Recording Cecil Taylor.

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When I started out recording in the late 60s, my goal was to make hip and popular music. You know, like The Beatles. Since things rarely turn out the way one hopes, I spent most of my recording experience in jazz, particular avant-garde jazz. While it’s music that reminds many of heavy traffic mixed with fingernails on a blackboard, for me it provided a thrilling window on expansive thinking. These were experiences that made sure I’d work hard to never be complacent. There’s no trade I’d rather have for those times.

Almost 40 years after the fact, it’s hard for me to imagine I was lucky enough to work with one of the great, world class talents like pianist/composer Cecil Taylor, who, along with John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, was a leading figure in the resetting of jazz expectations for over 50 years. Especially considering that I was 22 years old. But often, cutting edge artists on the fringes of mainstream culture like Taylor don’t always command the attention of the leading recording institutions, and it’s the young, passionate fans (like I was) that can fill the breach. 

Cecil’s (temporary) manager enlisted me to record and “produce” only since I could access some premium tape decks and microphones, and because I’d work tirelessly for his music. We recorded the “Return Concert” in November 1973 at The Town Hall in New York, and later in the winter traveled to Washington D.C. and crashed in a friend’s place to record a show at the Smithsonian. I spent months pouring over the tapes prepping them for release on Cecil’s own label, Unit Core Records (only the Town Hall show was released, as Spring of Two Blue J’s).

In the Village Voice, America’s leading jazz writer Gary Giddins called the album Cecil’s finest, and later said “it offers an improvisational coherence his earlier work only hints at.” 

I still have to pinch myself about my brief association with an artist like Cecil Taylor at one of the great peaks of his career.

You can listen to the entire album (and outtakes and alternative mixes) here, and there are some of the stories of the recording too. Cecil’s not an easy listen, but if you’re up for it there are a lot of rewards.

My mentors: Michael Mantler

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Photograph of Michael Mantler by Tod Papageorge, 1968

Another in my ongoing series of horrified-to-be-identified-as-my-“mentors:”

Trumpeter and composer Michael Mantler.

Mike was first hand proof that talent, planning, vision, drive, hard work, and sheer force of will could combine to accomplish dreams beyond anyone’s expectations. He didn’t have any particular interest, I think, in showing me much of anything really, but he was an incredible role model, trying to keep his family’s heads above water, struggling against all odds to be viable fringe artists in a highly commercial world. It was a time in my life that would never be repeated, and one that made a huge difference to me.

Mike would probably recoil at the whole idea of mentorship —by now, we’re probably more like friends or something— but I don’t know what else to call it. He was already a young legend in avant-garde jazz when, as a naive 18 year old, I crashed my first professional recording session he was producing, his then wife Carla Bley’s “Escalator Over the Hill,” He patiently figured I was a friend of one of the superstar orchestra’s if he even noticed my presence. I went on to play their records on college radio, and then he and Carla trusted me right out of school to work at their innovative artist record distribution service (itself an outgrowth of their incredible, idealistic collective, the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, JCOA). I wasn’t too impressed with the job I did, but a few years later Mike asked me to be the sound man and assistant roadie on Carla’s first big band tours. It was an unforgetable experience not only for the music, but for the pride with which Mike managed the unruly, artistic bunch they’d gathered. I repayed them after a year by ducking out days before our first European tour (a real loss on my part), but it didn’t stop us from staying friendly for the 30 years since.

Thanks Mike, you made a real difference in my struggle to become a professional adult.

……
It wouldn’t be right to talk about Mike without mentioning some of his stunning work. His music isn’t for everyone (on his website he quotes one reviewer saying “’Silence’ is possibly the least listenable record I have ever heard”) and requires a dedicated listener, but the rewards are great. Aside from his playing and composing, Mike was no slouch as a producer either. He always knew to not only get the very best musicians, but that it didn’t hurt if they had name value for sales (check out Robert Wyatt, Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, Jack DeJohnette, Pharoh Sanders, Cecil Taylor, and Don Preston, among many others). Here’s a few worth checking out:

One of my favorites of Mike’s pieces features a jazz avant-garde superstar orchestra, from the 1968 “The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra”:

The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra > Preview

(Composed & conducted by Michael Mantler;
Soloist: Pharoah Sanders)