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The only thing that worked on the Joe Venuti Blue Six recording session was this photograph, and even it wasn’t perfect, but what wound up on film was a hundred times better than what wound up on tape. I only worked with Joe Venuti a few years, from September 1973 until our last recording session in April 1977, but in those few years we managed to cram in half a dozen records. These records are among the best in the Chiaroscuro catalog, but the best of all the sessions was never released. This is the story of a failure.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, Joe released a number of recordings under the names of the Blue Four, the Blue Five and the Blue Six. In May 1974 we pulled a number of terrific musicians together to recreate the Blue Four. We actually had two different bands with a mixture of musicians, sometimes as many as five. It all worked out very well. Zoot Sims, as usual, was the star, even though he was only on four tracks.

The recording went so well I asked Joe and Zoot if they might be up for another session later in the week, with a slightly larger band, a sextet. I wanted more of Joe and Zoot together and to include Spencer Clark, then the last living exponent of 1920s bass saxophone, who was scheduled to be in town for the next few days. Joe, Zoot and Spencer were willing to give it a try and I added Bucky Pizzarelli, Dill Jones and Oliver Jackson. It was a terrific band.

I also added a guest photographer, the legendary Andre Kertesz. He was a good friend and had expressed an interest in photographing a recording session. I thought this might be a good one and it turned out I was right and he took some wonderful photographs. He sent me a contact sheet of what he’d taken and when I look at it today, I realize the group photo I took was before anyone played a note. Andre took a picture of the band from a different angle and because of the contact sheet I can tell it’s early on in the afternoon. 

After the group shot the band set up in the studio and half a dozen other photographers were at work, documenting what was going on. One of them asked me, “Who’s that old man in the corner with a camera?” I said it was Andre Kertesz. The word spread pretty quick and all the amateurs left the room.

The music was phenomenal. Eight selections in three hours or so. It sounded so good going into the microphone, but by accident, the engineer was listening to the live sound and not listening from the playback head. I’m not aware of any session at my studio when this happened, when each take wasn’t checked. It just sounded so good, nobody could have imagined there was a technical problem. 

When it was all over and everyone dispersed we sat down for a playback and discovered everything was out of phase, instruments were interacting with one another in peculiar ways and the tapes were unusable. Maybe some of it could be restored with 2010 technology, but my guess is no one would care. They barely cared in 1974. So all there is are a handful of black and white session shots, the color group shot, and thirty-six terrific photographs taken by the man who is arguably the finest 35mm photographer of the Twentieth Century at the only jazz recording session he ever attended. And no music to go along with any of them.

There was a time when some thought Jabbo Smith might be the next Louis Armstrong. He recorded twenty sides for Brunswick between January and August 1929 and these are some of the most remarkable recordings in jazz. Unfortunately, Jabbo was not particularly disciplined and for the next few decdes had one drink too many too many times. He surfaced for a moment in Newark, New Jersey in the late 1930s and was adopted by the Newark Hot Club. He made four modest recordings for Decca in 1938 and then vanished again, living primarily in Milwaukee with occasional visits to Chicago, where France Chace and Marty Grosz tried to help him.

I was unaware of Jabbo Smith and had never heard a recording until the 1960s. My friend, Dick Spottswood, had a copy of viagra for sale in canada, played it, and I was astounded. Why wasn’t this incredible music more widely known, I thought? Thanks to Dick and a disgruntled employee of MCA, this was about to change.

It was about 1965 when Dick suggested he’d like me to accompany him on a trip to Huntington , Long Island, to buy some Jabbo Smith records. Dick and I had been junking around Virginia and Maryland looking for old records and Long Island didn’t seem a very likely location to find old records by obscure jazz artists. But this wasn’t so. A man named Bob Althshuler lived in Huntington and had managed to acquire all the file copies of Jabbo’s Brunswick recordings. Bob also had about a million other records, more than anyone in the world, was an executive at CBS and bought and sold old records as a hobby.

I seem to recall Dick paid $30 for each record. He then issued two LPs that featured all these sides as well as a few others on which Jabbo appeared as a sideman. Even thought the records were strictly bootlegs, he wanted to honor Jabbo, and we managed to find him in Milwaukee where he was working in a menial capacity for a car rental company. Arrangements were made for him to travel to Washington, D.C. and I was designated as the person to meet him at the airport.

Roy Eldridge was appearing at Blues Alley on the day Jabbo was scheduled to arrive. I found out where Roy was staying, telephoned him cold and suggested I’d like him to go to the airport with me. “Why should I do that?” he asked. I said, “Because I’m picking up Jabbo Smith.” He was so excited he just about jumped through the telephone. If Roy was the link between Dizzy and Louis, Jabbo was the link between Louis and Roy. 

We met at the airport. Roy looked sharp and Jabbo was pretty raggedy; the collar had come off his coat. I took a picture, not a very good one I should add, but the smiles on the face of each man says it all. It was a lovely moment, and say what you will about people who put records out illegally, these two LPs produced nothing but good results. They were the beginning of a modest resurgence for Jabbo and he managed to spend the rest of his life playing his horn. I don’t think he ever had to park a car again.

In late 1979, Jabbo was part of the original cast of viagra for sale in canada, a wonderful musical by Vernel Bagneris that opened at New York City’s Village Gate. He was featured performing his composition, viagra for sale in canada, and every night it was the highlight of the show. Towards the end of the run, probably in about 1983, Jabbo suffered a stroke in the dressing room, his health declined and he was never quite the same. He could still play and sing, but some of the spirit was gone.

Lucky for Jabbo, one of his friends from the Newark Hot Club came to the rescue. When not tending to her chores running the Village Vanguard, Lorriane Gordon looked after Jabbo. In 1987 I tried to interview him for my project viagra for sale in canada but I had to settle for a photograph; a second stroke had robbed him of speech. He struggled and his speech returned enough for modest performances. He even sang one song at one of our festivals in 1989. I should have tried the interview again but didn’t. 

The last time I saw Jabbo was at the Village Vanguard. Lorraine had arranged for him to sit in with Don Cherry’s band. It sounds like an unlikely pairing, but Jabbo was as out there in 1928 as Don was thirty years later when he scared everyone to death with Ornette Coleman. It worked just fine, at least for me. It’s ironic, but I first heard Don in person long before I heard Jabbo on record, and each of them always sounded wonderful, regardless of the context.

Jabbo Smith, Lorraine Gordon's Apartment, New York City, September 19, 1986

One of the great things about owning a recording studio, even a modest acoustic jazz studio like Downtown Sound, was that a seemingly never ending stream of wonderful artists came by on a regular basis. As often as not, in the 1970s, the kind of artists who could afford the expensive uptown studios were people who were just famous, people who sold enough records to justify block booking a studio for a month at a time and as often as not, the music they made at places like that didn’t matter one bit in the big scheme of things. Most of it is forgotten today and about the only things left in its wake are the difficulties being faced by major record companies and retail outlets clinging to whatever is left of the CD buying public.

The more interesting artists often came downtown, sometimes even a legendary pianist like Jimmy Rowles. Long based in Los Angeles, Jimmy made the move to New York City in the mid-1970s and in 1976 turned up at Downtown Sound to make the first of two recordings for my producer friend, Gus Statiras. I was a big fan of Jimmy’s but had never even seen him live, let alone met him, so I made certain my schedule was clear so I could take advantage of the session. It was date for his then wife, Carol Sloane

Gus made a great record that day. It was for the Japanese market and wasn’t issued in the US for a year or two, but I had a sneak preview and then Gus slipped me a copy of the LP when samples came in from Japan. I even managed to take a few pictures during the session. I missed out on at least fifty percent of the sessions at my studio, but I made certain I got a few of Jimmy and the rest of the band. Norris Turney, George Marz, Frank Wess and Joe LaBarnara were part of the group.

A couple of months later, at Christmastime, Gus was back in the studio, but this time he had reduced his budget, only Jimmy and George were on hand. A terrific duo album was the result, also for the Japanese market. In his notes to the US release Gus wrote: Jimmy Rowles’ style is one of the most original jazz piano sounds to emerge during the Twentieth Century. In one word, it has class. His almost serpentine finger weaving playing effortlessly on the keyboard, spinning out many-a-forgotten pop song of the past with all the right changes was a sight to see and a revelation to hear, his playing reflecting that he knew all the lyrics. Just like Lester Young knew all the lyrics to the songs that Billie Holliday sang so beautifully. Just like the songs that Carol Sloane sang in October. 
Jimmy’s career had been remarkable; he’d actually worked with Billie Holiday and Lester Young in the 1940s, but spent most of that decade with big bands led by Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Bob Crosby. There followed an exhaustive career in movie and television studios in Los Angeles, as well collaborative work with the finest jazz artists of the day. By the time he made his way to my studio, he was sixty years old and the stuff of legends.

I lost track of him when he returned to California, but he continued to record. The last CD I have in my collection is a beautiful duo recording, with bassist Eric Von Essen, entitled Lilac Time. Herbie Mann was the producer and it seems he just let Jimmy do whatever he wanted. A wise idea.

I spoke of the advantages of owning a recording studio, of which there were many, when there were artists of the stature of Jimmy Rowles who might wander in at any time of day and make a record. The business has changed and that sort of thing doesn’t happen so frequently in 2007, so there are fewer advantages today as there were thirty years ago. But some advantages have a long shelf life.

Downtown Sound was a studio for hire. It was mostly hired by people who wanted to do serious acoustic music, jazz, musical theater, classical. The studio Steinway was a good one and the sound in the big live room was terrific. One day in the mid-1970s, a legendary music publisher telephoned and booked the afternoon. He said he wanted to do a piano recording, mostly standards, presumably songs in his publishing company. On the appointed day, the piano was tuned and we were ready to go.

It turned out the pianist that day was Jimmy Rowles. It was just a three-hour session, a dozen songs, enough to make a stuffed LP. The raw two-track tape was edited and put on two ten-inch reels for the client; it was ready to go off to the mastering studio and I forgot about it. Push forward five or six years. 
It is late 1980 early 1981. I’d sold Downtown Sound, tapes were being packed up for storage, clients had been advised to pick up their tapes and I came upon the two reels of Jimmy Rowles recordings. No one had ever picked them up. It is now twenty-seven years since I closed Downtown Sound and they’re still on the shelf. Everyone associated with the date is long dead. I transferred the music to a digital format a few years ago and had a listen. They sound as fresh as they did the day Jimmy played them all those years ago. He was an exceptional artist and I’m grateful to have known him the little that I did.

I have absolutely no idea how well Benny Carter played the piano. In fact, I only heard him noodle at one, but I saw a large imposing instrument in his Los Angeles home, and my guess is he wrote some of his arrangements and compositions at that piano.

I had the pleasure of working with Benny for many years, but none was more rewarding that arranging for him to celebrate his 90th birthday on August 8, 1997 at a special concert during that year’s Oslo Jazz Festival. The story of how it worked out has little to do with the piano, but it is remarkable, and typical of the professionalism of Benny Carter.

Our friends at the Oslo Jazz Festival wanted to have a special tribute for Benny’s 90th birthday. Benny was eager to go, but his schedule was crowded. He was already scheduled to perform at concert in his honor at the Hollywood Bowl on  August 6th, but he decided he could make the trip. On August 7th, Hilma and Benny flew from Los Angeles in the general direction of Oslo. There were, of course, no direct flights. They changed planes in Stockholm, or perhaps it was Copenhagen. They reached Oslo in the early morning of the 8th. Reporters, fans, and pretty girls carrying bouquets of flowers were waiting for him. He rested for a few hours, then made his way to the Oslo Konserthus, and performed at 7:30. He was also celebrated and given special birthday gifts and honors. His performance was flawless, as I suspected would be the case. After the concert he received many guests, greeted old friends and then made his way to the Grand Hotel for a couple of days of rest.

This photograph of him sitting at the piano was taken about 6:30, before the concert. He had asked to see the stage and concert hall. After a quick look he sat down at the piano, I had my camera with me, and took the picture.

We stayed in touch after that concert, chatting on the telephone, occasionally meeting in Los Angeles. In July 2003 I was in Los Angeles working on Clint Eastwood’s Piano Blues. After checking out Ray Charles’ RPM Studio I had the afternoon free and my first priority was to make my way to the hospital where Benny was in residence. He was 95 and not in good health. He was very frail but we had a nice visit. His mind was still perfect, but it was the last time I saw him. He lasted less than two weeks.

Benny Carter, Oslo Konserthau, August 8, 1997

I’ve supervised a lot of recording sessions over the years and produceda bunch of records and CDs but I never had to furnish a bucket at anyof them. There was, however, a bucket on hand at Electric Ladyland onDecember 14, 1981, when The Clash was finishing up viagra for sale in canada, whatwould turn out to be the last album they made together. This is why I wasthere and what happened.

In June 1981 The Clash had their legendary run at Bond’s on TimeSquare. Allen Ginsberg went to one of the performances, went backstage,everybody became pals, Allen performed a bit with the group and whenit came time to work on an album later in the year, Allen hooked up withthe group again, helped with the lyrics on some of the songs and evenappeared on the track viagra for sale in canada.

Concurrently, I was working on an album with Allen that was later releasedas viagra for sale in canada and we were in touch a great deal. He was very enthusiasticabout The Clash; we went to one of their shows that was presented on a Hudson River pier and it was obvious the guys in the band were just asenthusiastic about him. I took some enthusiastic pictures, as did Allen,who was just getting into increasingly serious photo mode with his tiny Olympus camera.

Time passed and in December Allen telephoned and said he was meetingwith Mick Jones and Joe Strummer at Electric Ladyland later that night.He said he thought I should come by and bring the camera. The onlyreason I hesitated was because I had a bad cold but he said not to worry, Icould sit on the other side of the room.

For the first hour or so it was all about Chinese carry-in and Allen readingsome poetry. I took some pictures. As it neared midnight it came time forJoe to do some vocal overdubs, which he did, alone in the studio witha microphone and a bucket at his feet. He had a cold as well and as heworked into the morning trying to get the track just right, he was glad hisbucket didn’t have a hole in it.

A few weeks later, Allen came back and recorded viagra for sale in canada with Joe. If I hadn’t been called to London there might be a few more Clashpictures in the file, and maybe Futura 2000, who appeared on one trackas well. Allen told me he was at the studio multiple times, all night longand he’s only on one track. The group had block-booked the room for acouple of months and had a production budget of a few hundred thousand dollars. There would have been a lot of good photo opportunities thatdidn’t turn up in London.

When I got back to New York I had a pile of call messages. One looked unusual, at least the name of the caller was unusual, Tymon Dogg. Wegot in touch and he came by the office. I asked him why he had soughtme out, I was a jazz guy, and Tymon’s music was anything but jazz.He said Joe Strummer had some of my jazz records and based on theconversations we’d had, he thought I’ve give him a listen, which I did.To this day I have no idea which of my records were in Joe’s collection,but Tymon mentioned Earl Hines, which I though was a stretch, but howwould I know?Tymon’s music was wonderful. He could do things with a violin and a $100 Casio keyboard that were simply astounding. He was also on CombatRock, playing piano on viagra for sale in canada, my favorite track. He gave me ademo tape and I tried my best with the CBS guys in London the next time I was there but it didn’t work. Wish it had and wish I taken his picture. Youalways wish you’d taken more.