Original Jazz Classics Series

After Fantasy began to make money hand over fist from the breakout success of Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1968, it acquired jazz labels like Prestige in 1971, Riverside in 1972, Contemporary in 1984, and Pablo in 1987 when the jazz market shrank in the rock era. Original Jazz Classics was a reissue series that was created in 1982 to mine this deep catalog of jazz titles. It ran until 2005, and presumably ended due to the acquisition of Fantasy by Concord in 2004. After Concord established its catalog label Craft Recordings in 2017 to produce releases for the growing audiophile market, the Original Jazz Classics series was revived in 2023. Each release is a 33 RPM single LP mastered at Cohearent Audio by Kevin Gray or Matthew Lutthans, is pressed at RTI, and comes in a tip-on jacket with an obi.

Contemporary Acoustic Sounds Series

During the vinyl resurgence, the market for jazz reissues began to expand dramatically. The record companies, once content to license out their vast catalogs to audiophile reissue labels, began to copy the methods of the reissue labels (i.e., all-analog mastering and deluxe tip-on jackets) and release their titles themselves. Universal was the first to do this with its Blue Note catalog and, shortly after, its Verve catalog. After seeing the success of the Verve Acoustic Sounds Series, Concord approached Chad Kassem about doing for its Contemporary Records catalog what he did for Universal’s Verve catalog: curate the titles and release them as if they were an Analogue Productions reissue. Each title in the series is mastered all-analog (AAA) from the original analog master tapes by Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, is pressed at Quality Record Pressings (or RTI, in the case of the Sonny Rollins titles), and comes in a single-pocket Stoughton tip-on jacket.

Non-Series Editions