By) went out of print in the US while still in Stereo Records clothing, were revived years later on Contemporary in Japan, and finally restored to US print in 1984 as Fantasy OJCs.
Stereo Records’ seven classical titles — sourced from SFM and the Composers Series — fell out of print somewhere in the 1960s and haven’t been heard from since.
Sources:
¹“Contemporary Tape Releases First Stereos.” GTJ & CR News, vol. 2, no. 2, May 1957, p. 1.
²“GTJ & CR Launch Stereo Records.” GTJ & CR News, vol. 3, no. 2, June 1958, pp. 1, 3.
³“’58 Is Best Year for Jazz: GTJ & CR Sales Reflect World-Wide Interest.” GTJ & CR News, vol. 3, no. 3, Oct. 1958, pp. 1, 4.
⁴“Duke’s First Classic LP on CR & Stereo.” GTJ & CR News, vol. 4, no. 1, Jan. 1958, pp. 1, 5.
⁵“Contemporary Aims a ‘Gunn.’” The Billboard, Feb. 1959, p. 6. Google Books.
⁶“Shelly Manne & His Menn Fire ‘Gunn’ Heard Round the World.” GTJ & CR News, vol. 4, no. 2, Mar. 1958, p. 1.
⁷“Five New LPs on Stereo Records.” GTJ & CR News, vol. 4, no. 2, Mar. 1959, pp. 1, 4.