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I

What Got into His Head

BERNARD STOLLMAN, FOUNDER OF THE LABEL

IN THE GREAT BEFORE

1 Who, Where, When

Beginnings and Departures

As the founder of a label unlike any other, Bernard Stollman shared the Jewish immigrant background of certain Hollywood moguls and also a few jazz impresarios, yet with many distinct turns. How he ended up in music, running a business that was hardly a business, seemed anything but a likely outcome. He recounts his own circuitous path along the way.

My father, David, was born at the turn of the century, in the small Polish market town of Krynki [Krinik]. He was the third youngest of nine children whose father, a devout Orthodox Jew, labored for long hours as the foreman of a local tannery owned by his brothers. The rafters of their one-story house held stacks of curing hides, which gave off a terrible stench. My father attended yeshiva as a child, until he was apprenticed to a tailor at the age of twelve. One day, his closest friend came running to the shop to tell him excitedly that a traveling cantor had arrived in town and was auditioning boy singers to accompany him on his tour of the great synagogues of Poland and Russia. My father’s sweet voice won him employment, and the two boys found themselves celebrities, warmly applauded by congregations whose women showered them with attention and fine food.

When a year had elapsed, his voice began to change with the onset of puberty. The First World War had begun and the cantor abruptly fled to America, abandoning him in a distant city without funds. Desperate, the boy approached a well-dressed stranger on the train platform and told him of his plight. He asked to borrow the train fare, requesting the man’s name and address, and insisted that he would repay the loan when he reached his home. The man gave him the fare and refused my father’s offer. This generous gesture left an indelible impression on him, and he recounted it with wonderment to me half a century later.

My mother, Julia Friedman, lived in Jurewicz, a small town on the border of Lithuania and Poland. She had four sisters and a brother. Her father had attended university to study accounting, and he was the town scribe as well as a schochet [kosher butcher]. She and her brother, Boris, were raised by their grandmother, a strong woman who owned the town’s livery stable, which housed the coaches that the czar would use when visiting the region. My mother attended the local grade school for three years under the new communist regime. Her father had left his family to go to the United States in 1913, in order to earn enough money to bring them over. When the war broke out in 1914, he could not return. His family was stranded without funds, so their living conditions were very harsh. The money that he accumulated was lost to a swindler. He was finally able to return in 1920. When she saw him, my mother angrily accused him of abandoning them.

When she arrived in the United States at the age of thirteen, she attended high school at night and worked in a department store during the day. She learned English and eventually spoke impeccably. My father was twenty-two when he arrived. He learned to speak reasonably well, with almost no accent. Both had come to the United States in 1920, the last year the doors were open to immigration. They met for the first time two years later, in the balcony of a Yiddish theater on the Lower East Side. She was not interested in him, but she had three older unmarried sisters she thought he might consider. He was not to be deterred and, after two years, they married. His three older brothers had come to America earlier in the century and peddled fruits and vegetables from horse-drawn carts in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He acquired his own horse and wagon, and among his customers was the Johnson family, founders of Johnson & Johnson. My mother decided they should open a dry goods store in Rahway, New Jersey, where they initially settled.

In the fall of 1929, four months after my birth in New Brunswick, we moved to Plattsburgh, New York, where my mother’s parents and sisters had settled. A city of seventeen thousand, Plattsburgh is, like much of upstate New York, scenically beautiful, with a long history of economic distress. On the shores of Lake Champlain, thirty miles south of the Canadian border, it has one of the finest sand beaches in North America. It housed the barracks of the Twenty-Sixth Infantry Division and a paper mill, a teachers college, and little else of note. My parents opened a dress shop there in 1930, just a few months after the great crash on Wall Street, at the beginning of the Depression. Plattsburgh was composed largely of two population groups, both Catholic: the descendants of French Canadians, many of whom spoke French at home, and the Irish. Each group had its own bishop, church, and parochial schools. There was little mixing between the two communities.

Was there an Old World orientation in the family when you were growing up?

My parents thought America was paradise. They never talked about the old country. They had dark, negative feelings about their early years and never expressed an interest in returning.

They were very progressive, and not at all religious, but they were honest and ethical. Mother’s father combined the roles of rabbi and schochet. Before making their home in Plattsburgh, they had lived in towns up and down the East Coast. Wherever they went, they lasted about a year. To survive, her father surreptitiously became a conventional butcher. So he’d be butchering hogs, and it didn’t take long for the Jewish community to become upset. He would lose his position, and they would move to another town.

My parents developed few social ties in the Plattsburgh community. They worked around the clock, spending much of their time traveling to small towns in northern New York and Vermont, where they opened six additional stores to form a small chain. My mother had good business sense, and my father’s training as a tailor proved invaluable. He was an excellent window draper. His window displays were successful in drawing customers, which gave them an edge over the competition. He was a superb salesman who charmed the local farm women, to whom they supplied inexpensive and tasteful garments for their difficult figures. The stores became magnets for Canadian tourists, including prostitutes, for whom the Plattsburgh store stocked gaudy, vividly decorated dresses that resembled the Parisian bordello attire depicted by Toulouse-Lautrec in his paintings.

When they traveled to their stores, my father would drape the windows and teach the managers to display garments. While the name of most of the shops was Stollman’s, in Burlington and St. Albans, Vermont, my brother Solomon, who had earned an industrial design degree from Pratt, installed modern stores for them, with my assistance, and those were called Bernsol’s. My parents were astute merchandisers. Dad used a unit control system on flip cards that I had designed for him, which showed every item in every store, and he loved to sit at home and observe what sold in which stores. If a store manager or a saleswoman liked a particular item, and it was selling well, they would transfer these garments there from their other stores.

Where were they buying the clothes?

New York had a flourishing garment district in the West 30s. On the avenues were the higher-priced manufacturers, and my parents bought coats and suits from them. They stocked well-made, inexpensive garments. For a number of years, my parents used a resident buyer in the garment district who knew all the manufacturers. They made seasonal buying trips to New York, driving down Route 9, an eight-hour trip, and they would stay at the Hotel New Yorker, adjacent to the garment district. The manufacturers had great respect for them—my mother was a lovely woman; my dad was a gregarious, dapper individual. They were a striking couple. One day I said to them, “You’ve just become resident buyers. Print up your order book; you’re going to become the AAA Buying Service.” They did that and began to get the 6 percent commission that the resident buyer had obtained from the manufacturers. The manufacturers didn’t mind, as it was factored into their prices.

As a youth I would travel down with them once a year, making the rounds of the showrooms with them. I knew nothing about women’s fashions. But I reacted instinctively to colors and designs. Besides, the raincoat showrooms had models wearing black slips to make it easier to don and remove the coats, and they were beautiful girls. I was thirteen or fourteen, and it was mind-boggling for me.

What sort of perspective came with being the oldest of seven kids?

My parents were away a lot. Our French-Irish live-in housekeeper cooked for us and looked after the younger ones, but she had two children of her own. She was divorced, and her children were being raised by her parents. I felt a responsibility to my siblings. I was the surrogate father. The youngest was about fourteen years younger than me. I’m told that the oldest child in a family often does not marry. I had many opportunities, but I just let them go by—until I was in my forties, which is late.

As the firstborn son, did you feel particular expectations from your parents or within yourself?

Both. During the years I was growing up, I had to get a hundred in my exams. My parents never raised this subject, but somehow it was implicit that I would have to excel. I was totally absorbed in school and in every extracurricular activity. Throughout high school I did little socializing.

Were you raised with much of a Jewish orientation in the family? Did you hear Yiddish around the house?

My parents spoke Yiddish occasionally, but only to exchange their thoughts privately. The Reform synagogue had a congregation of upper-class, educated, second- and third-generation German Jews. And there was a second congregation, in the Orthodox synagogue. It was a conventional Orthodox shul, with a bimah [altar] at its eastern end and a mikvah [ritual bath] in its basement. I had my bar mitzvah service in that synagogue. These were two distinct communities: the merchant community that went to the Reform synagogue and the Orthodox Eastern European Jewish immigrants. As a twelve-year-old, I became the organist in the Reform synagogue. I wasn’t trained, and I didn’t know how to work the pedals, but I could play the keyboard. The rabbi was a gnome-like man of advanced age; he would cue me and I would play the hymn. Once, during a sermon, I mischievously pressed a pedal that emitted a squawking sound.

What kind of musical education did you have in Plattsburgh?

I had weekly piano lessons from the age of seven until I was thirteen. My teacher was one of three daughters and a son of the late Charles Hudson, a sea captain who had married a Chinese woman on one of his voyages. The Hudsons were tall, handsome, distinguished individuals, none of whom married, living during their later years in the shadow of the father whose memory they detested and suffering the racism that characterized popular attitudes during that era. They lived together throughout their lives in a stately, white frame house on Court Street, in which they ran the Hudson School of Music. All were highly accomplished musicians. They taught string instruments and provided cultural life to the town. They created a string ensemble that would rehearse there. The smell of rosin was pungent in the living room when I came for my piano lessons. Their parlor was full of Chinese screens and art objects, which their father had collected in his travels. The environment had a profound influence on my outlook regarding music.

How old were you when the family moved to New York? Did the change affect you much?

When I was sixteen, my parents bought a house in Forest Hills, Queens, but couldn’t occupy it yet. I rented an apartment with my next younger brother, and for eight months we attended Forest Hills High School, living on our own. The year was 1945.

While I was a high school student in Plattsburgh, trains would come up from New York City with two daily newspapers: the New York Post, which was a very different New York Post from the Rupert Murdoch one of today, and PM, the radical left newspaper. I observed the Second World War through the lens of these publications. I read Max Lerner and I. F. Stone. They prepared me for the move to New York City.

How did you fare in college? Did you remain a diligent student?

When I attended Columbia, on a scholarship, the teachers were highly rated, but I was bored with sitting in the classroom. I lived in the dorm and then in rooming houses off campus. I would show up regularly to work in my parents’ business, now based in a loft on West 36th Street in the garment district, from which they shipped merchandise to their stores. At Columbia, all around me were veterans of World War II, who were very serious about obtaining a professional education. The only courses I enjoyed were French literature of the nineteenth century, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and Chaucer. I tried campus radio, and then found a berth at the campus humor magazine, the Jester. In the spring of my third year, I was suspended from school in midterm for flunking Soviet Economics, poor grades, and cutting classes. I went west and found a job as a laborer in a Wyoming tunnel construction project, surrounded by strong silent men, and lived in a tiny cell with a slatted wooden door. At the end of two weeks, it was clear to me and the foreman that I was not strong enough to maintain the pace. I went on to Los Angeles, where I worked briefly at various jobs, including as a stock clerk in a drug store and as a gas station attendant. In the fall, I returned to Columbia, where I was readmitted. I took the law aptitude exam and scored in the top 2 percentile. My faculty adviser suggested that I enter Columbia Law School on professional option, which meant I would not have to finish college.

Was there anything in particular that made you think of law school?

It was the prospect of being drafted for the Korean War. I don’t know if I ever would have chosen medicine as a career. A Jewish youth is expected to choose law or medicine or commerce. I was comfortable with law, assuming that the training would be useful in whatever career I undertook. Cutting classes, I would digest three texts for each course prior to the exam. This required a periodic frenzy of reading, but it freed me to continue my self-indulgent practices. As graduation day approached, the dean called me in. He said, “Bernard, we can’t let you loose on an unsuspecting society. Your professors have no idea what you look like.” He insisted that I take an extra term and attend class diligently. I graduated in January 1954 and then in March I was drafted. The Korean War was now in an armistice phase.

Were you ever tempted to enter the family business?

No.

So then you allowed yourself to be drafted….

I could have avoided it. At my physical, the examining doctor offered me an out and said, in effect, “Do you want this?” Being drafted, I didn’t have to take the bar. I didn’t mind that at all. Also, I was curious about the world. The war was over, and I hadn’t traveled outside the United States, except to Montreal.

I was assigned to Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, to learn teletype operator skills and spent much of the hot summer in the base swimming pools. Visiting a large barbershop on the base for my first haircut, I studied the barbers and noted that one young black barber clearly took pride in his work. When his chair was free, I sat in it. The barber quietly informed me that he could not cut my hair. I asked him to identify the shop owner. The barber pointed to a short, elderly white man who was unloading barber supplies from his van. “Hold the chair,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

I approached the proprietor. “I care about my appearance, and that barber is good. I would like him to cut my hair.” He adopted a confidential manner. “Look, son, in our shops, white barbers cut white boys’ hair and black barbers cut black boys’ hair. You wouldn’t want to catch a disease, would you?” I ignored the comment and reiterated my request. The owner, sensing an impasse, changed his tone. “You will have to sign a paper, releasing the barbershop from responsibility for anything that might happen to you.” I stated that I would sign the release, returned to the chair, and directed the barber to proceed. I noticed that all of the eight barbers, white and black, were staring. The barber’s hand trembled slightly from nervousness. When the haircut was finished, I signed the statement in a notebook that was proffered to me by the proprietor.

Recognizing that this practice was in violation of Defense Department regulations, I visited several base barbershops the following Saturday and interrogated the barbers. I learned that the white barbers would cut the hair of black soldiers if directed to do so, using a shaver attachment for this purpose. A white barber informed me that the preceding year there had been three days of rioting at a Virginia military base over barbershop segregation, and one man had been killed.

I collected statements from barbers and also from my black teletype instructor. He had been refused service by two white barbers, and they told him to wait for the black barber, who did not materialize. He had to return to his classes without a haircut.

Visiting the base recreation center on Saturday, I prepared a report titled “Integration of Camp Gordon Barbershops: Report and Recommendations.” I attached the various statements, plus my own statement decrying this breach of law and policy. I made multiple copies and on Sunday delivered one to the office of the commanding general, and others to those of his subordinates in the chain of command.

On Monday morning I marched off to class. At noon I was called into the office of my company commander. “You do not follow the chain of command by what you have just done. You are supposed to bring it to me, and I refer it up the line.” Laughing, he added, “I have just delivered a lecture to you on the chain of command. You have an appointment with the base IG [inspector general].”

I was interrogated intensively by the IG, a captain, who concluded that I was acting from conviction. I was given an assignment as an Information and Education instructor and relieved of all normal duties. After learning that my unit was to be assigned to Korean occupation duty, I visited the instructor who had provided me with his statement. He told me that all of the units on the base had been summoned to a formation to hear an announcement from the commanding general that the base would not tolerate discrimination in the barbershops and that the soldiers were to report any infractions immediately. In response to my expression of concern regarding my probable assignment to Korea, he directed me to visit the officer in charge of the assignment section and to request compassionate leave, ostensibly to visit my girlfriend in Europe. Following his instructions, I was greeted by a black warrant officer who smiled broadly and ushered me into the office of the captain in charge. He listened to my story and then proposed to assign me to European duty, so that I would not have to use up precious leave time for a visit.

In Germany I was assigned to an artillery unit. While on maneuvers in the Black Forest, I shared Thanksgiving dinner with a small group of soldiers. Seated across from me, a corporal commented that I appeared downhearted. I said that I was just thinking I would rather be in Paris. The corporal said he was being assigned to Paris. I remarked on his good fortune. “Don’t sweat it, man. I am the chauffeur of Senator Harry Flood Byrd. I just wrote to him that my buddy was being sent to Paris, and so I wanted to be sent there too. You just write to the senator and tell him the same thing. I will give you his private mailing address.”

I thanked him for his kindness and rushed off to write a letter to the senator. The following Monday, having returned from maneuvers, I had a reply from the senator—the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one of the most powerful politicians in Washington—acknowledging my request and stating that he would follow my progress with great interest. I obtained a pass to visit Heidelberg, where I called on the general in charge of legal matters for the U.S. Army in Europe. I asked to be assigned to Paris, where I proposed to study Civil Law, since I spoke French. The general granted the request. I was assigned to the Claims Office Team in Paris, a NATO liaison office that dealt with claims by French civilians against the U.S. Army.

On New Year’s Eve, I was on a train to Paris. Arriving the morning of New Year’s Day, I walked down the Champs-Elysées, oblivious to the cold. For seven months, I lived on the French economy, wearing civilian clothes and with a generous cost of living allowance for rent and food. I worked closely with a staff of French civilian women in the glass pavilion of the former Rothschild mansion in the Bois de Boulogne. I lived on the Left Bank and frequented the cafés, where I once observed tiny, white-maned Bertrand Russell swoop into La Coupole with a retinue of admirers.

Through mutual acquaintances, I met Henry Miller and Richard Wright. I went to Miller’s small apartment on the Left Bank, which was cramped and filled with books. A man of advanced years, he was brusque but civil. Wright received me in his classic high-ceilinged Paris apartment. He was cordial, and we had a brief conversation. I was just curious to meet this celebrated and controversial expatriate.

I also attended performances by the Red Army Choir, the Beijing Opera, and Yehudi Menuhin, and the Russian opera Boris Godunov. In mid-August I was transferred back to Germany for the remainder of my tour of duty, until January 1956.

After your military service, what did you do?

Upon discharge I returned to New York and was admitted to the state and federal bar. I returned to my hometown, Plattsburgh, and hung out there for several months, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. The town had become foreign. Thomas Wolfe was right: you can’t go home again.

After that, I went to Tucson, Arizona, to check out the region. I found the desert magnetically attractive, but the local culture felt alien, except for a small community of artists who welcomed me.

Returning to New York, I met a young woman at a modern dance performance and was captivated by her. She was a designer of woven fabrics. I leased a large sunny loft at 329 East 47th Street—what is now United Nations Plaza—as a design studio and installed her in it. The rent was modest because the building was to be demolished in a few years. I bought hand looms and hired weavers. The enterprise attracted the interest of chemical companies that had developed synthetic yarns. We created demonstration fabrics for various applications, utilizing the considerable colorization skills of one of the weavers, Elsa Rush. The National Council of Negro Women rented space from me to hold meetings. After a year my partner started turning out designs that were purple-and-black combinations, and walked out. I realized this would not be my career of choice, so I dissolved the business.

2 Music and Law

Into the Deep End Fast

In 1960 you worked as an unpaid assistant for Florynce Kennedy, the attorney and activist. How did you meet her?

As a law student I attended huge parties that Flo Kennedy and her two statuesque sisters threw in their large Harlem apartment for law students. Later, when I found that she was practicing law in midtown Manhattan, I approached her directly and offered her my services as an unpaid gofer.

In Flo’s office I met Doris Parker, who claimed to be the widow of Charlie Parker, and Louis McKay, the widower of Billie Holiday. I had never heard of these artists. Flo obtained the representation of the Parker and Holiday estates through the efforts of Maely Dufty, a Rumanian-born publicist in New York who had managed Billie Holiday and been married to William Dufty, the coauthor with her of Lady Sings the Blues.

Two months after joining her office, I found out that Flo had scheduled a press conference in which she identified me as her associate counsel. I had no such formal standing. More importantly, Maely Dufty came to me and urged me to leave Flo, as “something is about to blow up.” Maxwell T. Cohen, Esq., a prominent Manhattan entertainment lawyer, had been retained by Chan Parker, the actual widow of Charlie Parker, to enforce her rights to the estate. I left abruptly. Flo lost the representation of the estate.

Where did you go from there?

I rented a room in the law offices of Bruce McM. Wright, who later became a state supreme court justice, and Harold Lovette, Miles Davis’s manager—a small suite at 120 East 56th Street. I was there for a year trying to form a practice. I had little interest in dealing with the typical problems and challenges of a conventional law practice. Prominent black musicians, clients of Bruce and Harold, came by and I met them. I found these artists interesting people of depth and dignity, more sympathetic than the average run of humanity.

My first victory, while I shared the offices, was on behalf of three jazz bassists: Art Davis and Reggie Workman, and a third whose name escapes me. All of them had sent their basses to Chicago to be repaired, and the instruments had been damaged in transport by TWA. C. C. Tillinghast was its president, and his employees refused to respond to our claims. I hit on a stratagem: I called TWA and asked for Tillinghast, saying that it was a personal and confidential matter. They put me through to him in his home, as he was having dinner. He got on the phone, and he said, “What is this?!” I said, “Mr. Tillinghast, I’m a lawyer. Basses were damaged, and we’re being brushed off by your staff.” He hit the roof! “How dare you call me at my home?” He was incensed! I apologized, and he settled our claim.

Composer and pianist Mary Lou Williams—brilliant, saintly, and influential—paid little attention to her recording and publishing interests. I engaged in extensive research for her in these areas, compiled an inventory of her songs and recordings, and presented it to her. She then proceeded to contact the labels and publishers, from whom she collected long-overdue royalties. I chided her for disregarding my entitlement to compensation for my work, and she was clearly ashamed. I didn’t press the matter, because I knew her to be charitable and supportive of her fellow musicians.

Did these early associations help you in subsequent relations with musicians?

While I was working for Flo Kennedy, Dizzy Gillespie was in touch with her, and it occurred to me that I might do some work for him, since I was then engaged in research regarding the copyrights of the Parker and Holiday estates. I called Lorraine Gillespie, his wife, and introduced myself, suggesting that perhaps I could be helpful to him in this area. She replied, “Dizzy will want to speak with you.” She set up a meeting, and I visited him at his home in Corona, Queens. I worked for him for about two years, attending his performances in New York City, and succeeded in recovering his copyrights from Norman Granz, the producer and record label owner.

After you left the offices of Lovette and Wright, you then had a new round of musical adventures.

I migrated over to Broadway and became acquainted with black R&B writers who were starting to write for white rock-and-roll artists. They hung out in the bars on 52nd Street. There was Charlie Singleton, one of the most prolific and successful figures. “Horse” was a large, soft-spoken, dignified, and congenial individual. Otis Blackwell wrote Presley’s biggest hits. We three formed a publishing company, whose songs included “Breathless” and “Hey, Little Girl,” but it was short-lived. The songwriters were streetwise and engaged in monumental battles with publishers. They would sell a song to one publisher, get an advance, then sell it again to another publisher. It was too fast a crowd for me, so I left the scene, after winning my first court case for a songwriter.

David Curlee Williams, a Kentuckian, had written a hit song, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and the publisher had left town with the earnings and could not be found. Curlee was broke, and I agreed to represent him. I sued the publisher in Supreme Court, New York County, and won a default judgment. When I gave Curlee the good news, he said nothing, but went to Lee Eastman, a prominent publisher, and published the song with him. I phoned Eastman, who had earlier interviewed me for a job, and informed him that I had just won the suit and had a contingent retainer agreement with Curlee that would entitle me to a 25 percent interest in the publishing rights. Eastman replied matter of factly, “I guess you’ll have to sue me.” Disheartened by the experience, I decided that I did not wish to be a lawyer in popular music.

Given your contacts in the jazz world, were you going out much to hear live music?

Sporadically. I was naive, and my responses were totally spontaneous. I was just providing legal services for people in that sector of music.

So, if you were not an aficionado, what kept you going in that realm of music and law?

The artists I encountered in the so-called jazz sector were serious composers and performers. They conducted themselves with dignity, reserve, and integrity. They were profound philosophers and articulate; I had and still have great respect for them.

Around 1963 Stollman persuaded his parents to buy a large co-op apartment at 180 Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side. The apartment included a tiny maid’s room (and bath) on the top floor of the building, where he lived for the next few years. He continued to provide legal services, usually without charge, for composers and performers of the new music.

I was visited by a young woman choreographer. I welcomed her to my parents’ apartment, where I conducted my practice. She said, “Why aren’t you helping Ornette and Cecil?” I said, “Ornette and Cecil who?” She was clearly taken aback. “You don’t know who Ornette and Cecil are? They’re the princes of the new music. I’ve talked with both of them, and they want you to manage them.” I met both of them to discuss their concerns.

I didn’t do very much for Cecil, except to get his pianos fixed. He had a loft on Chambers Street, and his two Steinway grands had been damaged by rain from the skylight. I contacted Steinway, and they repaired both pianos without charge. Gil Evans had made Into the Hot [Impulse, 1961], and half of it was written by Cecil Taylor, who also performed on it, but they called it a Gil Evans record. I contacted the label, and they surrendered their claim to the publishing rights to Cecil for his publishing company, whose catalog I now represent globally. The percussionist Sunny Murray, who toured for years with Cecil, reminded me recently that I was instrumental in getting them booked in Europe for the first time. In 1965 Cecil asked me to manage him. I surmised that others could do a better job for him and declined his offer. We hadn’t been in touch for many years, when I invited him to dinner at his favorite restaurant recently. As we ate, I said to Cecil, “The answer is yes.” He said, “The answer to what?” I said, “The question you asked me in 1965 was whether I would manage you. I’m sure you could use some help.” I negotiated a booking for him into the Iridium, the midtown Manhattan club. He was pleased with it. And they were pleased with my participation.

When I met Ornette, he was already famous, having been featured on a Time magazine cover with his plastic horn. But he was in a protracted depression. He had already done all those records on Atlantic. They were about to release a new one, for which they had not made a contract with him. At Ornette’s request, I called Ahmet Ertegun, the president of Atlantic, and cautioned him that he had not acquired the rights for this release. Subsequently, they paid him a substantial advance and issued the album. He never paid me for my services. In fairness to Ornette, I should mention that I never billed him. This was typical of my conduct, effectual for my clients but not self-protective. To support Ornette, I saw John Hammond at Columbia, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff at Blue Note, and Bob Thiele at Impulse. I offered Bob Thiele a license for Ornette’s self-produced concert at Town Hall for a three-year term. He liked the idea, but then he said, “You manage Ornette?” “Yes.” He looked skeptical. That was intended as a hint, which I did not pick up. I went back to Ornette and said, “Hammond is interested in working with you, Lion and Wolff at Blue Note are interested, and I have a proposal to Bob Thiele at Impulse, and this is the deal.” The following day, Ornette went to see Bob Thiele on his own. He also saw Lion and Wolff at Blue Note and made a deal with them for the Town Hall concert tapes. He then went to John Hammond, and Skies of America eventually followed from that. I had laid the groundwork. His morale improved, and his momentum was restored.

When we first met, Ornette had handed me the tape that he had produced of the Town Hall concert with David Izenzon, Charles Moffett, and a string ensemble. Izenzon couldn’t hear himself, so he turned up his amplifier. His bass track was totally distorted, and they couldn’t use the tape. I went to Dave Sarser, a remarkable engineer and a friend. At his studio, I met Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man, and Horace Parlan, the gifted pianist. David compressed the track; the distortion disappeared and the bass sounded normal. I brought the tape to Ornette. He paid for the engineering work and asked to borrow the tape. I gave it to him.

During that period, in August 1964, Bud Powell returned to America with Francis Paudras. Francis and I had corresponded regarding Bud. I invited Francis to dinner at the Carnegie Hall Tavern. As we ate, I urged him to return with Bud to Paris. “How can Bud survive the pushers here?” He replied that they were bound by contract to perform for two weeks at Birdland. “They flew us here and we must go through with the deal.” I could see Birdland from our window seat, and I spotted a tall, portly man in a tan suit, running around the block, and recognized him. “Isn’t that Bud?” Shamefacedly, he explained, “On our way over, I gave him the wrong pills.”

About a month following Bud’s arrival, I got a phone call from Nica Rothschild, the Baroness de Koenigswarter, whom I didn’t know. “Bud has disappeared. Mary [Lou Williams] says that maybe you can help.” I said I would try. The New York City Police Department, Missing Persons Bureau, staff member asked, “Are you a family member?” “No.” “Well, I’m afraid we can’t help you.” “Please understand,” I said. “We’re talking about Bud Powell, an American treasure.” There was a pause. “All right, we’ll see what we can do.” Then, at 3:00 a.m. the following morning, Nica called: “Mr. Stollman, the police have found Bud, seated on a doorstep in Greenwich Village. I’ve sent my chauffeur to get him. Would you like to come visit me in Weehawken?” Nica had a beautiful, modern flat-roofed house, on the cliffs above the Hudson River, whose panoramic picture windows provided a stunning view of the New York skyline. In its huge salon was a grand piano. On a large antique couch, in the center of the living room, dozens of cats were perched. Still more cats perched on couches that lined the picture windows. A small crowd had gathered: Francis Paudras, Ornette Coleman, and my youngest brother, Steve. As we waited for Bud, his teenaged daughter, Celia, and her mother, Mary Frances Barnes, arrived. Nica served us Château Lafite Rothschild.

Ornette cornered me. “Bernard, why aren’t you helping me?” I said, “Why should I start again?” This was some months after I had done the other work for him. “We’ll make an agreement, but”—this was just before anything had been released on ESP—“you must license the Town Hall tape to me; I’ll produce the record of it myself.” Ornette had left with me a two-track tape of a portion of the concert. I sat down and I typed out an agreement, and he signed it, as we waited for Bud Powell.

That same night, Francis Paudras played me a solo performance by Bud that he had recorded on his Nakamichi professional tape recorder, while Bud stayed in Francis’s apartment in Paris. He had locked Bud in, turned on the machine, and gone out to do his work as a graphic designer. It was stunningly beautiful. When Bud arrived, he sat at the piano and played briefly. Then he pulled me aside and spoke to me in a soft voice: “Mr. Lawyer, can you help me? I don’t want to go back; I want to stay.” Mary Frances and their daughter Celia invited him to live with them in Brooklyn. Francis was dismayed, realizing that his idol would not accompany him back to Paris. Francis said to me, “I have to go back, but I need money.” He had graphic images with him that he had made of Bud. I said, “All right, Francis, I’ll give you the money you need, but I want to license this art.” It was three hundred dollars. These images were used for the covers of his ESP album Live at the Blue Note in Paris, 1961, a tape that was brought to me in 1966 by Buttercup Powell and its producer, Alan Douglas. Francis wrote to me following his return to France. Phonogram wanted to put out a record by Bud, offering a thousand dollars. I had become Bud’s manager. I wrote him back and refused, as it appeared to be too small an advance. In retrospect, I think Francis had personally assumed responsibility for the cost of Bud’s hospitalization for tuberculosis and hoped to recoup part of it. I should have approved his request. Francis eventually licensed tapes from his collection of recordings by Bud to an Italian company. Over thirty years later, in a book he wrote describing his profoundly personal relationship with Bud, he characterized me as a scheming, unscrupulous, money-grubbing liar and recalled events that had never occurred. He blamed me for booking Bud into Carnegie Hall for the Charlie Parker Memorial Concert produced by Mercury Records. I had not been contacted by the producers and had known nothing about it prior to the evening of the performance. In 1997 Francis committed suicide. His book appeared the following year.

Shortly after the visit to Nica, I read in Billboard that Blue Note Records would release Ornette Coleman at Town Hall. I called the owners of Blue Note, and one of them came to see me, a dignified and genteel individual. They had paid Ornette to issue it, and he had then gone to Stockholm. There he recorded At the Golden Circle, including “Sadness,” from the Town Hall concert. I proposed that Blue Note release the portion of the concert that Ornette had not licensed to me, and they accepted. We signed a mutual release, and ESP eventually issued Town Hall 1962. The remainder of the concert has never surfaced, and its whereabouts are unknown.

THE RISE AND FALL AND PERSISTENT RESURRECTION OF A CURIOUS RECORD COMPANY

3 The Initial Years

When did you first imagine starting a record label?

In 1963 I volunteered to do legal work for Moe Asch at Folkways Records. I was fascinated by his dedication to documenting the folk music of America and of other cultures. I saw him as an unofficial extension of the Smithsonian. Pete Seeger was often in the office, providing support. I was struck by the fact that one could operate a record label with very modest means. The custom pressing plants made it possible to press five hundred LPs, place each one in a standard black jacket, paste a printed sheet of paper over it, and have a finished product. Moe Asch had launched his label in 1945 and devoted his life to this undertaking. When he died in 1983, his catalog contained over two thousand titles, all of which are available today from his successor, Smithsonian Folkways.

What was the purpose in producing your very first record, Ni Kantu en Esperanto, in 1963?

In 1960 I became interested in the international language and was briefly employed as a publicist for the Esperanto League of North America. The record was just an exercise, and I had no thoughts of doing anything beyond that. Ni Kantu demonstrated the sound of the language through poetry, a comedy monologue, and songs. It was marketed to members of the worldwide movement.

Late in 1963 somebody told you to go hear Albert Ayler play up in Harlem. What was that all about? Who was that person?

Granville Lee visited me. He had attended high school in Cleveland with another student who was enormously talented. They had formed a band and all through school they were performing professionally. He insisted that I hear his friend, who was going to play at the Baby Grand Cafe in Harlem on the following Sunday afternoon, between Christmas and New Year’s. He said, “I won’t be in town, but you can go; please, you must go hear him.” He had said enough to intrigue me.

It was snowing when I trudged uptown from 90th Street to 125th Street. The Baby Grand was a popular piano bar. A few people were sitting there, wearing their coats, because the heat had not been turned on. The bartender busied himself polishing glasses. Elmo Hope was at the piano, with his trio, on an elevated stage. I sat and listened to them. Several minutes later, a small man in a gray leather suit, holding a large saxophone, brushed by me and jumped up on the stage. He had a black beard, with a little patch of white in it. He was not introduced and, ignoring the trio, he began to blow his horn. The other musicians stopped and looked at him. No words were exchanged. Elmo Hope quietly closed his piano, the bass player parked his bass, the drummer put his sticks down, and they all sat back to listen. He was playing solo, and he kept right on playing for twenty to thirty minutes, just a burst of music. It seemed like a second; it was no time at all! Then he stopped and jumped down from the platform, covered with sweat. I approached him and said, “Your music is beautiful. I’m starting a record label, and I’d like you to be my first artist.” A small voice in the back of my head said, “Oh, you are, are you?” He reflected, and then he said, “I’d like that. But I have to do a session in March at Atlantic. After that, I’ll be free and I will contact you.” I was skeptical that I would ever hear from him again.

In June, however, the phone rang: “This is Albert Ayler. I’m ready to record.” Moe Asch, the owner of Folkways, used a small and inexpensive studio near Times Square, so I directed Albert to the Variety Arts Studio. He arrived with his trio: Gary Peacock and his then-wife Annette and Sunny Murray. Gary was slender and austere, while Sunny was a big gregarious bear. There was no discussion. The engineer was lanky, blond, and low-key, one of the owners. They filed into the recording studio, and the session began. The engineer left the door of the control room open, while Annette and I sat outside listening. As the music played, I was enthralled, exhilarated, jubilant. I exchanged glances with Annette and said, “What an auspicious beginning for a record label!” She nodded her head in agreement. Then I found out that it had been recorded monaurally. I was horrified! We had assumed it would be in stereo. In forty-plus years, no one has ever cared. The engineer had done a superb job of miking. The Penguin Guide to Jazz says Spiritual Unity [recorded July 10, 1964] is one of the hundred top jazz records of all time.

Once you started thinking of a label, did you have a sense of what the potential could be?

Not at all. It wasn’t a thoughtful decision, just something I was drawn toward doing.

After the Ayler session, you knew you had one record. What did you do?

I was thrilled with that record, so I was very much charged up with the idea of going forward. I wanted to explore this new music. A few months later, the October Revolution in Jazz gave me an opportunity to meet the community. The festival took place in a tiny café at West End Avenue, a block from where I lived at 90th and Riverside. The Cellar Café was out of business, and there was no electricity. Bill Dixon and Carla Bley had formed the Jazz Composers Guild, which sponsored the festival. Just inside the entrance, Paul Bley was seated at an upright piano, and standing next to him was Giuseppi Logan with a wired-together clarinet. I positioned myself next to them, as it was the only way I could be certain to hear them. The only lighting was from candles on the crowded tables. I met Marion Brown, Burton Greene, Sun Ra, the entire community of free improvisation composers.

Archie Shepp stood on the steps outside, puffing his pipe: I invited him to record for the new label, but he was under contract to Impulse. I invited all of the artists I found. Sun Ra was slated to perform with his Arkestra in a Newark loft. He gave me the address, and I went. I was greatly impressed by his music, and the playing of bassist Ronnie Boykins prompted me to invite him to record. He said he would like to record when he felt ready, and would let me know. We remained acquainted, as he was repeatedly featured on other ESP albums. Ten years later, he informed me that he was ready. It would be the last album made by ESP before it suspended operations for many years [Ronnie Boykins, The Will Come, Is Now, February 1974].

Were you still working as a lawyer at that time?

Yes, I was continually working, struggling, as a lawyer. I had a private practice. I had sought employment with other lawyers, but these were depressing experiences because I knew within myself I wasn’t going to be a conventional lawyer. I wasn’t interested in the kinds of work that lawyers typically performed.

When you started ESP, how did you imagine the enterprise as a business venture? Did you have any particular business models, beyond Folkways? Were you thinking at all as a business?

I just plowed blindly ahead, without giving a great amount of thought to how it would be sustained. I had no model to go with other than Moe Asch and Folkways. He was focused on documenting our culture, and it was clearly a not-for-profit enterprise. It became my calling. It took over from my law practice very quickly, because it was closer to my heart. I wasn’t judicious in my approach to a livelihood or a career.

As the label was coming into being, how did you figure out financing?

I went to my mother, just after I recorded Albert. There was no way I could have gone forward without her help. She came up with the equivalent of a young executive’s salary for two years. ESP was possible because of her; I had no other source of financing. My law practice was skeletal.

Why did you go to your mother about this and not your father?

She was the business head of the family, a brilliant woman, pragmatic, and a Taurus. My father was an artist, and all he wanted to do was sing. He sang for anyone who would listen. If he were in a room with a group of people, he would have to sing. He needed to be the center of attention, and he sang well. One didn’t discuss anything to do with money or business with him.

You asked her for your inheritance at the time. How did you know there was an inheritance?

My parents were prosperous. They had worked hard all their lives. I felt that they would probably be able to provide funding. I wasn’t sure how much I would need or how much they could afford, and I didn’t ask for a specific sum.

With the Ayler session, you had the studio and the engineer. How did you go about putting together the packaging, the design? How did you find people to work with?

My first art director, Jordan Matthews, had been a producer for ABC. He brought in Howard Bernstein, who did many of our covers. I found Richard L. Alderson in the course of my efforts to manage Bud Powell. When Bud returned to New York in 1964, after years in Paris, he was in terrible physical shape. He had been hospitalized in Paris for tuberculosis, he had liver problems, and he was an alcoholic. When I shook his hand, it was the strangest experience, like grasping a soft pillow. I tried to record him. I put him in the studio with two young musicians, and the tape eventually ended up with Mainstream Records in England, with a picture of me on the back [released as Ups ’n Downs, 1973]. But the session was a failure, and it should never have been issued. I have no idea how this tape got to Mainstream. Then in March 1965 two young men, producers at Mercury Records—this was before Mercury was sold to Universal—decided to stage a concert at Carnegie Hall, the Charlie Parker Memorial Concert. They invited several prominent artists, and it was going to be a recording session. I hadn’t been contacted and knew nothing about it, but I found out they had booked Bud. I went to Carnegie Hall for the concert and met Celia, his daughter, and her mother, Mary Frances Barnes, at the entrance. Bud was with them, and I noticed that his hands were bleeding. “He fell down,” Mary Frances told me. I excused myself and went backstage. An audio engineer was seated at a recording console, and two men stood behind him, the producers, listening to the concert over the speakers. I heard Bud announced. It was clear that he was unable to form chords. It was pathetic. When he finished, I said to the engineer, “I’m Bud Powell’s manager and his lawyer. I must take that tape. It can’t surface anywhere.” He turned to look at the two young men for instructions, and they said, “Give him the tape.” I destroyed it. The engineer was Richard Alderson, who would become ESP’s engineer! Most of our albums were recorded by him, and he was the producer of ESP albums by the Fugs and Tom Rapp [Pearls Before Swine]. He had a small studio that Harry Belafonte had financed, where Lincoln Center now stands.

But how did you manage to get people to do the cover art, for example, when presumably you couldn’t pay them very much?

I picked people who were unknown. They became famous, as their covers for ESP brought them recognition and commissions for major labels and other clients. In keeping with our outlook, they enjoyed complete creative freedom. The large LP format helped. Some covers featured photographs, often without words, a style that was quickly adopted by Elektra and other labels. Howard Bernstein and Dennis Pohl were inundated by offers.

The covers and liners for Spiritual Unity, [Ayler’s] Bells, and Pharoah Sanders Quintet were Jordan Matthews’s concepts. I decided that silk-screening them would have a primal quality, suitable for ESP. I personally silk-screened the first Bells LPs.

Howard and I found each other again recently after thirty-five years. Howard did the graphics for Ayler’s Spiritual Unity, the Byron Allen Trio, for the Giuseppi Logan albums [The Giuseppi Logan Quartet; More], the Holy Modal Rounders [Indian War Whoop], very phantasmagorical. He did the Fugs color cover that we used for the first album, The Village Fugs. He did the Cromagnon record. He did the original cover for Music from the Orthodox Liturgy, but it was rejected by the producer as inappropriate.

Were there ever any recordings that you decided later you didn’t like?

Not one. Many recordings were by artists I had not heard before I commissioned them. In the arts, there are circles inside of circles. If someone plays with another artist, whose work you admire, you know they’re at a certain level of creativity. By granting them carte blanche to do whatever they choose, they assume full responsibility. As a premise, it works.

And that was the same with the cover art?

I never dictated cover art. They came up with whatever they chose to do, and it reflected the vibes of the time. I didn’t want an institutional look, such as those of Blue Note and Impulse. By getting away from that, we were able to remain unpredictable.

When you were starting the label, how did you see your role with respect to the music?

I saw my role as a very limited one, as that of a curator and editor, who nurtured an emerging community of composers.

Where did your affinity for that type of music come from?

One influence was my father, who loved to improvise and harmonize. I grew up with that. During the Second World War, my parents often drove the sixty miles from Plattsburgh to Montreal in their 1941 Buick Special sedan, with their older children crowded in the back seat. My father would sing as he drove, and my mother would harmonize with him. I approached music with the tacit question, Is this art? Entertainment is something else. Bernard Berenson, the art critic, and Sol Hurok, the impresario, were among my models. I was footloose, and I had no wife or children, and my legacy after a lifetime of commitment would be this body of work that highlighted and spurred on the careers of a certain community of composers.

What did your parents say when they later heard and saw what you were doing? Did they ever meet any of the musicians?

They came to performances and met many of the musicians. Tom Rapp and his group, Pearls Before Swine, slept on their living room floor in sleeping bags. My father enjoyed talking with them.

The first time my mother heard Albert’s Spiritual Unity album, I was watching her. She was a woman of very few words, and she just smiled in pleasure. Their sensibilities were sufficiently developed that they picked up on what was going on. She never offered any kind of critical comment, but took it in stride, appreciatively, proud of my work.

Following the October Revolution concerts, why was it the musicians responded to you? What did they have to go by? Was it because you’d already recorded Albert Ayler?

The word had gotten around that there was a new label, and the artists were desperate. No major label would record them. And there weren’t any other small independents like this one. They were mature, in their twenties and thirties—they were ready to be heard. I had made a good faith serious bid, and they didn’t have a better idea. I think it was that simple. What risk were they taking? The artists I met at the Cellar Café, who accepted my invitation to record them, became the nucleus of the label. I surmise that they had probably heard of my recording Albert.

So, in those days, you didn’t encounter much distrust as an independent record producer?

There wasn’t a lot of money involved. They knew they were highly unlikely to sell thousands of LPs. No one imagined that it would be commercially viable. They didn’t look at it that way, of course, because their art was very important to them. I knew from the inception that it might be a generation before this music would be accepted. I couldn’t give them the promotion that a major label could. I didn’t have the staffing, the resources, or the expertise to do a proper job. I knew I could issue and distribute their records. What happened beyond that was out of my control. I think that they assumed they would derive income from their record. Most of them had not recorded before. So, they were naive, and I was as well. What I could not do—and never claimed I could do, but they nonetheless imagined or expected I would be able to do—didn’t happen. The vast majority of the records sold five hundred or a thousand units, while a few of the more celebrated recordings were repeatedly pressed.

However, they gained something priceless. They had an album, and it was prestigious; they could seek engagements. It was a galvanic thing that launched them. If I were the grandson of an immigrant whose father had become wealthy, it would have been an appropriate occupation for me, but I had skipped a generation. I was subjected to harsh criticism over the years and deep suspicion, and praised as well. Some of my detractors came to understand the significance of my work on their lives and careers, and I am not greatly distressed by the criticism. You do what you feel you want to do and can do, and let the chips fall where they may.

In September 1965 the label released its first dozen titles all at the same time. These included dates by Paul Bley and Sun Ra; first records by Pharaoh Sanders, the New York Art Quartet, Giuseppi Logan, Bob James, and Ran Blake; as well as Albert Ayler’s first American record and Ornette Coleman’s Town Hall concert. What was your purpose in launching the label that way?

It was a matter of critical mass. Putting out one album, then a second, and a third would have lessened the impact of our emergence. One afternoon, months earlier, when I was strolling on East 57th Street, I observed a large crowd on the sidewalk outside the Sidney Janis Gallery, for the opening of a new show. Inside, I found works by Andy Warhol, George Segal, and the Chilean sculptor Marisol, among others. The gallery described them as the Pop Art movement. The message was clear: launch your enterprise with a splash and a unifying theme. Put a frame around it and give it an identity as a movement.

The tactic worked. We called it simply the new music. The critics praised our releases. We were unable to find a market in the United States, but Europeans and Japanese responded. The quantities were not substantial, but it was encouraging.

How did ESP go about promoting its releases in those first years?

We attracted college student reps at several schools. We gave them LPs, and they helped us to get publicity on college radio. There was little else that we could do, because commercial radio would not play us, and this remains true today. We were a well-kept secret, except to a few jazz publications and some exposure in the Village Voice and underground newspapers like the East Village Other.

4 While It Worked

After that initial flood of releases from ESP, the dozen titles that came out in September 1965, the label released forty-five more titles over the next eighteen months. As you continued after the first dozen, how did you figure out what to do, whom to record?

Karl Berger sent Gato Barbieri to me. I was lying on the office couch, and suddenly Gato Barbieri was there with his wife, Michele. They looked down at me and said, “Karl sent us.” And I said, “When do you want to record?” I had no idea what he sounded like, but he was very impressive in his bearing and demeanor, and I trusted Karl’s judgment. He had just recorded for ESP. It was often like that. ESP didn’t have a systematic approach that might include submission of a demo, or an audition. It was circles inside of circles.

So you hadn’t heard of Gato Barbieri, his work with Don Cherry?

No.

In the spring of 1966, a number of ESP artists embarked on a concert tour of colleges in upstate New York, which resulted in several albums [Sun Ra, Nothing Is …; Patty Waters, College Tour; Burton Greene Trio, On Tour]. How did that adventure come about?

The owner of the printing plant that was printing our album covers was a friend of Omar Lerman, a prominent music writer and a director of the New York State Council on the Arts. He introduced us, and Omar was very knowledgeable and kind. The council gave us seventy-five hundred dollars during the early months of the label, to do a one-week tour of five colleges with music departments. I hired David Jones, a highly regarded classical engineer, gave him a checkbook, and instructed him to manage the tour as well as record it. ESP sent Sun Ra and his Arkestra, Ran Blake, Patty Waters, Giuseppi Logan, and Burton Greene. When the tour was over, David returned with the tapes, and I turned the tapes over to the artists, asking them to listen to their own work and to select enough material for an album. It worked. David told me that it had been an ordeal for him, coping with the personal needs of all the musicians, and vowed he would never do it again. When ESP artists went into the studio to record, they never did second or third takes of their pieces. The sessions were brief, typically forty-five minutes, and that was it.

Did the label engage in sponsoring other concerts or tours?

Infrequently. The Fugs had an underground hit on Folkways before they joined ESP. We paid for musical instruments, posters, and a publicist, and paid the rent for the Astor Place Playhouse, where they performed for a few months. In 1968 we staged a free concert on Pier 17, which would later become the South Street Seaport, at the foot of Manhattan. Sun Ra and his Arkestra performed without charge. Jim McCarthy of the Godz gave a solo performance, and so did John Hall, who is now a member of Congress. A huge white yacht was moored along the pier on one side, and on the other side was a Portuguese full-masted training ship, with two hundred cadets in white uniforms. A macrobiotic restaurant, the Paradox, was closing on that day, and I paid them for all their remaining food. They delivered it to the pier, and ESP was able to feed Sun Ra and all of the other performers. A huge crowd formed, and the Sun Ra Arkestra played a long set. The captain of the ship allowed the cadets to join the crowd on the pier, and they danced with the local girls. The captain saw our concert as a salute to Portugal, an observation shared by Portuguese journalists who were present, and ESP has since enjoyed a highly favorable reputation in that country. A recording engineer acquaintance warned me not to try to record the event in a conventional manner, explaining that the long electric lines needed to reach the end of the pier would act as antennae, picking up radio signals and ruining the undertaking. The engineers who had been hired for the job were neophytes and unaware of the problem. I foolishly disregarded his warning, and the tapes were useless. He had bicycled down to the scene with his portable tape deck on the handlebars and recorded thirty minutes of the concert. The sound was flawless.

How did you see what you were doing at ESP with regard to the usual industry practices?

I saw the industry as an enemy to the creative process, and I drafted a new standard for the treatment of artists. Each production would be a collaborative undertaking, in which the artists would have full control over the repertoire and the recording process. Our slogan became “The artists alone decide what you will hear on their ESP-Disk’.”

The typical recording industry contract has thirty-six to forty-five pages. We use a two-page agreement, and it is for a single album. The industry agreement grants ownership of the album to the record label. ESP co-owns the album with the artists in perpetuity. By jointly owning the master and administering their publishing rights through our Global Copyright Administration, LLC affiliate, we are partners.

As the label grew, you soon branched out into other types of recordings. How did you make the transition from the free jazz that was the core of the label to other projects like the Fugs, Pearls Before Swine, even the nonmusical albums?

I didn’t want ESP to be a niche label. Art is anarchistic, and when it becomes categorized, it loses impact. I wanted people who were innovative and inspirational. The Coach with the Six Insides, the Jean Erdman theater piece based on James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and other productions were selected using this criterion.

Were you concerned with avoiding a particular public perception of the label?

The label was not to become identified as representing only one particular sector of music. Art is ephemeral, and change is always under way. Any art form can become clichéd and derivative. I thought the label should be a documentary device to capture audio art. The format didn’t matter; it could be Tim Leary talking about LSD [Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out]. It was important to confound people.

Did that help enlarge the audience for the free jazz people?

I was hoping that this approach would reach a larger audience than the very small community who were interested in free improvisation. I was always surprised to find people who embraced all of our repertoire.

The label had a certain success with the Fugs. How did that affect your ongoing approach?

It meant that we were doing more business, and I could pay my staff. Our U.S. distributors stocked our free improvisation titles on consignment to obtain the rapidly selling Fugs and Pearls Before Swine, folk-rock artists. In 1968 we were forced out of business.

The success of the Fugs didn’t change what you wanted to do with the label?

No, I didn’t go out to the pop music community and recruit artists. That wasn’t our focus, and I was not interested in commercial music designed to be entertainment. A few folk-rock singer-songwriters—including Randy Burns, Jerry and Don Moore, Mij, Les Visible, Cromagnon, Octopus, and Louis Killen—came to ESP and were recorded. The Fugs were Beat poets and anarchists. They were against the war in Vietnam. I had numerous reasons for wanting to work with them. But pop music groups as such? Any commercial group would have had lawyers, managers, and demands for promotion budgets. They would have needed a small army of people to support their enterprise.

How did you see the label’s role in the culture of that time?

Our role was to document the work of the community of newly emerging composer-performers of the generation who were identified as free improvisational, who had followed bebop and its immediate successors, such as Coltrane. ESP filled that need.

As you moved from the free jazz to a wider perspective with the label, you also started recording European musicians.

ESP put out one record by Gunter Hampel [Music from Europe, 1967]. By the time it came out, he had his own label, Birth Records. Other European musicians who joined ESP were the Free Music Quintet of Pierre Courbois, the group of Nedley Elstak, and Czech artist Karel Velebny. If I had been able to continue, ESP would have recorded more European artists. They too were in desperate need of wider recognition and stigmatized because they were Europeans.

How did you find out about Karel Velebny?

I’d gone to the MIDEM [the annual international music industry convention in Cannes, France] in January 1968. The Czechs were enjoying their “false spring,” a brief period of freedom from the Russians. They were intoxicated by it, and they staged the gala that year. Marta Kubisová, the most popular singer in Czechoslovakia, sang to celebrate freedom! It was thrilling. At their reception following the concert, a young member of their delegation approached me and said quietly, “You will come to Prague.” On a hunch, I flew to Prague! It was late January, and Prague was dark, cold, and damp, and they burned soft coal, so a soft rain of soot fell. I visited their official record label, Supraphon, where they played me Karel Gott and other artists. Their sounds were all commercial, so nothing came of it. The sun came out, and I hired a cab driver as a guide. We spent hours visiting exhibitions of historical art, the great old churches and monuments in Prague. When evening came, I visited the jazz club and asked for the name of their most celebrated jazz artist. I was told it was Karel Velebny. At my request, they found him for me, and he appeared within twenty minutes. He suggested that we step outside, to avoid prying eyes and ears. We walked out in the darkness, and I said, “I hear you’re the most prominent jazz artist in Czechoslovakia. I have an American label, and I’d like to record you.” “What do you want?” “I want you to take it as far out as you can go.” He looked at me, stupefied. Then he paused and said, “We are going on tour; we will be in Germany in a few weeks.” I said, “When you get to Germany, find a studio and ask them to call me in New York. I will pay for the session.” He agreed. About a month later, the phone call came from the studio in Germany. I said, “Record him. Send me the bill.” I paid the bill, and they sent me the tape. Then a few weeks later, I received photographs from him. He’d been in a terrible car accident. I thought, What a perfect metaphor for the state of his country. The Russians had suppressed the freedom movement. I put a photograph of him lying in a hospital bed, all bandaged up, on the front cover—and a nude shot of him standing and playing the flute on the back cover. The album [SHQ] did not sell, as we were on our way out of business then, so it did not receive promotion. I went to the MIDEM in January 2008 and met a friend who was a Czech publisher. He wants to release the album in his country, where Karel Velebny is revered. We shall license it to him [Velebny, who died in 1989, also founded the Summer Jazz Workshop in Frýdlant, Bohemia, in 1984, which has since been named after him].

Even from the start, did you see the free jazz records at all from a political perspective?

Yes. Art is profoundly subversive. If you’re living under a system whose government is disseminating lies, art is a refuge. It’s difficult for the government to control, if it’s not verbal. Art is inextricable from the free expression of ideas. It subliminally conveys a spirit of freedom. In the late ’60s, we had a system that was drafting American youth for the Vietnam nightmare, and we have a recurrence of preemptive war now, and the official lies that go with it.

What was your relation with the East Village Other, the underground newspaper? They were receptive to the records you were producing, and you even did a record with them.

The Fugs were part of that Lower East Side community of artists, poets, and writers. They trusted me. The newspaper’s editors asked me to do a record that would help finance the paper. They brought the artists to the session.

When did you first become aware of errors or faults in your handling of the label as a business?

I knew from the start that I was woefully incompetent and not suited to deal with both the creative side and the business administration side. I never saw it as a business. It is rare that one can wear two heads. Some artists have phenomenal business acumen, but most have one orientation or the other. And my orientation was to hear what was going on. I never asked, “But will it sell?” That is no way to run a business, if you look at it as a business. If you look at it as something different—as a commitment, a calling, an obsession—no, I didn’t make mistakes. To regard it as a business would have been preposterous. ESP planted seeds that might yield a harvest in a year, ten years, or thirty years. How does one derive a livelihood in this manner? I wasn’t married; I didn’t have the normal concerns about getting married and having children and assuming the responsibility to support a family. I met women from time to time who were extraordinary, who would have made superb wives. I wasn’t about to settle down.

Because of the money from your parents, weren’t you able to keep the label going until that ran out?

Yes. And it ran out because I had been put out of business in ’68, when we were doing phenomenally well. The government closed my business because of our opposition to the war.

With respect to business practices, how did you determine your royalty rates and why did some believe it was too low?

I think our original price when we started the label was $4.98. Over the span of a few years, it became $6.98. A $5.00 retail was $2.50 wholesale, and 25¢ would have been 10 percent of $2.50, domestic. And foreign export would have been 12.5¢. The rate was 10 percent of wholesale. That was not wildly off the mark. The records themselves were not ever—for any of the artists—deemed to be a significant source of earnings. The artists would make more from a tour or a series of concerts in a few weeks than they’d make in a year from a record. The records were a vehicle for promotion. And this had been true of the industry throughout its history. The record labels and their producers, recognizing the vulnerability of the artists, would make sure the studio costs were huge. You had to use a Columbia Records studio if you were recording for Columbia, and you would incur astronomical studio costs, promotion costs, and breakage allowances.

Did your royalty rate change in those few years?

Not only did it not change, but we paid royalties to few artists. During those three years, we kept records of what the sales were. We saved those files and are busy issuing statements that go back to the beginnings of the label. When ESP resumed operation six years ago, we changed our royalty rate to 10 percent of wholesale for all recordings, unilaterally—including those that had been recorded during the early stage of the label—to reflect current prices.

But most of the time you were paying advances?

Three hundred dollars to a leader, fifty to a hundred dollars for a side person, and they all shared ownership of the album.

How did you determine these sorts of arrangements?

Artists who got together to record for ESP produced their own albums and often exchanged roles. A sideman on an album might become the leader on another album. They were all improvising. We decided that the leader should have a share of the royalties as the composer (he was generally the composer), as a performer, and as the leader. That’s three shares to one share for each of the sidemen. That is the ESP formula. All the performers share in the benefits of the sales of the record.

Whether downloads or record sales, we have become efficient in our accounting practices. We did not pay substantial royalties during the first years or during the years we were out of business. We didn’t pay royalties on the licensing either, because licenses were general advances, and then we’d receive absurd, fictitious royalty statements that were useless for this purpose.

So what did you do wrong, and how did musicians understand what was wrong, or right? Are there any particular things that you can point to as your failures in that era?

I have no regrets over any decision that I made during that time. My commitment to document the music was total. So, although I received criticism, it was more from people who didn’t get recorded than from those who did. And of those who did, some were verbal in the first few years, but as time went on, they became far more tolerant, recognizing how important their first record was to their career. Few records ever recouped their production costs in the early years.

Was there a point where this bad reputation was beginning to surface?

Writers have written critically about ESP regarding its royalty accounting practices. Our artists, as they have mellowed, are far more sympathetic to the label, and they now often cite its importance in launching their careers.

And certainly a number of the musicians kept coming back to you, complaints or not.

Yes. There is no ESP musician today with whom I can’t communicate amicably, or who would decline to work with ESP regarding a retrospective or current project involving his or her work.

5 Decline and Fall

In 1968 the label fell over the edge. What were the circumstances? How did that come about?

I had a team of four, including the shipping clerk and his assistants, who were the Godz. We had three albums on the charts by the Fugs and Pearls Before Swine. One was at position 30 on the pop charts. We were hot. Then, I received a call from an industry figure associated with Warner Brothers—that Warner wanted to buy our label. And I said no. One morning, weeks later, the phones stopped ringing and the orders stopped coming in. Obviously, something was going on. The records were available in the stores, but they weren’t coming from us. I went to the pressing plant in Philadelphia, and I toured the facilities. I couldn’t find any Pearls album sleeves, or any of the Fugs. We had shipped them thousands in advance in anticipation of orders. The sleeves had disappeared. The plant had gone into business on its own with our products, bootlegging them. We were out of business.

And this was the plant that you always dealt with?

Yes.

Was there nothing you could do?

We could have sued them in federal court. We would have had to prove what they were doing, which probably wouldn’t have been that difficult to do, but no federal laws against bootlegging existed at that time. The Johnson regime had found a way to silence our criticism of the war in Vietnam. Strict federal laws were enacted in 1974 to deal with bootlegging, but it was too late for ESP.

How did you come to that conclusion? Did you have anything concrete?

There were hints that we were being wiretapped. Why did the Philadelphia plant suddenly decide to go into business on our product, unless they had gotten a government okay? That was my theory. Why would they deliberately destroy an account, unless they had been authorized or directed to do so? That’s a reasonable assumption.

You saw traces that the records still existed?

They were widely available in the stores! Tom Rapp [of Pearls Before Swine] told the public he had sold two hundred thousand records. I believe this was the correct figure. We had sold twenty thousand to thirty thousand—the rest were bootlegs. The Fugs too, their sales estimates were about the same.

Where did the Fugs and the Pearls go from there?

Tom Rapp and Ed Sanders were approached by a CIA man, who signed a personal management agreement with them and took them to Warner Brothers Records. He pocketed Tom Rapp’s seventy-thousand-dollar advance and disappeared. Both groups no longer wrote or recorded songs that challenged the war, so they had been effectively silenced.

Did the bootlegs affect the jazz titles as well?

They weren’t selling. The U.S. distributors tolerated our jazz; they put it on their shelves on consignment, and they could return it any time. They weren’t legally obligated to pay for it until they sold it. Once the popular groups were no longer supplied by ESP, they no longer had any reason to handle the jazz, and they returned their stock to us.

As far as that purgatory of the label for the next few years, what did you do for pressing the new releases? It seems that as many as several dozen records were produced between ’68 and ’74.

I have a vague recollection of using another plant, whose product was of poor quality. In 1974 our remaining stock was sold to an Italian company, as I faced reality and closed the company.

Regarding the COINTELPRO surveillance, did you have any signs that you were being spied on?

I moved from 156 Fifth Avenue, where our offices had been, to an apartment house at 300 West 55th Street, on the top floor, in 1969. I engaged in a telephone conversation with someone, and I used an obscure phrase. Then I got a call from a prominent music industry lawyer, asking me whether I wanted to take on a client. As we chatted, he used the identical phrase. The likelihood of a coincidence was very remote. I concluded that the government was monitoring my phone calls. And he was in on it.

Do you see all that springing from your having two pop bands who were political, particularly the Fugs?

Lyndon Johnson’s daughter got married, and the East Village Other album recorded the broadcast on August 6, 1966, intercutting the announcer gushing about the ceremony with ghastly audio images from the war. That was the first blow. The second was “Uncle John,” a song by Tom Rapp of Pearls Before Swine, which labeled Johnson a war profiteer. The third was “Kill for Peace,” a song by the Fugs. Johnson would have been enraged.

What was your reason at the time for not selling to Warner Brothers?

I had just started the label. Why would I cash out? It would show me as an opportunist—which was not how I saw myself. And I sensed that this was a ploy sponsored by the government to shut us down. Our government has two ways to deal with opponents: one is dirty, and the other is to throw money at them.

Did these troubles dog you beyond that period?

It was a very dark period, during which I lived in obscurity as a state government lawyer until I retired at sixty-two. I reopened ESP in 2003, at the age of seventy-four.

In the mid-1970s, you did continue to work in music a little. Didn’t Columbia Records even hire you for a while?

They actually signed a producer agreement with me to find new talent for Columbia, and I brought them a roster of candidates who were artists that I would have issued on ESP. I signed a deal with them for the Charlie Parker broadcasts, recordings that I had bought from Boris Rose. I acted as the middleman. They wouldn’t deal with Boris Rose, an underground individual, but they would deal with me. I went to Washington with my wife as volunteers on Jimmy Carter’s transition team following his election, and I lost that connection by being out of touch.

I had assisted my lawyer brother Norman to obtain employment with a major music lawyer, and he eventually became vice president for International Legal Affairs for Columbia Records, based in London.

But how did Columbia think of you, at that point in time?

In 1965 I had contacted Columbia custom pressing. They sent me a salesman, Bruce Lundvall. Eight years later, he was the president of Columbia Records. He and I negotiated the licensing agreement for the Charlie Parker material, and he hired me to scout for new talent for Columbia.

With regard to the legendary Boris Rose, and the many radio broadcasts that he taped, what was the legal status of such material, some of which ESP released over the years?

He did this night after night for almost forty years, fifty-thousand hours of live music. The vast bulk of it is in the public domain. The courts have not dealt with whether radio and television organizations can assert any legal interest in their broadcasts apart from the rights of producers of shows. No copyright existed in sound recordings until 1974. No right of publicity exists in the estates of deceased artists if they were residents of New York. The courts have never adjudicated whether broadcasts are in public domain, and the broadcast organizations prefer that it remain a gray area to minimize exploitation of these materials. The rights of living artists to protection against unauthorized use of their names, likenesses, and performances are now protected by copyright laws and laws regarding the right of privacy, unauthorized exploitation, and unfair competition. ESP contracted with the estates of Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday.

How did ESP manage to continue in that period of 1968–74? Where were the resources?

My mother had lent me a certain amount of money. Much of it remained, as we had been largely self-financing. My rent was low and my expenses were as well.

We did some sales, but from 1968 to 1974 there was no longer distribution. We limped along. In November 1974, I got married and we moved to my country place, Acorn Hill House in the Catskills. I had no employment, and my wife wasn’t working. In 1979 I took the federal and state civil service exams, at the age of fifty, and obtained employment as a staff lawyer with the New York State Department of Transportation, at seventeen thousand dollars a year, which was not enough to cover our living costs.

In that period between ’68 and ’74, did the label’s difficulties affect your choices as a producer?

Putting out a record for commercial reasons was never contemplated. It would have been very detrimental to our credibility.

Did these difficulties provide an occasion for new alliances in some way?

Bruce Lundvall at Columbia Records provided us with needed funding from the independent producer agreement and the Charlie Parker licensing. Phonogram in Europe licensed some titles, but the agreement was cut short after two years, presumably under pressure from the U.S. government. Then Japan Phonogram surfaced and licensed titles from us in 1970.

Did the decline that began in 1968 affect your past relationships with musicians?

Not really. I don’t think they were aware of our troubles. Major labels were signing them. Some were getting teaching positions in colleges and universities. Their ESP albums had given them passports to careers. They weren’t preoccupied about sales of their first album.

According to the ESP catalog, even though the company shut down in 1974, you did continue to produce some records afterwards. What was that all about?

While I had no funding, I kept producing records. It was irrational, as these productions had no apparent future. I believed ESP would return to operation.

After eleven years in government service, I retired in July 1991, with a small pension and social security. In December of that year came a proposal from the German dance label ZYX to release every ESP title for the first time on CD. I sent them all of our masters, including several that had never been issued, creating the graphics for those that had never been packaged for release. The catalog became 125 albums. They released all of them, with a forty-two-page color brochure, and sold them worldwide, providing ESP with renewed interest from the music industry and the music-buying public.

How did you end up buying the farm near Woodstock?

I had purchased tickets to the original Woodstock Festival in 1969, but access was blocked by the state police. Instead, I visited a real estate broker in Ellenville, New York, and looked for a secluded property bordering state land for a country home. I found an idyllic parcel of seventy-five acres, with meadows and woods and a stunning view of a mountain peak. Acorn Hill House was my weekend home until 1974, when we moved there. Onno Scholtze, our audio engineer from Philips Phonogram in Holland, had brought his family to live there for a while at the beginning. He found employment with a manufacturer of audio tape, and he opened a recording studio in our old red barn. Onno recorded two young Native American rock musicians from Florida in the meadows of the farm: Sun Country [in 1969; the band later reformed as Tiger Tiger]. The Tiger brothers were sons of Buffalo Tiger, chief of the Miccosukee tribe, a branch of the Seminoles. They had met my father in Florida, where my parents had retired, and he sent them to me. Members of the tribe wrestled alligators for tourists; in later years, they opened a casino in Miami and became wealthy.

What was the perception of the label in this period of decline, among musicians?

We didn’t talk about it with anyone.

Did you take on any outside legal work through this time, in or out of music? How much did others know about your predicament?

I never sent out distress signals and did little legal work, except for Dizzy Gillespie.

6 On Individual Artists

Bernard Stollman was asked to speak more at length about a number of the artists who recorded for ESP.

Albert Ayler

Albert produced four records for ESP: Spiritual Unity, Spirits Rejoice, Bells, and New York Eye and Ear Control. Spirits Rejoice was done in Judson Hall [September 23, 1965], which we rented solely for recording purposes. W. Eugene Smith, the famous photographer, came by and took pictures of the session. So did Guy Kopelowicz, the Associated Press photographer from Paris, a good friend of the label. ESP recently acquired tapes of Albert’s last performances in 1970, at the Fondation Maeght in the south of France. Several years ago, Revenant Records acquired the tape of his performance with Cecil Taylor in Copenhagen, as well as recordings from Cleveland and elsewhere, and issued the Holy Ghost box set. All rights to these performances now belong to ESP.

As Albert was recording his session at Judson Hall, I asked him whether he would be willing to do a short work. He smiled resignedly and nodded in agreement. One of the songs on Spirits Rejoice, “Holy Family,” is the result. It is less than three minutes in length. I realized, to my chagrin, that I had violated our commitment to recognize the artist as the sole authority to determine the content of his work, and I vowed to myself that it would never happen again.

ESP staged a concert at Town Hall on May Day, 1965, which yielded the Bells album as well as Giuseppi Logan’s More. While Albert was waiting to perform, he asked me to the basement for a private talk. His musicians would not play until they were paid, he told me with some embarrassment. It was early in their careers, and they were apprehensive as to whether they would be paid. I had the necessary funds, so I paid them.

In 1966 he asked me to visit him at his aunt’s apartment in Harlem. He told me he had been invited to sign with Impulse. They were offering him a $2,500 advance and he asked for my advice. I said, I thought it might help his career, to have the support a major label could provide. We lost touch with each other after that, as he recorded several albums for Impulse, produced by Bob Thiele.

He came to visit me in November 1970 and told me with much satisfaction that he had a quarter-million dollar deal to tour Japan for the first time, in December. He played me a tape he had made of spirituals, taking them way out. They were magnificent, but my hands were tied. Two weeks later, he was found dead in the East River, under circumstances that are still unknown.

We represent Albert’s estate now. His wife, Arlene; his daughter, Desiree; and a son all live in Cleveland. Desiree has a son at Ohio State on a football scholarship and a daughter who is entering a nursing career. Albert’s father is in his nineties, and his brother Don died a few years ago.

Sunny Murray

I recently retrieved two masters for him: Sonny’s Time Now from the Japanese licensee and Big Chief from BYG. They are being reissued under his direction.

I saw him in Paris a few years ago. At the apartment of a mutual friend, we had dinner together. Over the years, from time to time, we’ve always reconnected.

Pharoah Sanders

We met at his original recording session for ESP, which was his debut as a leader [Pharoah Sanders Quintet, September 20, 1964]. He was extremely shy. Unless you knew him well, he was not garrulous. The session was in the loft of the late Jerry Newman, a highly regarded audio engineer. Pharoah didn’t greet me; he just approached the engineer regarding the placement of the microphones. When it was over, I paid the group.

I met him again three years ago, backstage at the Iridium. A beautiful set—he was singing through his horn—it was quite arresting. In his dressing room I sat next to him, identified myself, and complimented him on his performance. He seemed pleased, but I can’t be certain, because he didn’t say anything.

Paul Bley

Following the October Revolution festival, I visited Paul at his downtown apartment and met Carla. She looked at me quizzically. Paul and I discussed the pending album, Barrage [October 20, 1964]. It was recorded at a midtown studio, with Alfy Wade as engineer. As usual, I provided no input. He was satisfied, I believed, because he quickly decided he wanted to do a trio album [Closer, December 12, 1965]. I didn’t attend that session. I visited him again a few years ago at the Blue Note, performing with a trio. I hadn’t seen him in over thirty years.

Giuseppi Logan

When Giuseppi made his first album for ESP, I stood with Richard L. Alderson, the engineer, in the control room. I thought the piece they were playing was stunningly beautiful. It sounded totally spontaneous, as if they were engaging in an engrossing conversation. Suddenly, I heard a “thwuuunk,” and I realized that the tape had run out. The engineer and I were so absorbed, we hadn’t been paying attention. I thought, “Oh God, this remarkable thing is lost. It was interrupted in the middle, and it’s gone.” Richard got on the intercom and said, “Giuseppi, the tape ran out.” Without a pause, Giuseppi said, “Take it back to before where it stopped and we’ll take it from there.” So, Richard wound it back and played some bars of it and hit the record button, and they resumed exactly what they were doing—there was no way of telling where the break had occurred. It was unreal. [Stollman’s note to the 2008 reissue of The Giuseppi Logan Quartet, 1964]

I hadn’t seen him in ten years; he had vanished. Then, one early spring day in 1979, I made a rare visit to the Manufacturers Hanover bank at the corner of 57th Street and Ninth Avenue, where the ESP master tapes were stored. As I approached the corner, I saw a street musician playing a battered clarinet held together by wires and recognized him as Giuseppi Logan. Of all the places to play on the streets of Manhattan, he had picked a spot directly above the vault in which the tapes of his recorded performances were stored, about which he could not have known. When I stopped to speak with him, he gave no sign of recognition but leaned over and whispered in my ear: “Nixon has exploded a bomb off Amchitka.” Some years earlier [in 1971], Nixon had authorized an atom bomb test under the waters of Alaska. I gave him a small sum, and he brightened and said, “Now I can go home and practice.” Efforts were made, over the years, to put him in contact with people with whom he could play and record his music, but his mental faculties were impaired and he was unable to perform. He had last been seen in Seattle some years ago, and I looked for him there during a visit in the late 1990s, but no one in the music scene recalled seeing him.

In the summer of 2008, he showed up at the Vision Festival in lower Manhattan. He has since acquired an alto sax, a bass clarinet, and a flute. He’s been practicing, trying to get his strength back together. ESP has provided some support, and he has expressed a fierce desire to perform his new works.

Marzette Watts had recorded the Judson Hall concert in 1966 that ESP produced, of Giuseppi [playing thirteen instruments] with a small chamber ensemble. It was exquisite, but Marzette told me afterwards that the recording had failed. I was devastated! When I reached him on the phone in 1997, he confessed that he had lied to me and claimed he had done this to protect Giuseppi. We agreed that he would turn the tape over to me, and I volunteered to pay him for his services. He died before we could conclude the transaction. Giuseppi is presently being cared for by the Jazz Foundation of America and has returned to recording.

Roswell Rudd

Roswell Rudd had a large loft on Chambers Street in Manhattan and several young children. I remember visiting him there, and this was probably the origin of our agreement to record the New York Art Quartet [November 1964]. Roswell and I maintained contact over the years. I saw him in Woodstock in the ’80s and recently at the Rubin Museum in 2006, where I caught him during the reunion of his Dixieland band at Yale, Eli’s Chosen Six. It was spectacular!

Sun Ra

He had made over seventy-five records for his El Saturn label in the ’50s and ’60s. When he signed with ESP, he had never had general distribution—El Saturn was sold only at their gigs. His first two studio albums with ESP, Heliocentric Worlds, volumes 1 and 2, in 1965, brought him wider public recognition. During that same period, ESP sent him and his Arkestra on the college tour [Nothing Is …, 1966]. He was generous in response to ESP requests for his time and his music. Later, ESP produced the Town Hall concert [Concert for the Comet Kohoutek, 1973], and he was given a large advance to bring back recordings from his pending Mexican tour, but the Town Hall appearance was our last project together.

Following Sun Ra’s first visit to Egypt in 1971, he and his Arkestra were stranded at Kennedy airport, broke, on their return. He called me at 11:00 p.m., and I drove to the airport in my old station wagon, paid for cabs, and he came with me back to Manhattan. My parents had an apartment at 5 Riverside Drive. They were in Florida, and I was staying there. Ra stopped by for tea—by then it was one in the morning, and he wanted to talk.

He told me how he was stopped at the Egyptian border by a guard, who examined his passport and was affronted—Sun Ra, in the Ptolemaic religion, is the term for a deity! He wasn’t going to admit Ra and his musicians into the country. Sun Ra asked the guard to call the director of the Egyptian museum, who rushed out to the airport and engaged Sun Ra in conversation. They talked Egyptology, including hieroglyphics. Ra had studied the Rosicrucians; he was knowledgeable about Egyptian lore. The director said to the guard, “He is who he says he is. Let him in.” He invited Ra to appear on Egyptian television. The group also went out to the pyramids. While they were there, a German documentary film crew was filming and saw Ra and his musicians, so they filmed them. When they finished, Ra sent someone over to confiscate the film.

The day after the Kohoutek concert, Ra came to my apartment. I had moved to West End Avenue. The label had been shut down—what was I doing staging a concert at Town Hall? He came by with a small group of his followers to show me a film, Space Is the Place. It was shot partly in the Rosicrucian Garden in California, and it showed Ra stepping out of his spaceship. There were shots of young women in scanty attire, introduced gratuitously. I said, “The film is fine, but take that material out. There’s no point to it.” Then they left. The master tapes of the Kohoutek concert were stored openly in the office, and they vanished during his visit. I never saw him again. The engineer had done a monaural reference tape for the concert, and this was used by ESP many years later for the record.

Frank Wright

John Coltrane was playing with his quartet at the Village Gate during the Christmas holiday. I was greatly impressed by the playing of a guest artist, a saxophonist. When the set ended, I approached and complimented him on his playing. I asked who he was. He said, “I’m Frank Wright, from Cleveland.” “Do you have a record label?” “Oh no, I’m not on any record label.” I said, “Well, you are now.” He’d been pressing pants in a dry cleaning shop in Cleveland before he came to New York. Shortly afterwards, he formed a group and went into the studio [to record Frank Wright Trio, November 1965]. And he did a second album for ESP [Your Prayer, March 1967]. Then he came to me, and he said, “Bernard, I’m desperate. I can’t get any work in this country.” I said, “You have no problem, Frank. You’re going to Europe.” He said, “I am?” “Of course, you are.”

And he did. A year and a half later, Frank returned. He was ebullient and dressed beautifully. “Bernard, I’ve made twelve albums! I’m touring everywhere. It’s wonderful.” I said, “I’m very happy for you, Frank.” That was the last exchange I had with him. Frank married a French woman and had a child and lived the rest of his life in France.

Burton Greene

He made two records of his own with ESP [Burton Greene Quartet, December 18, 1965; On Tour, April–May 1966]. And he was on both Patty Waters records. Marion [Brown] performed with him on his first album, and his second album was from the college tour. Burton was one of the most outspokenly critical individuals regarding ESP for many years. He recently acknowledged, when I chided him, that while he had made numerous recordings over the years, none of them had made money. He acknowledged that his impressions were incorrect.

Patty Waters

One afternoon Albert Ayler phoned and asked me to visit him in a handsome group of buildings that predate the Revolutionary War, on Astor Place, across from the Public Theater. It was a beautiful afternoon, and he opened the door of a lovely, sun-filled apartment. He smiled at me and stepped aside. Patty Waters was standing behind him. That’s how I met her.

I had never heard of her, but I knew that Albert would not mislead me. A resourceful woman, she was working as a ticket taker in a movie house, barely surviving. She invited me to her apartment, a tiny room with an upright piano. I said, “Play for me.” She sat at the piano and played some songs. I said, “What would you like to do as a record?” “I want to do the great standards, like Ella.” I replied, “That’s fine. But not on ESP. You have to do your own material.” Patty found Burton Greene, who had just recorded his first album for ESP.

She and Burton worked it out between them. She sings and accompanies herself on piano through the first side of her album, Patty Waters Sings [December 19, 1965]. Then she does “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,” and Burton starts to tear apart the piano at that moment, so that half of the album is Burton and his trio backing her. They were all her originals, except one that she’d written with another woman. I think it’s one of the finest albums I’ve ever had anything to do with. But it’s topped by Patty’s College Tour [April 1966], which had different mixes of musicians with her, song by song. Her work has been praised by Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, Diamanda Galas, and by critics.

She didn’t stay active as a musician in the years that followed, and we lost contact. She lived in Santa Cruz, and part of the time in Hawaii, raising her son. When she came to the Vision Festival in 2003, Burton and bassist Mark Dresser played with her. ESP may release it.

Perry Robinson

Henry Grimes’s trio record [The Call, December 28, 1965] was as much Perry’s as it was his. He’s a very fine clarinetist. I’ve run into him in the past occasionally. It’s partly my fault; I could have taken some initiative with him. I had no rationale or justification for not giving him the same attention I’ve given to others. He projects modesty, humility, diffidence. He’s highly regarded by his fellow artists.

Marzette Watts

I knew him as an independent engineer with his own recording studio. When I visited his apartment on Cooper Square, he had a few small paintings on the wall. I didn’t know at the time that he had studied at the Sorbonne. He said, “Bernard, I’m going to do an album.” “Yourself? Are you a musician?” “Yes,” he said, “I taught myself.” He had such aplomb, that when he said something it wasn’t halfway. I said, “All right, Marzette, you will do an album.” He brought together Sonny Sharrock, Karl Berger; a lot of people played on that album [Marzette Watts and Company, December 1966].

The Fugs

Jordan Matthews came to me one day, and I was depressed. Our initial releases weren’t selling. “My company’s not happening,” I told him. “The American public is not interested in this music.” He said, “You’ve got no problems. You’ve got the Fugs.” “What do you mean?” “I’ve talked with them. They want to be on the label.”

They went to Richard Alderson’s studio and made their album [The Fugs, 1966]. It was a lot more polished than their first record, and Ed Sanders’s songs were more prominent in it. When they did the suite “Virgin Forest,” which was the culmination of the album (and which I later learned had been composed by Richard Alderson), I performed with them as one of the rude chorus. “Kill for Peace” is on the album, and that song was certainly very antiwar and antiestablishment. I took no part in counseling them. That record was really their unfettered moment.

The material put out by Folkways [The Village Fugs, 1965] was charming. Sexually, it was raw; it wasn’t political. And then, from the unreleased Folkways material, came “CIA Man,” which appeared on Virgin Fugs. That had been part of their original material, but they were angry with me when I released it, a violation of the label’s principles. ESP was sued by the Fugs, but they lost the case.

After The Fugs started selling, I bought their first album from Folkways. Moe Asch couldn’t care less how much they sold, as he didn’t want anything to do with them. I released that album on ESP as well. Virgin Fugs came out later: when I bought the master from Moe, the tapes included additional songs. It meant we had another album of material. By then, relations were strained with Sanders. They were feeling their oats; they had a manager. They had been on the Tonight Show. They had all kinds of major breaks—some of which ESP had engineered, because it hired a publicist for them. Their drum set, their instruments, their microphones, all kinds of stuff, silk-screened T-shirts, posters, advertising—ESP underwrote it all, providing first-rate professional support.

We’d never had a pop group, with underground buzz, and we played it to the hilt. We booked the Astor Place Playhouse for them. I signed the lease and advanced the down payment for the rent. They performed there continuously for a few months [January to May 1966, appearing weekly, according to Sanders in his history of the Fugs on the group’s website; during this period other ESP artists also performed there, including Albert Ayler and Sun Ra]. And the night they opened, the fashion editors and the major media came down as their guests, and ESP put out a spread for them of macrobiotic food, which they ignored. But they went back uptown and wrote very supportively. It was a major breakthrough.

They did a free concert in Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side for a crowd of several hundred fans. As they were performing on the stage, a police captain came by with a detail of four officers and made his way through the crowd. He mounted the stage and said, “I have a report of a bomb threat. You’ll have to clear the area.” Nobody moved. He climbed down off the stage and disappeared. The Fugs resumed their performance.

Peter Edmiston became their manager. He was in partnership with Charlie Rothschild, a well-known manager who represented Judy Collins and Allen Ginsberg. Edmiston took the Fugs and the Pearls to Warner Brothers and stole Tom Rapp’s advance. After that, he vanished and hasn’t been seen since.

Godz

They were all sales clerks at Sam Goody’s, the record store. One of them became ESP’s art director [Jay Dillon], another became our sales manager [Larry Kessler], and two were just helping the shipping clerk [Paul Thornton and Jim McCarthy], because we were shipping a lot of records. At one point, Larry Kessler came up to me and said, “Well, we’re going to record tomorrow night.” “We?” “Yes,” he said, “we call ourselves the Godz.” I had no idea until that moment that they had any such aspirations. I said, “Where are you going to record?” He said, “Herb Abramson’s,” which was a studio we used. I said, “Do you want me to hear you?” “Oh, yes. We’re rehearsing in Natasha’s apartment tonight to prepare for the session.” Natasha was my executive assistant.

On a hot August night, I visited her apartment. It was humid. We turned off the lights, so we wouldn’t have heat from the bulbs. As we sat on the floor in the dark, the guys started to do a song. They imitated the sounds of a passel of cats on the back fence during mating time, doing this like a choir. I decided we would call it “White Cat Heat.” I allowed the session to go forward, and it was clear that I was going to subsidize it, no big deal. At seven o’clock the following evening, the session began. I decided that my presence might intimidate them, so I waited about forty-five minutes. At a quarter to eight, I entered the studio. It was on West 56th Street, and it had been the original studio of Atlantic Records. Herb Abramson had been a founder of the label with the Ertegun brothers. I found them sitting around. Paul Thornton, realizing that I was a little taken aback, greeted me. “Would you like to hear it? We just finished it. We’re editing it now.” I said, “You finished it in forty-five minutes?” He said, “Yeah, we just ran with it.” So I listened, and I was delighted. I said, “We’ll call it Contact High with the Godz.” I was obviously inspired. It was followed by a second album [Godz 2, 1967]. For the third one [The Third Testament, 1968], they invited a large number of friends, who contributed crowd noises and choral effects. It has kind of a rowdy party quality to it, which works.

Promoting them was an impossible challenge. They would try to perform, but they would get in fights; it was total chaos. I rented them a concert hall in the Times Square area and sent out flyers—they showed up but no one else did. Larry Kessler and Jim McCarthy were at each other’s throats. “I’m the leader!” “No, I’m the leader!” That kind of thing. Those were the only records they ever made in their lives. We sent review copies of their records to the press, and one famous critic loved them, Lester Bangs—which was a tremendous plus, of course—but nobody else did. I think we re-pressed the first one, because I know the artwork changed. So, we pressed at least a thousand altogether of that one, maybe more.

I didn’t bother to stop to figure out whether it worked or not. The investment was minimal and I liked their work, so I just kept documenting it. Now that ESP is back, we’re going to do a Godz box set. Their records were pressed in Italy, by Abraxas, in the ’90s. That gave them a new lease on life—and they sold reasonably well, five hundred pieces a year.

Pearls Before Swine

One day in 1966, two tiny reels of tape arrived in the mail at the ESP office on the twelfth floor of 156 Fifth Avenue. They were postmarked Eau Gallie, Florida. At the end of the day, I sat alone in my darkened office to audition them, and as I listened, I was moved to tears. I called Tom and asked him to visit a local studio in Florida with his group to make a professional demo. Two weeks later, a seven-inch square box arrived, wrapped in kraft paper. On the cover were handwritten notations: “garbage,” “trash,” “disgusting.” Inside was a reel of tape. The Christian fundamentalists who owned the studio apparently could not refrain from expressing their opinions of his lyrics.

I brought the group to New York and they stayed in my parents’ living room in sleeping bags. The first record was recorded in Richard Alderson’s studio [One Nation Underground, May 1967]. I was the gofer; I went out at two or three in the morning to the delis so that Tom and Richard could work without interruption. Tom was pleased and gratified at the reception the first album had received, and he saw that he had complete latitude to do whatever he wanted. The second record [Balaklava] was done a year later. Then Edmiston signed him to a producer agreement and brought him to Warner Brothers.

The Pearls records got extensive airplay on college radio. Rumor was that there had been vast sales of the Pearls albums. They didn’t come out from us; they came from the pressing plant. We didn’t get rich on it.

Yma Sumac