AmnranH
i n
October, 1977
Ampersand
October. 1977
Lester Young
QQLniU
S.y.
There's a great, spinning
whirlpool of good jazz
records funneling into the
marketplace today more
than there has ever been
before in the 50-year recorded
history of this most vital
native American art form.
Small labels like Muse, Inner City, Concord,
Catalyst, the venerable Contemporary, etc.,
and slightly larger ones like Pablo and ECM,
are steadily releasing solid, straightforward
jazz by topnotch American and European
performers of many styles and ages. Major
record companies are having marvelous suc
cesss with pop-oriented jazz from such as
Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Weather Re
port, and Maynard Ferguson, and are even
slowly opening (or reopening) their hearts
and their recording studios to purer versions
of the music. And maybe most impor
tantly of all a few companies are making
use of the vast resources pf the jazz past and
producing generous numbers of newly
packaged and (usually) well-documented
reissues. Some of these feature a single artist
Art Pepper, Lester Young, Thelonius
Monk, et. al. while others concetrate on a.
time and a place (Savoy's Black California or
The Changing Face of Harlem) or a musical
instrument (Verve's Masters of the Jazz Piano);
many of the reissues contain alternate takes
of particular tunes, or material that has never
been released in any form; and the vast
majority of them are budget-priced two
record sets "twofers" to the trade.
"The value of reissues," says Bob Porter,
"is to put music into perspective. It takes a
great deal of perception to appreciate a lot of
this kind of music when it first comes out:
hindsight is a great tool in evaluating it."
Porter should know what he's talking
about. He is the producer (and all-around
boss) of the best and most conscientious of
the reissue programs Arista's Savoy series.
(Arista also releases plenty of good new jazz,
incidentally much of it from the fine
English label, Freedom.)
Porter is a robust, all-American-looking
gentleman, born in Boston and raised in
Southern California. Someone gave him a
Woody Herman record for his 1 1 th birthday;
later, he recalls standing in a record shop
trying to decide whether to spend his $3.50
for a new Elvis album or for a live Benny
Goodman recording; he finally chose the lat
ter, and his musical fate was sealed.
When he was 19 or 20, Porter says, he
wrote to Bob Weinstock at Prestige Records
one of the most tenacious, prolific, and
important of the pioneer jazz labels
suggesting that the company should record
some of the West Coast "soul jazz" that was
current then in California. Weinstock replied
by asking Porter to write some liner notes for
an album by tenor-player Eddie "Lockjaw"
Davis; Porter has been involved profession
ally in the record business ever since.
Two years ago, Porter wrote a story about
Steve Backer, the man in charge of jazz re
leases for Clive Davis' newly-formed Arista
Records. "Backer mentioned that Arista was
thinking of acquiring the Savoy catalogue,
which included all kinds of good jazz, R&B,
blues, gospel, and rural music. I was very
interested, I told him. So when the sale hap
pened, Backer asked me to look at what they
had acquired. I found that the amount of
material was incredible; the issued masters
were just the tip of the iceberg. There were all
kinds of tapes and stacks and stacks of ace
tates representing music that had never been
released on albums, or never been released at
all, including artists like Lester Young,
Howard McGhee, Don Byas, and John Col
trane. "That's the main thing that separates
Savoy from the other reissue series there's
so much that just has never been available
15
except on 78's. Savoy is really, in all honesty,
the pacesetter in the reissue business today.
There's nothing schlock about it. We put all
the credits on the back of the album so the
buyer knows exactly what he's getting, we
don't use phony stereo, we get the best liner
notes we can, the best research and overall
packaging. And it's paying oil". Fifteen to 20
percent of our reissues have sold over 10,000
copies which is considered successful for
material like this and the first Charlie
Parker LP has sold 30,000 and is siill mov
ing." Although Arista isn't exactly depending
on the Savoy program to supxrt the com
pany, royalties are being paid on all releases.
' This is particularly unusual (though not
quite uni(jue) for a re-release series, as musi
cians in the old days were often paid a flat fee
for their services, with further royalties not
legally mandatory. It's simply a good-will
gesture to the musicians or their estates.
Other reissue series suffer sometimes, Por
ter believes, either because they don't own
enough good material or because higher
echelon record company executives aren't
sufficiently committed to the programs.
"PrestigeMilestone just doesn't have that
much that hasn't been released or already
rereleased. RCA has plenty of material, but
they seem to have a corporate purge every
three or four years, and their Bluebird series
is in an uncertain state right now. On the'
other hand, Columbia's Contemporary Mas
ters series, which they've just announced, has
blockbuster potential. I'm not sure what's
happening with United Artists' Blue Note
, reissues. I don't think they really have the
right people over there. That's too bad, be
cause they have probably the most material
deserving reissue of anyone Blue Note
itself, which is maybe the single best jazz
catalogue there is, Dick Bock's labels,
Alladin-Imperial, Sue, Alan Douglas' UA is
sues, and so on. They have incredible potential."-
The recent commercialization of jazz
doesn't bother Porter: "The fact that jazz of
any kind is getting popular is helpful to all of
us. A lot of times, record company executives
don't know Pharoah Saunders from Jack
Teagarden but they know how to look at
sales figures, and they know jazz is happen
ing. And they don't really know what makes
a successful jazz record, so they're willing to
try a lot of different things."
Savoy's newest release, out this month,
includes single albums by Charles Mingus
and Art Blakey, and one called Kenny Clarke
Meets the Detroit Jazzmen (who are Pepper
Adams, Kenny Burrell, Tommy Flanagan,
and Paul Chambers). The "twofers" include
a 1947 Dexter GordonWardell Gray jam
session with Sonny Criss, Howard McGhee,
Hampton Hawes, et al.; a second volume of
The Changing Face of Harlem, featuring people
like Nat "King" Cole, Herbie Fields, Stuff
Smith, Pete Brown, and Illinois Jacquet; and
a collection of all the records blues shouter
Big Joe Turner made for the National label,
including seven previously unissued tracks,
two of which, with pianist Pete Johnson, are
not even listed in discographies. "There are
no alternate takes on this one," says Porter,
"but there are some examples of the same
tune recorded at different sessions and Joe
never sings anything the same way twice."
In December, Savoy will release a double
album by the seminal R&B group, The Ra
vens, and in the spring they plan a second
California R&B album, heavily weighted
with Little Esther and Johnny Otis. "After
that," says Porter, "we may try some blues
and rural stuff. Savoy has got a lot of it. In
fact, Savoy has got plenty of everything."
Colman Andrews is a gentleman and a scholar with
a keen palate for wine, food and all that jazz-