Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds Series, from Craft Recordings and Acoustic Sounds, begins with six album releases from the Contemporary Records catalog, celebrating 70 years of the legendary jazz label. The releases are supervised by Chad Kassem with each title, originally engineered by Roy DuNann and/or Howard Holzer, mastered all-analog by Bernie Grundman and pressed at QRP!

• Contemporary Records' 70th Anniversary
• Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds Series
• 180 Gram Audiophile Vinyl
• All-Analog Mastering from the Original Tapes
• Cut by Bernie Grundman
• Pressed at Quality Record Pressings QRP, USA
• Stoughton Old-Style Tip-On Cover

Craft Recordings and Acoustic Sounds are proud to announce the Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series, which begins with six album releases from the Contemporary Records catalog, celebrating 70 years of the legendary jazz label. The releases are supervised by Chad Kassem, CEO of Acoustic Sounds, the world's largest source for audiophile recordings.

Each title, originally engineered by Roy DuNann and/or Howard Holzer, features all-analog mastering from the original tapes by legendary engineer Bernie Grundman (himself a former employee of the label), as well as unsurpassed audiophile pressing on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings, presented in a Stoughton Printing old-style tip-on jacket.

The series highlights gems from Contemporary's extraordinary catalog and features artists who both defined and expanded the sound of West Coast jazz.

Guitarist Barney Kessel, drummer Shelly Manne, bassist Red Mitchell, and the supremely soulful Hampton Hawes, one of jazz's most appealing yet unsung pianists, fill out the quartet scorecard of the 1958 release Four!. Although much later in his career Hawes experimented with electronic keyboards and fusion music, at heart he was a bebopper, as this session makes abundantly clear.

With material like Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite," his own "Up Blues," and Red Mitchell's "Bow Jest" (on which Mitchell plays his first recorded bowed solo), Hawes is at a creative peak here. Kessel, who played on the date, paid tribute to Hawes' "inexhaustible ideas on the blues…no one else in modern jazz plays the blues better." And nobody could tie a rhythm section together better than Shelly Manne, the fourth party in this boundingly energetic Four!

Musicians:

Hampton Hawes - piano
Barney Kessel - guitar
Shelly Manne - drums
Red Mitchell - bass

Track Listing:

Side A

01. Yardbird Suite
02. There Will Never Be Another You
03. Bow Jest

Side B

04. Sweet Sue
05. Up Blues
06. Like Someone in Love
07. Love Is Just Around the Corner

Click here to listen to samples on YouTube.com ♫