CRAFT RECORDINGS & ACOUSTIC SOUNDS ANNOUNCE

12 NEW TITLES IN ACCLAIMED

CONTEMPORARY RECORDS ACOUSTIC SOUNDS SERIES

 

Celebration of seminal jazz artists continues throughout 2024, with monthly drops that include titles from Art Pepper, Sonny Rollins, Helen Humes, Ben Webster, and many more

 

Each album is cut from the original master tapes (AAA) and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl,

 with new hi-res digital formats also set for release

Click here to pre-order

 

Los Angeles, CA (January 9, 2024) — Craft Recordings and Acoustic Sounds are thrilled to announce the latest installment in their acclaimed Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series, which heralds a staggering 12 vinyl and hi-res digital releases throughout 2024. These reissues include sought-after albums from Art Pepper, Shelly Manne & His Men, Harold Land, Hampton Hawes, Howard McGhee, Prince Lasha Quintet, Ben Webster, Helen Humes, and Sonny Rollins.

 

Originally engineered by Roy DuNann and/or Howard Holzer, each LP will boast lacquers cut from the original master tapes (AAA) by the GRAMMY®-winning engineer Bernie Grundman, an audiophile favorite who also happens to be a Contemporary Records alum. All are pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings (QRP) and presented in Stoughton old-style tip-on jackets. The complete series is available for pre-order today, with release dates beginning February 23 as detailed below.

 

Art Pepper Quintet — Smack Up (releasing February 23, 2024):

Saxophonist Art Pepper was considered one of the best altos of his time, just behind Charlie Parker. This 1960 recording, whose album’s title presages the addiction that would soon offline the self-taught musician’s career, features compositions written by fellow saxophonists (including Ornette Coleman’s “Tears Inside” and Buddy Collette’s “A Bit of Basie”). Finding Pepper at his finest, most limber form, his own composition “Las Cuevas de Mario” is a particular standout in 5/4 time and would pop up on his set lists in subsequent years.

 

Shelly Manne & His Men — At the Black Hawk, Vol. 1. (releasing March 15, 2024):

Shelly Manne, a famed bebop drummer who worked with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, also made his name in Hollywood as the sticksman on soundtracks for classic films such as The Wild One and The Man With the Golden Arm. He never lost his passion for playing club shows though, and recorded this album (the first of four volumes) during a 1959 gig at San Francisco’s Black Hawk nightclub in the Tenderloin district. “The extended performances,” says AllMusic, “are easily recommended to straight-ahead jazz fans.” To that end, the album opens with a leisurely take on Gershwin’s “Summertime,” and goes on to dazzle with the swinging waltz of “Blue Daniel.”

 

Harold Land — The Fox (April 12, 2024):

The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings states Harold Land is an “underrated composer with a deep feeling for the blues.” Tracks such as this album’s title track, the breathless “The Fox,” which makes stellar use of the unforgettable Dupree Bolton, the mythically talented trumpeter out of Oklahoma City whose career tragically derailed, as well as legendary pianist Elmo Hope, who penned four of the album’s six tracks, highlights this. The surprisingly moving, honey-like “Mirror Mind Rose” also showcases Land’s range and is an extraordinary exercise in expression and restraint. This album, writes the New Yorker, is “well worth savoring.”

 

Hampton Hawes — For Real! (releasing May 17, 2024):

This re-visiting of Hampton Hawes’ 1961 record, For Real!, comes four days after what would’ve been his 95th birthday. One of the most influential pianists of his time, the self-taught prodigy was named “New Star of the Year” by DownBeat magazine. Hawes shines bright in familiar territory: whether it’s his exquisite harmonic locked-hands style on the boppin’ “Crazeology,” recorded well after his friend Charlie Parker brought it to fame, or his lively, flittering rendition of the much-covered Cole Porter ballad “I Love You.” Here, he’s backed by Clifford Brown/Max Roach saxophonist Harold Land and Scott LaFaro, the gone-too-soon double bassist famous for his work with the Bill Evans Trio.

 

Howard McGhee — Maggie’s Back in Town!! (releasing June 14, 2024):

Just in time for summer comes this reissue featuring the criminally unsung Howard McGhee, the dexterous bebop trumpeter who’s frequently compared to greats such as Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro. Maggie’s Back in Town!! (Maggie was McGhee’s nickname), captures the musician’s triumphant return to music in 1961. AllMusic rates the album as “McGhee’s finest recording of the period.” He overachieves in rhythmic fluidity, a through line that’s particularly potent in seemingly carefree songs such as “Sunset Eyes” and the title track.

 

Teddy Edwards & Howard McGhee — Together Again!!!! (releasing July 12, 2024):

Another Howard McGhee cut, Together Again!!!! (recorded just before Maggie’s Back in Town!!), is a collaboration between McGhee and his old friend, saxophonist Teddy Edwards. Also featuring Phineas Newborn, Jr on piano, the sultry, otherworldly “Misty” is a spectacular entwining of each musician’s superpowers and the golden mean of musicianship led the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings to declare that Together Again!!!! is “one of the best mainstream albums of its day.”

 

Prince Lasha Quintet — The Cry! (releasing August 16, 2024):

Prince Lasha Quintet’s critically adored transcendent avant-garde jazz opus The Cry! lands on August 16^th. “Lasha prefers a wooden flute,” remarks All About Jazz, “which gives his passages a dark, earthy tone that contrasts well with the bitter, vibrato-less sax.” (The latter refers to saxophonist Sonny Simmons, a frequent Lasha collaborator who’d finally get his time in the spotlight about three decades later, while signed to Quincy Jones’ Qwest Records.) Songs such as the jaunty “Bojangles” and rhythm-forward “Congo Call” imbued the Quintet’s brand of free jazz, recorded here in 1962, with an identity independent of Ornette Coleman’s influence on them.

 

Ben Webster — At the Renaissance (releasing September 13, 2024):

This reissue of Ben Webster’s At the Renaissance is a “consistently wonderful” album notes AllMusic, that finds the saxophonist “in superior and creative form.” The New Yorker, for its part, has anointed Webster one of the “founding emperors of the jazz tenor saxophone.” The superlative 1960 performance from the Duke Ellington Orchestra alum and his band — pianist Jimmy Rowles (Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald), guitarist Jim Hall (Jimmy Giuffre, Sonny Rollins), bassist Red Mitchell (André Previn, Billie Holliday), and drummer Frank Butler (Duke Ellington, John Coltrane) — features something for everyone: from a feather-light, sentimental take on “Georgia on My Mind” to the swaggering insouciance of “Ole Miss Blues.”

 

Art Pepper — Gettin’ Together! & Intensity (releasing October 11, 2024):

Two more essential Art Pepper reissues, originally recorded in 1960, are the albums Gettin’ Together! and Intensity. Originally released on either side of Smack Up, these albums underscore just how refreshingly creative Pepper was at the time. Gettin’ Together’s tight “Bijou the Poodle,” penned by Pepper, leads the way, with Jazzwise admiring its “angularity…representing the darker side of the Californian jazz idyll.” Often described as a sequel to Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, Gettin’ Together! once again finds Pepper backed on beat by Miles Davis alums (bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb). Meanwhile, the San Francisco Examiner sums up 1963’s Intensity, the last release of his early period, as Pepper being “well on his way toward a new kind of playing freedom.” Writes AllMusic, “Pepper sticks to swinging standards such as ‘I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me,’ ‘Gone with the Wind, and ‘I Wished on the Moon’ as points of departure on this interesting and largely enjoyable set.”

 

Helen Humes — Songs I Like to Sing! (releasing November 8, 2024):

Helen Humes takes on the standards on her second Contemporary Records release, Songs I Like to Sing! The Louisville native got her start as a jazz and blues vocalist — including a stretch with the Count Basie Orchestra — but went on to define the sound of swing music. Los Angeles Times jazz critic Leonard Feather once remarked, “no other singer had a comparable mastery of both ballads and blues.” Her silken-voiced renditions of “If I Could Be With You” and “You’re Driving Me Crazy” at once exude wistfulness, but mostly joy. With Humes backed by a Dream Team of musicians, the album features a wealth of gold-standard saxophonists such as Ben Webster, Teddy Edwards, and Art Pepper.

 

Sonny Rollins — Way Out West (releasing December 6, 2024):

Closing out the year is Way Out West from tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins. The New York Times recently wrote, “He is jazz’s greatest living improviser, able to imbue his solos with wry humor, surprise, brilliant logical form, and profound emotion.” In a genre where so much talent burned out too young, Rollins (now retired at age 93) held court as one of jazz’s most formidable talents. Way Out West, his classic 1957 album, received five stars from Rolling Stone’s prestigious Jazz Record Guide and has prompted Pitchfork to deem it “an album that looks like a novelty and sounds like transcendence.” The album’s infamous 3 a.m. recording sessions featured Rollins’ sax strolling over the contributions of onetime Ella Fitzgerald bassist Ray Brown and iconic West Coast Jazz drummer Shelly Manne, neither of whom he’d ever played with. The results are incredible, with “I’m an Old Cowhand (From the Rio Grande),” a satirical song about Texas written by Johnny Mercer and made famous by Bing Crosby, skillfully merging country with jazz, while Rollins’ own composition, the title track “Way Out West,” reminds us of his dexterity and playful ambivalence towards time signatures.

 

Contemporary Records was founded in 1951 by Lester Koenig (1917–1977). A film producer and screenwriter by trade, he was a record collector who was also a stickler for high-fidelity audio. His label was soon synonymous with audiophile sound and became the epicenter of the West Coast jazz scene. The Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series — launched in the spring of 2022, with titles from Art Pepper, Shelly Manne, and Benny Carter, among others — honors the label’s legacy through meticulous reissues of both popular classics and influential rarities. Listen to more from Contemporary Records here.

 

Since its debut, the Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series has earned critical raves. JazzTimes notes, “Artists, producers, and engineers alike have held Contemporary aloft…as a label dedicated to presenting jazz at its absolute purest, richest, and live-est,” and remarked that the successful reissues “are living, breathing proof of that label’s hotly cutting clarity.” Audiophile Review enthuses that the reissue of Art Pepper + Eleven: Modern Jazz Classics was “top-notch…richer and more inviting.” Meanwhile, Audiophile Audition lauded over how “pristine” Hampton Hawes’ Four! reissue was, adding, “Kudos to Craft Recordings for re-introducing a brilliant pianist.”

 

Each of the 2024 reissue titles is available for pre-order today. Hi-res digital (192/24) will also be available for purchase at the time of each LP release.

 

 

Art Pepper Quintet – Smack Up

 

SIDE A

1. Smack Up
2. Las Cuevas De Mario
3. A Bit of Basie

 

SIDE B

1. How Can You Lose
2. Maybe Next Year
3. Tears Inside

 

Shelly Manne and His Men – At the Black Hawk, Vol. 1

 

SIDE A

1. Summertime
2. Our Delight

 

SIDE B

1. Poinciana
2. Blue Daniel
3. Theme: A Gem From Tiffany

 

 

Harold Land – The Fox

 

SIDE A

1. The Fox
2. Mirror Mind Rose
3. One Second, Please

 

SIDE B

1. Sims A-Plenty
2. Little Chris
3. One Down

 

 

Hampton Hawes – For Real!

 

SIDE A

1. Hip
2. Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams
3. Crazeology (Little Benny)

 

SIDE B

1. Numbers Game
2. For Real
3. I Love You

 

 

Howard McGhee – Maggie’s Back in Town!!

 

SIDE A

1. Demon Chase
2. Willow Weep for Me
3. Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise
4. Sunset Eyes

 

SIDE B

1. Maggie’s Back in Town
2. Summertime
3. Brownie Speaks

 

 

Teddy Edwards and Howard McGhee – Together Again!!!!

 

SIDE A

1. Together Again
2. You Stepped out of a Dream
3. Up There

 

SIDE B

1. Perhaps
2. Misty
3. Sandy

 

 

Prince Lasha Quintet – The Cry!

 

SIDE A

1. Congo Call
2. Bojangles
3. Green and Gold
4. Ghost of the Past

 

SIDE B

1. Red’s Mood
2. Juanita
3. Lost Generation
4. Y.

 

 

Ben Webster – At the Renaissance

 

SIDE A

1. Georgia on My Mind
2. Caravan
3. Renaissance Blues

 

SIDE B

1. Ole Miss Blues
2. What’s This Thing Called Love
3. Stardust

 

 

Art Pepper – Gettin’ Together!

 

SIDE A

1. Whims of Chambers
2. Bijou the Poodle
3. Why Are We Afraid?
4. Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise

 

SIDE B

1. Rhythm-A-Ning
2. Diane
3. Gettin’ Together

 

 

Art Pepper – Intensity

 

SIDE A

1. I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love With Me
2. I Love You
3. Come Rain or Come Shine
4. Long Ago (And Far Away)

 

SIDE B

1. Gone With the Wind
2. I Wished on the Moon
3. Too Close for Comfort

 

 

Helen Humes – Songs I Like to Sing!

 

SIDE A

1. If I Could Be With You
2. Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me
3. Mean to Me
4. Every Now and Then
5. I Want a Roof Over My Head
6. Louis Blues

 

SIDE B

1. You’re Driving Me Crazy
2. My Old Flame
3. Millon Dollar Secret
4. Love Me or Leave Me
5. Imagination
6. Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone

 

 

Sonny Rollins – Way Out West

 

SIDE A

1. I’m an Old Cowhand
2. Solitude
3. Come, Gone

 

SIDE B

1. Wagon Wheels
2. There Is No Greater Love
3. Way Out West

 

 

About Acoustic Sounds:

Headquartered in Salina, Kan., Acoustic Sounds, Inc. is the world leader in audiophile music. Owned by CEO Chad Kassem, who founded the company in 1986, Acoustic Sounds provides the largest selection of highest-quality music in a variety of formats — from vinyl LPs and Super Audio CDs to Blu-ray and reel-to-reel analog tape — all designed to exceed the expectations of audiophiles. The company owns its own record pressing plant, Quality Record Pressings, and its own vinyl reissue label (Analogue Productions), an original production label (APO Records), its own recording studio (Blue Heaven Studios), and its own LP mastering business (The Mastering Lab at Blue Heaven Studios). For more information on Acoustic Sounds, please visit www.acousticsounds.com, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

 

About Contemporary Records:

Founded in 1951 by Lester Koenig (December 3, 1917 – November 21, 1977), Contemporary Records is a uniquely Hollywood story. An intellectual who loved the arts, Koenig (pronounced kay-nig) thrived in the film industry as a screenwriter, co-producer, and assistant to William Wyler, playing an important role on landmark films such as The Best Years of Our Lives, Detective Story and Roman Holiday. Koenig’s life in movies was effectively ended by the Red Scare in 1953, when he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was flayed by the conservative Hollywood establishment for having left-wing sympathies, and blacklisted he turned his attention to Good Time Jazz, a label he’d launched in 1949, to record a Dixieland combo featuring players who all had day jobs with Disney. He initially created Contemporary as an outlet for new contemporary classical works, but his ears were wide open and by the mid-1950s many of Southern California’s most exciting jazz artists were eager to document their music in what was rapidly becoming one of the best studios on the West Coast under the auspices of Roy DuNann, the sound engineer Koenig lured away from Capitol Records in 1956. The artists responded to Koenig’s steadfast faith in their creativity, and Contemporary became the essential vehicle for L.A. modernists and East Coast players looking for respite from the New York hustle. Seven decades later, the label’s legacy looks more imposing than ever, as the albums that Lester Koenig and his son John recorded continue to inspire and influence leading players on the contemporary scene.

 

About Craft Recordings:

Craft Recordings is home to one of the largest and most essential collections of master recordings and compositions in the world. Its storied repertoire includes landmark releases from icons such as Joan Baez, John Coltrane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Celia Cruz, Miles Davis, Isaac Hayes, John Lee Hooker, Little Richard, R.E.M., Joan Sebastian, and Traveling Wilburys. Plus, the catalog recordings of celebrated contemporary acts including A Day to Remember, Evanescence, Alison Krauss, Nine Inch Nails, Taking Back Sunday and Violent Femmes, to name just a few. Renowned imprints with catalogs issued under the Craft banner include Fania, Fantasy, Fearless, HITCO, Musart, Nitro, Panart, Prestige, Riverside, Rounder, Specialty, Stax, Vanguard, Varèse Sarabande, Vee-Jay and Victory, among many others. Craft creates thoughtfully curated packages, with a meticulous devotion to quality and a commitment to preservation—ensuring that these recordings endure for new generations to discover. Craft is also home to the Billie Holiday and Tammy Wynette estates which preserve and protect their respective names, likeness and music through day-to-day legacy management of these cultural trailblazers.

 

Craft Recordings is the catalog label team for Concord. For more info, visit CraftRecordings.com and follow on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

 

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