The first extended remote recording I ever undertook was in April-May 1970 at The Roosevelt Grill in New York City. Eddie Condon had told me his pal The Roosevelt Grill was coming to town, that Bobby had a good band and an extended residency was planned. The modest recording enterprise that was to ultimately become Chiaroscuro Records was bubbling along and since I was a Hackett fan and looking for an exciting project, this seemed a likely target of opportunity. Eddie and I headed to the Grill, checked out the band and I decided to ask Bobby if he might like to try to get something down on tape.

I had a couple of things in my favor. Bobby was between engagements; nobody was recording old mainstream guys in those years with any regularity. There was an even stronger motivation for Bobby: he was a recording nut. He loved tape recorders, particularly when he could be involved with the process. It’s hard to imagine, but the series of records I released from The Roosevelt Grill tapes are the only live recordings Bobby ever made. There were tapes of old concerts and radio shows that were later used for suspicious releases, but this was a first for him. The famous Coast Concert he did for Capitol in 1955 was done in a recording studio.

I pitched the idea to Bobby, he jumped on the idea and I cobbled together as much remote gear as possible. I had Sherman Fairchild’s two track Revox, four microphones with stands and two small Shure mixers on loan from Bobby. I set up with the busboys in back of the stage, my modest equipment spread out on two unused banquet tables. I recorded the quintet for about a dozen nights during the month they were in residence. 

The recording conditions were hazardous. I couldn’t see the band, only listen. Dancers occasionally bumped into a microphone, as did the musicians on the bandstand. On some of the evenings I recorded Bobby’s flawless chamber group, which also included Vic Dickenson, Dave McKenna, Jack Lesberg and Cliff Leeman, it was alternating with The World’s Greatest Jazz Band, a popular all-star band in those years and Atlantic Records had a truck in the street with ten tons of equipment to do the job and I had to work around the big boys. I did and their recording doesn’t sound that much better than mine. Maybe it was because I had a lot of help, with many willing assistants and listeners from each group. The four of five chairs at my table backstage was usually filled with guys wearing headphones and Bobby was always camped there out between sets. 

Sherman Fairchild didn’t come down to see his machine in action, but he did give me a few rolls of film and one night I used my new Pentax to take a few pictures. The light was not wonderful, I was worried about the recording, I was inexperienced and there were lots of dancers. I’m surprised any of my pictures turned out at all. This is the best one of the few I managed to take. I know I should have tried harder, but this was the best I could do under the circumstances.

The recordings, however, came out superbly; the first LP released in 1971 was highly praised and received the ultimate five-star rating in Downbeat, as did subsequent volumes. Later, in the CD era, expanded versions of the LPs were issued and these four CDs, documenting the best of those heady nights forty years ago, are still in print. This was a good way for an inexperienced guy to start recording live in New York City, and all these years later I don’t think I’ve ever done better in terms of the quality of the music. I did, however, learn to do a little better with the photographs.