In 1986, at her final Chicago Jazz Festival, Sarah Vaughan stopped the show
mid-song and told the audience they would wait until the guy in the front
row with a video camera was ejected and the tape given to her. She smashed
it before continuing. She said she was through with people getting a free
ride on her work.
In 1982, Jaco Pastorius made a studio recording featuring steel pan artist
Othello Molineaux. The tape was stolen by an unscrupulous engineer, who
Jaco thought he could trust, and was released in 1991 (Holiday For Pans)
after Jaco's death. Jaco's estate and Othello get nothing for it. In another
Jaco incident, some really bad quality (stereo mic to cassette) recordings
were made in New York of three live dates in 1985. Although the players
and Jaco's estate do get a pittance from sales, I'm sure they all cringe
at the quality of the recordings as well as some their playing.
These are just a few examples of not taking care of business, of which the
history of recorded jazz is rife. Fats Waller selling songs for drinking
money, Charlie Parker recording some sides for a fix, producers claiming
composers credits and royalties for songs they heard at sessions, are perhaps
some of the better known tales.
You are probably wondering where this is going; some of you may know already
(said tongue in cheek). If you are a working musician, particularly if you
write your own material, be ever so careful of who, how, when, and where
the tapes roll!! If you don't, you could find yourself in some very embarrassing
situations later.
Let me spell out some of the potential problems with recordings over which
you give up control. First, just because someone has a microphone and a
tape recorder does not necessarily make said individual a recording engineer.
Remember this recording is a historical document of your performance, and
a bad recording can ruin what was a great show (however a great quality
recording cannot fix a bad performance). Nonetheless, both are preserved.
Either way it is your reputation at stake, not the recordist's. The next
point is: what is the recordist's intent for the recording? Is it a hobby,
for the home collection, or is there an ulterior motive? Who gets to keep
the master tapes? Point three: what qualifies the recordist to make a recording
of your show? Membership in NARAS (National Association of Recording Arts
and Sciences) would be great. Maybe having gone through one of the recording
programs at a reputable institute (not a match box school) would increase
credibility. It takes a lot of training, practice, and experience to understand
where best to place a microphone or which type works best on each different
group and space-it will be different. Possession of equipment does not certify
knowledge of recording techniques. Point four: is the person doing the recording
familiar with the type of music you play; have they even heard you play
before? In the recording biz we talk about what kind of "ears"
someone has. Are they rock 'n' roll, blues, classical, country, jazz etc.
Most good recording people know their ears and stick to recording the type
of music they hear best. Crossing over from one style to another can have
most peculiar results.
Finally, here are some things musicians should ponder if they've been asked
to record or if someone has asked to record them.
How would you feel if you got a recording contract and finally, after all
your hard work, you got the money and notoriety you deserve and suddenly
a crappy tape that you unwittingly allowed to be made ten years ago pops
up on the market. This release, for which you get no financial rewards,
maybe due to the quality of the recording (or maybe you were having an off
night) smears your good reputation. What if you go to publish some of your
originals only to find out that some one else (say the recording engineer
or producer) already owns the rights?
Even in the best of worlds some pond scum exists: even if only to feed the
fish. PROTECT YOURSELF AND YOUR MUSIC!!! Know that what doesn't sound good
won't come back to haunt you later. Two more examples are the Miles Davis
Plugged Nickel recordings and Sun Ra's stuff released posthumously by Leo
Records. Neither were allowed to be released during their lifetime, however,
since their deaths, they have been. Miles sounds awful on some of the previously
released stuff, go figure why it wasn't released while he was alive. Sun
Ra's is just plain bad recording technique, and neither his estate nor the
members of the Arkestra get a penny from any of these releases. It's sad
but true, it could happen to you. Don't get blue, let the tape roll, JUST
COVER YOUR ASS!!
People who study jazz too often isolate The Musician and The Art, forgetting
the many people who work behind the scenes to support artists and (sometimes
unintentionally) make performances happen. Their personal narratives are
frequently as interesting and idiosyncratic as the musicians' stories and
quite often their historical role has been pivotal. Can you imagine American
jazz history without Sidney Story, John Hammond, Norman Granz, Al Capone,
or Chan Parker? In like manner, the history of jazz in Japan since the 1950s
would be quite different if there had been no Doctor Jazz.
Dr. Uchida Osamu has spent so much of his life listening to jazz, collecting
records, hanging out with and assisting musicians, and documenting jazz
history, that one wonders where he actually found the time to go to medical
school and run his own practice. Born in the town of Okazaki (a suburb of
Nagoya in central Japan) in 1929, Dr. U first heard jazz in 1950 on US Armed
Forces Radio during the Allied Occupation. As a starving medical student,
he borrowed money to buy imported American records and started hanging out
with American soldiers in order to hear the music that so entranced him.
With the zeal of a missionary, he sought out people who shared his interest
and organized "record concerts" featuring recorded music and commentary.
In the early 1960s Dr. Uchida started establishing close relationships with
jazz musicians such as Akiyoshi Toshiko, Watanabe Sadao, Hino Terumasa,
Kikuchi Masabumi, and Togashi Masahiko, who came to regard him not only
as a generous patron and cheerleader, but also a confidant and advisor.
Dr. U carried a large tape recorder with him to jam sessions sponsored by
the Twentieth Century Music Studies Group at the Ginparis coffeeshop, thus
documenting the explorations of young musicians who were self-consciously
groping for new voices within the jazz idiom. In an effort to support their
experiments, Dr. U built an addition on to his home/office that was dubbed
"Uchida House"-a fully equipped recording and rehearsal studio
that jazz musicians were free to use as they wished. Japanese musicians
frequently studied, composed, rehearsed, jammed, and slept there; American
musicians passing through the Nagoya area also made a point of stopping
by Uchida House. One of the doctor's fondest memories was Thelonious Monk's
visit. Monk came by to listen to some (nervous) Japanese musicians perform
and to hear a rare private recording of Charlie Parker at Birdland from
Dr. U's enormous jazz collection. As his taxi was pulling away from Uchida
House, Monk ordered the driver to stop, got out and hugged Dr. Uchida, saying
he'd never had more fun.
Japanese musicians relied on Dr. Uchida for his medical skills, as well;
not a few of them sought his help to overcome drug addictions ("cold
turkey" was his preferred treatment). At a time when jazz musicians
were stigmatized as drug abusers, anyone associated with them was considered
suspicious. Undercover cops showed up at Uchida House jam sessions hoping
to catch the doctor dispensing narcotics. Once an officer threatened, "I
have a gun!" when the doctor refused to go to the station for questioning
for the third day in a row.
Since his retirement and the loss of his wife, Dr. Uchida spends his time
traveling around Japan and the world to watch his musician friends perform.
Uchida House was demolished in 1992, and he donated his collection of jam
session tapes, magazines, and 20,000 jazz LPs to the city of Okazaki with
the intent of creating Japan's first jazz museum. He has written two newspaper
serials and one book (When Jazz Was Young, 1984) on his experiences, and
one LP of the 1960s Ginparis jam sessions has been released. He remains
active as a concert producer, jazz critic, historian, and self-proclaimed
"jazz crazy." A retired physician who by his own admission smokes
and drinks too much, he has the energy of a man half his age, and commands
the respect of several generations of musicians who have benefited from
his enthusiasm. He is the "Dr. U" thanked by Hino and Kikuchi
on their latest Blue Note release, the funky Acoustic Boogie.
I once embarrassed Dr. Uchida by pointing out similarities between his life
and that of Monk's friend and patron Baroness Pannonica de Koenigwarter.
He insists that he's done nothing to compare with her deeds. But a whole
nation of jazz people would beg to differ