Last spring after reading a New York Times account of the demise of one of the last of a dying breed, the retail record store, I knew the proprietor of this Brooklyn record outlet was someone we should interview as part of a series of oral history interviews for the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn. So last April my Weeksville colleagues Jennifer Scott, Kaitlyn Greenidge, and I toted our equipment to the modest home of Mr. Joe Long, legendary proprietor of what had been a Bed-Stuy institution – Birdel’s Record Store.

Birdel’s, as you’ll learn from our interview, besides being a listening post, community and budding artist hangout, and site for countless artist record signings, is the place where nascent hip hop artists like the late Biggie Smalls did their initial crate digging and samples mining. Reading the New York Times account of the sad demise of Birdel’s put me in mind of the record stores of my youth, the places I frequented in Cleveland to search for the latest recordings, have a listen to those records I was speculating on, and pore through liner notes and personnel listings to learn more about who was who in the music. The following is part one of our interview with the gregarious Joe Long.

Joe Long plying his trade at the late, lamented Birdel’s

When I read that New York Times piece it reminded me of record stores I used to frequent as a kid, before there was any Tower Records; the kind of record store in the neighborhood where the records would be behind the counter on the walls. Talk about the history of Birdel’s.

Joe Long: I came to New York from North Carolina in 1954. The reason I came to New York was to better myself with a decent job to help my mother prolong the education of my sister that was in North Carolina College in Durham. She had won a 2-year scholarship, she was valedictorian. I came out of high school at the tender age of 16 and I said I would work to help her to get through her junior and senior year of college. That’s what prompted me to leave North Carolina to come to New York.

In 1954 my sister that lived here worked at Rands Dry Cleaners and she had a position for me when I left North Carolina. I came straight to Brooklyn and we lived on Quincy Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant at that time. I worked at Rands on the line sorting clothes and I learned that quickly, and then I did maintenance [work] with them. I was always an enthusiastic person for music, I really loved music. In my sophomore year at home I bought a Victrola called Airline from Montgomery Ward. Remember those big boxes with AM and FM radio, shortwave and everything? Airline was the brand.
I bought that radio so we would have music in the house and in the community. Victrola, they called them at that time, cost me close to $200 and I paid down like $25 then $5 a week until I was able to pay for it; back then they wouldn’t give it to you until you finished paying for it.

Everybody would come to my house and we would party on the weekends because I had the only Victrola in the community. I was working at the 5 & 10 cent store H.H. Kress, and by me working there I had access to the music – it was 78s during those days and I would bring home these 78s and we would have our little thing. My father was a janitor and after his [work] day finished they would always give us the popcorn and we would distribute it in the community… the cookies and things… So we used to have a good time.

When I came to Rand Dry Cleaners, they had 155 stores across the metropolitan area – Brooklyn, Long Island, Queens, and Staten Island. I would always come down to Birdel’s and buy my music. During that time they were located on Fulton and Throop next to the Apollo Theatre; we had an Apollo Theatre here in Brooklyn too that had acts and music and things. During those days I would come in evenings after work and buy music. Birdel’s relocated down on Fulton & Nostrand.

During those days – this was in 1956-57 – the groups were making records and the entertainers that were a part of those groups would come by the store. The bass singer from the Heartbeats, Wally Roker, we became close. Wally used to say to me “Joe you know music, why don’t you ask Birdel for a job.” I would tell him I already have a job, why do I need another job? During those days the record stores were open until midnight. You had the junkies out there and the drugs and all, but it wasn’t like today, you could feel more safe.

We had the Bickfords during those days, something like Chock Full ‘o’ Nuts [coffee shop]… We had a Bickfords two doors down from Birdel’s on Fulton Street and I used to go down there. Wally would say come on down there and we would talk and he would say ‘I’m gonna tell Birdel to hire you and maybe you’ll like it…’ I said ‘well ok, I’ll give it a try.’ So I spoke with Benjamin Steiner, the owner, and his wife was named Birdie Steiner and they had a guy named Lefty and another fella named Shorty that used to work full time. So I would come in the evenings, and I started to work there and I liked it.

So then I went to Rand after two years and I tell them I’m gonna quit. They didn’t want me to quit because I had learned all the locations of the stores throughout Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and Staten Island, so they really needed someone with the trucks to help get around. So I told them I’ll give you a coupla weeks notice and then I’m going to leave you, and then I told Birdel’s that I would come with him full-time. I really liked the [Birdel’s] job. I worked part-time at Birdel’s in the evening and that gave me an idea of whether I would want to get into the music business. I liked it so much I told him I would work with him and I would give him ten years; I’m a young man, I said I’ll give you ten years.

He was talking about retiring so I said if you don’t want to sell me the store in ten years I’ll go ahead and get my own business. So he says ‘ok, we’ll see.’ I worked with him and I really liked it. He saw the head I had on me… during those days you bought records by numbers. Once I saw a number I was just like a computer, the number would stick. Right now I can call off numbers from 1954-55 on record labels that we ordered by, and he liked that.

So he would say to me ‘you’re gonna get this store, I’m gonna sell you this store…’ In 1963 I told him I was ready [to buy the store]. In ’64 blacks at that time were a little more on the edge of wanting to do things for self; you had the Black Panther party, the radical Brooklyn guys that really would do things to get attention. God rest Sonny Carson’s soul, he was one of the guys that really was out front. So Birdel’s got a little leery during that time and he was saying that he might have to sell before.

So when the time came and Martin Luther King got killed and the riots came, that really was the icing on the cake; he said I’m gonna sell and get out. During those days SBA small business loan was loaning minority people money and it wasn’t that you had to have a good foundation or background or good bankroll… if they saw the potential in you and you were able to take the business they didn’t mind loaning. That was one of the reasons I was able to get a loan for the business. Birdel had quoted me a price and I went to SBA and they offered me the money so quickly that when I went back and told [Birdel] I had the money that’s when he wanted to up the price $10,000.

I told him ‘Ben you promised me the store and you promised me a price. I worked for you over ten years and never stole a penny from you because my mother didn’t raise no thieves in North Carolina, and I’ve been honest. I had a tendency of working with fellas that would always be stealing and I used to tell them ‘man, you don’t steal the man’s money because one day you might need the man for reference, but if he fires you for stealing you won’t get good references.’ So I said I’m gonna tell you to quit stealing and if you don’t stop stealing I’m going to the boss because I don’t want to work around thieves and I don’t want him to think that I’m part of what you’re doing.’

So at that time he says to me ‘ok I’ll talk to my wife and see if we want to stick to the original price.’ The drugs are flourishing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, especially on Fulton Street and there was a guy who had a store on Fulton Street who was dealing drugs and he wanted the location on Nostrand Avenue and he was the one who offered [Steiner] the $10,000 more than I would pay – because I knew what he wanted to do.

I told Ben, you go home and talk to Birdie because I’ve worked with you all these years and I’m not looking to just walk away; I put my blood, sweat and tears here and if you don’t sell me this store I’m gonna burn it down. Its just that simple, I said I’ll burn it down, you won’t have it and I won’t have it, you’ll get the little money from your insurance or whatever, but I will burn it down. He went back and talked to his wife; he knew that I was serious. He knew that I wasn’t playing.

During those days I had two fellas – a guy named Mitch and a guy named Jeff, we had a little social club together. I told them once I buy the store I’ll bring you all in. During those days when black folks were on the other side of Fulton Street you didn’t have the idea of coming across Atlantic Avenue to say that you wanted to be a part of Crown Heights.

After he went back and talked to his wife they finally made the deal to sell me the business. When I took on Mitch I said my whole vision was to have a chain of independent retail [record] stores. One of the reasons I saw that change I knew that during those days music was popular with the blacks and you had good radio stations that played this music and it wasn’t a thing of wherein you were selling tickets for different programs – gospel programs… all these programs were a help to build Birdel’s up. So when I finally bought the store and we closed the deal, Birdel said to me ‘Joe, you’ll make a lot of money here.’ I said to him ‘Ben, I might not make no money because you made the money, I worked for you and I know you made good money and when we as a race of people find out that one of us own it they tend to not purchase and support like they should.’ I told him that but I wasn’t worried about survival out here because I knew what it took to survive.

When I took on Mitch I said ‘Mitch I want to do a chain and we got as far as three stores. The only people that were competitive to independent [record] retail at that time was E.J. Corvettes, Mays Department store, and Sam Goodies; but Goodies was a part of the record clan that could sell records out of town, so they could sell [at] list prices, they didn’t have to give you a discount.

So as I would build up a store I would put my partner Mitch in there and he had a head and wanted to be Mr. Big Stuff and he didn’t want to work and every time he would go out and hang out, I’d put the workers to work and he’s gone. I told him ‘we can’t achieve a good business if you’re not there, because these people we’re putting in here are gonna be stealing.’ I knew they weren’t gonna take it all, but at least give me the majority, don’t take 60/40 – give me 70/30 or 80/20, but they weren’t doing that so I kept him on, I told him I would give him five years to learn the business, but I kept him on another three years and he still didn’t learn the business.

So then I sat down with him and I said ‘look, we’re gonna have to [end] our partnership. He didn’t want to give it up because now he didn’t have nowhere to go. We had three stores so I told him, I’ll keep Birdel’s on Nostrand Avenue, I’ll give you the tape center on Fulton Street, and we had another store on Flatbush and Prospect, and I said we’ll sell that to my brothers, because I had two brothers working here. That way we’ll all have a store, you can do what you want and I’ll do what I want. But if you want to keep the Birdel’s name for the Birdel’s Tape Center you’ll have to pay me because the name was incorporated, and I told my brothers the same.

My brothers didn’t want to give up their jobs; one worked for the transit authority, the other one worked for an insurance company. They didn’t want to quit their jobs and they put their wives in there to run [the store] and I knew it was gonna be a failure. Women have come a long way from those days, but during that time I could see they weren’t the people to have in your business to carry the load – and I’m being honest, this is what I saw. They hung on for about 3 years and I said [to his brothers] ‘if you don’t want to give up your jobs I’m gonna have to take the store back. If you don’t want to give up your jobs I’ll sell it.’ Eventually I took it back.

I was trying to let Mitch know that I carried him for eight years – I promised you five – and now I want out. I’m divorced now, but during that time my wife said to me to get rid of him and pay him, so I paid him. When I finished paying him [his store] lasted about a year then he went out [of business]. We had a rider in the contract that said if he was to go out, he head to come back to me and see if I wanted to buy the business back. He didn’t do that, but it was alright with me.

Right then and there I started building Birdel’s internationally because I knew the Japanese clientele liked vinyl, people from Germany liked vinyl, and all these people were tourists that would be coming into New York. Harlem was a little more well-known than Bedford-Stuyvesant and they would go up to Harlem – they had the Record Shack, Bobby Robinson with Bobby’s Happy House, and then Rainbow; we all worked together, we were like a network. So when they would come up to Harlem they would tell [record tourists] ‘you need to go over to Birdel’s in Brooklyn.’ And all you had to do is get one [tourist] to see what you do and what you had, and it became like wildfire and [tourists] started to come into Brooklyn. And then we became internationally known because the Japanese would come and they would tell somebody, and England would tell somebody… and they’d say ‘go to Birdel’s’, they forgot about Harlem [laughs].

That’s how I became really popular. It took years to do this, it didn’t happen overnight because vinyl took a decline; when I came into the business it was vinyl, then it became mono/stereo with records and stereo was an elevation of the sound that was better, then it was 8-tracks, then cassettes. All of these trends I grew up in with the different modifications in the music business.
All of that modification with vinyl (mono-stereo), the record manufacturers felt as though now there was a decline in the music as vinyl. They would put out a vinyl album and they would tell the public that it was going gold. During that time gold was if you sold 10,000 units; 100,000 units would be platinum. They weren’t really selling that amount because it was all a number game; they would ship the amount to these stores and in essence if they didn’t sell them they would get them back in return.

So we had a cutout house in Philadelphia that I would go to and buy this product on vinyl. I could buy that same album for $1 from the cutout house and I could in turn sell it for $1.98 or $2.98 – most of the time I would put $2.98 on it – and this is how I built it up, because now the record is only 6 months or a year old and people still want it. So that’s how I started building up the vinyl trade, and this is how the word got around to go to Birdel’s, get the music in vinyl because one thing about it was if I didn’t have it, nobody had it because I would order for people all over… You have to build a customer relationship and it wasn’t about the money with me, it was about the commitment that I had to my customers. Our motto would be “if Birdel’s don’t have it, ain’t nobody got it…’ They would depend on me because I was like their bible. But it took a lot of work.

When we would have those big conferences, like Jack The Rapper and the Urban Network, I would go because we got record companies to support us and the independent stores were always the foundation of the record business. If we didn’t build the music during those days – when you had the disc jockeys… before Frankie Crocker you had Eddie O’Jay, you had the Jack Walkers, WLIB, WNJR in Newark, Jocko… These guys were disc jockeys, they made the music… That was before the Frankie Crockers came along and the Gary Byrds… [Deejays] would make the music and we would have them, wherein the big boys wouldn’t carry it because they didn’t know nothin’ about it. They [big chains] would only carry it after we broke the record, so the manufacturers and these companies knew that the independent store was the foundation of the business to build it up, so they had to support us.

We had corporations together; we had Mirror, independent stores coalitions throughout the country and we would meet at these conventions and we would voice our choice. So then they said ‘we gotta do something else now’ and they came up with digital tapes and that was taking away from cassettes, so then they said they had to come up with another configuration, which brought in the CD. They didn’t know that the CD would really be a thorn in their side to the music business. Because what happened was everybody that had a CD could copy it. At these big conferences when the presidents of all these companies would come in they would always call me the troublemaker because I would always be on their ass. You couldn’t butter me up… a lot of these presidents of these coalitions would come in and say I’ll take care of you, but you don’t have to take care of your group. But they couldn’t say that to me, I would say to them ‘you know what, if you all continue to make CDs and worry about bootlegs and get the RIAA and the FBI to work with you to combat this you all will have to quit making the [CD burner] machines. Now if you’re making the machine and these people are buying the machine, what did you expect them to do? This was one of the downfalls – the copying of product.

Then they tried to put labels about $10,000 fines for CD burning… people didn’t pay that no mind and it became widespread. I told them when you come to us about a bootleg we are only the ones who can sell it, you’ve gotta hit the manufacturers where these people are making 100,000 units at a time. So they busted a couple of them – one in Philadelphia, one in Florida and they took 100,000 records, but that didn’t stop it.

One day we were talking at one of those meetings, I said ‘you know what, ya’ll let the horse out of the barn now and you’re trying to get him back in. You have destroyed independent music labels because now everything is geared to the big boys, the artists are going along with them now. You’ve got Burger King, McDonalds and all these companies telling these artists we can give you X amount of dollars and we will book you about ten cities and you’ll be able to make more money, so that cut out the independent.

Then the same thing when the radio stations combined; they got rid of all the little radio stations and they made a big network, and KISS went all over the country and bought up all these stations – forgot about the independent disc jockeys they had, brought in artists that don’t know nothing about the record business and they put them in position that they shouldn’t have been, and the disc jockey that went to school to learn the business was no longer a part of that. Through it all [Birdel’s was] were surviving and they couldn’t understand it. They used to tell me all the time, ‘you know, you don’t ask for nothin’, how you makin’ it’? I said ‘with the master upstairs’, I used to quote scriptures on them in a minute. As long as I’ve got my health, got my strength, I’m gonna make a dollar – and this is what I’d tell them all the time. All of this time that we worked as a coalition to build the [record] manufacturers up, they were always looking to tear us down.

Then they began to like me and they started doing things for me all the time. I was reading an article from 1973 that Nelson George wrote for Billboard; I knew his mother, his mother’s best friend was one of my bookkeepers. I watched Nelson grow up and every time he’d write an article he’d mention Birdel’s.

OWED TO BIRD
by Walter Bishop Jr.

In the beginning first was the word
And the word was Bird,
The word that we heard
The great Messiah had come
To lift us higher
Free us from slavery to the Blues
We paid some dues, drank some booze
Got a little high
“How High the Moon”
Do you know that tune?
He was born a Virgo, the sign of the healer
The sign of the revealer
And to us he was the dealer
He was “A Bird of Paradise,” “An Early Bird”
“A Bird of Love” who made us more than we were before
A bird of passion and compassion
He was our Christ after a fashion
Well, some said he was loco, but still drank his “Koko”
He strung us out, without a doubt
Just give us one ounce of “Billie’s Bounce”
And “Parker’s Mood,” how’s that for food?
And “Repetition” is pure nutrition
He swallowed life whole and spit it back out of his horn
Now you know how BeBop was born
He was the mother of BeBop
Diz was its dad
They gave us a child that was truly bad
He paid the price in labor pains
And from his womb perfection reigns
He was a giant although not compliant
Dress like a Mau-Mau
Piss in a phone booth
Get a nickel bag and cool out that tooth
What outrageous behavior to come from a saviour
And how could one so erratic leave us ecstatic?
Bird with Strings, it gives me wings
Oh, how my heart sings
He was Gulliver in the land of Lilliputians
Jonathan Livingston Seagull too
Now his passing was tragic, but he left us pure magic
If he liked you he’d call you Jim
If your thing was flimsy he called you Jimsy
If you were half-assed slick, he’d call you Dick
Oh how I miss him, if he were here I would kiss him
Right in the mouth
How we all loved him and he loved us too
Black, White, Latino and Jew
To name a few
Birdland was named for him
They called him Yardbird and my how he flew
Higher and higher, oops, there goes the Messiah
Now he’s out of sight
So brothers and sisters, whoever you are
Keep your eye on the sparrow
And follow the star.

This is the space where a series of musicians have responded to the burning question:
When you read music journalism & criticism what qualities are you looking for in the writer and the writing?

TED NASH, saxophonist-composer

“It’s important that the writer/critic understands the music well enough to speak intelligently about it. I occasionally get some insight from hearing the writer’s perspective. Often the writer, as critic, is not objective enough. I use good reviews as a press opportunity. But I don’t often take the reviews too seriously, good or bad.”

JOHN SANTOS, percussionist-bandleader

“Honesty. Accuracy in terms of facts and grammar. No working out of personal demons. Love for the art form. Concise editing.”

MARCUS STRICKLAND, saxophonist-composer

“I look for honesty, relevance, decisiveness, eloquence, positivity and quotable content. Also I understand why some [musicians] choose not to read the writings, they don’t want an outside source affecting their creative decisions. Me, I’m too hard-headed to be swayed in my creativity so I love reading reviews and critiquing the critics – besides, I’m always my own worst critic. Basically, I shine light on reviews that help me sell my product and ignore the rest.”

Dominick Farinacci

About 15 years ago my old friend, pianist-educator Eric Gould invited me to speak to his students at a Saturday morning music education program at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C). When I arrived the students were running down a chart, then they took a break before my talk. As they broke the kids were bouncing off the walls like normal 13 year olds… all except for one young guy.

From hearing the kids earlier, this particular serious looking, dark-haired trumpet aspirant was clearly less experienced. But while the other kids were enjoying a raucous break, this kid was off by himself practicing. A few months later Eric invited me back for part 2 of my talk. Same thing… same kid off in a corner rigorously practicing by himself. I took note – maybe this is one to watch. Now, fifteen years later, having been taken under Wynton Marsalis‘ prodigious wing at 16, matriculated as part of Juilliard’s first jazz class, and become a big fave in Japan, now 28 Dominick Farinacci is one of the brightest young trumpeters of his generation.

As one of an impressive crew of trumpeters who’ve come through the Tri-C JazzFest education program – including Sean Jones, Curtis Taylor, and Donald Malloy – Dom is all about giving back. Along with his peer bandmates pianist Dan Kaufman (who reminded me that he’d been one of the kids featured on my old JazzEd BET show), drummer Lawrence Leathers, percussionist Keita Ogawa, bassist Paul Sikivie, vibist Christian Tamburr, and the vivacious old soul/young spirit vocalist and pride of Brooklyn, Charenee Wade, Farinacci has launched a Young Artist Residency program.

Their first Tri-C residency was this week. They did band clinics for Tri-C Jazz Studies students (under Steve Enos’ able direction) all day Monday. The day was capped by a music biz panel discussion for Tri-C’s Recording Arts Technology (RAT) students (name another community college with a state-of-the-art recording studio program) and jazz students. Featured speakers were moderator Tommy Wiggins from RAT, artist manager Brian McKenna, Grammy-winning recording engineer Todd Whitelock and Tri-C JazzFest managing director Terri Pontremoli.

Tuesday they spent the day at Cleveland Heights High School. What struck me about their activities at the high school was the fact that their classroom work wasn’t exclusive to music students. They did clinics for English and Geometry classes. Whitelock told me later that he was impressed by the excitement and maturity of the high school students’ questions.

Young Artists Residency at Cleveland Hts. HS

As Steve Enos aptly observed, one of the keys to these young artists’ effectiveness with both high school and college students was their relative youth. By and large it was clear the students did not view them as older authority figures, which seemed to heighten and broadened the ultimate reach of their message. Clearly this is a jazz ed program with legs!

Ain’t But a Few of Us… – Black music writers tell their story.
by Lofton A. Emenari, III – Part 1

Many years ago I learned that being a so-called “Black” writer on jazz music would be an enriching but harrowing journey. It would not be out of the question to say that I was a ‘child of the civil rights movement’. With parents that instilled a love of kith and kin, past and present, ever cognizant of the social realities abounding. It was from this fertile nest that I became a writer/journalist – initially seeking, altruistically to address seeming wrongs and speak for the unheard and unseen. Jazz was a part of my household – played everyday either on the record player or radio. As a child I was exposed to Downbeat magazine and became an avid reader in high school. Then I had no real working knowledge of ‘Black’ writers per se in the field yet once out of high school I would join various writers collectives in Chicago. That alone gave me more intellectual power/measure. And the first black writers I learned of were Leroy Jones/Amiri Baraka and A.B. Spellman. And while Baraka would leave the jazz arena for a moment, it took years for me to break his spell on not only my thinking but writing style as well. He was that influential motivator.

Later I would be influenced by the writings of Albert Murray, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Ted Joans and ultimately Stanley Crouch. These were icons who set the bar. They collectively told OUR story as no others dare or could. It was because of them that I diligently studied the history of this music. It was, as Val Wilmer’s classic tome indicated, “As Serious As your Life”. The study of this music, the very research began in the venues and in the very lives of the musicians themselves. Study this music I did. Everywhere the music was I went to hear and feel it. In the same time I became a broadcast journalist, having a weekly jazz radio show on WHPK-FM University of Chicago. It was there that I would meet Ted Pankin, who remains one of the most knowledgeable and interesting writers on jazz – Black or white. Ted followed the exploits of the avant garde in particular the AACM (an all Black music collective supposedly espousing a Black nationalist agenda. More on that later).

I would form some lasting friendships with some of the musics most gloried pracitioners. At this point by my count I’ve interviewed over 1,000 musicians. I first became a published writer on jazz through the initial impact of reading ‘underground’ magazines like ‘The Grackle’, which was published in New York by a loose coterie of black writers in Roger Riggins, Ron Welburn and James Turner. this was in the mid to late 70s. Yet I was to find out there were more Black writers out there when copies of The Jazz Spotlite made their way to Chicago outside of New York. Here in Chicago there were perhaps two Black writers on jazz – Brent Staples (who since is an editor at the NY Times) and Salim Muwwakil, one time editor of Muhammad Speaks and current columnist of ‘In These Times’. They would become invaluable mentors and significant friends.

My first article for a ‘major’ jazz publication was Downbeat ‘79 (thanks to then editor Howard Mandel, who serves as the head of the Jazz Journalist Association). Yearly, I’ve voted in the annual Downbeat International Critics Poll. I began writing about jazz in many various community newspapers and journals; with a 10 year column in the Chicago Observer; 28 years in the Chicago Citizen Newspaper Group. At one point because of the apathy I felt was prevalent in jazz journalism I published a journal The Creative Arts Review, which I garnered articles from writers, mostly unpublished on the music (i solicited articles regardless of gender or race). It was a one issue wonder that included the writing of voices such as Hakim Sulieman (an unrecognized jazz historian and archivist); Brent Staples; Larry Queen (an accomplished ‘black’ art critic); Keith Boseman and a few others. But it was mainly a platform for my theories on the music.

Over the years I’ve found the niche of ‘liner note’ writing to be almost a closed circle. This is particularly prevalent with the so-called major jazz labels. In the late 70s early 80s I began to query some of the musicians I knew, on a personal basis about writing liners for them. I asked, in no certain order Robert Watson; David Murray; Joe Henderson; Arthur Blythe; Terrance Blanchard/Donald Harrison; Wallace Roney, Javon Jackson and many others. Only Blanchard/Harrison, Jackson and Wallace Roney granted my wish. This was for Columbia/Sony, a major label. And at the time they were a ‘major’ voice in the wake of the ‘Marsalis’ phenomenon. Roney, of that ‘wave’ was with a major/minor label in Muse. And consequently I’d secure liner gigs with Donald Brown, Billy Pierce and Stephen Scott.

Yet there was something missing from the average liner note reading. Most often I dreaded reading liner notes for there were the same writers on rotation. I called it the Bob Blumenthal Syndrome school of notes. Patronizingly dull, mundane, almost pedestrian. The kind of writing that was basic ABC recognizable standard fare. Writing that catered to ‘new’ jazz listening. I recognized that most liner were either 1.biographical – recounting the bio background of said artist. or 2. Musically Detailed – . Which prompts the whole issue of ‘liner note’ writing as genre (which some awards committees deem an award-able category of recognition).

An incident with the producer (Blue Note) of Javon Jackson was most trying. Prior I had the honor of penning liners for Jackson’s first recording as a leader on Criss Cross (which most jazz fans would consider a major international label). Jackson asked me to write some liners for his second release, a debut on the heralded Blue Note label. Dutifully submitting the notes the producer phoned me wanting to discuss the notes in detail. After going over the notes she told me, in a matter of fact way that my writing was way too, “Amiri Baraka-ish” and the language, “too hip”! Needless to say I was floored when she said that she couldn’t use them due to deadline constraints, blah, blah, blah.

My mind was in a tizzy. How can liners be “too hip”? At worst sounding too, “Amiri Baraka-ish” was a flag waving signal. Yet I was at a loss. Javon Jackson, whom I considered a close friend apologized and I understood his position. He was powerless under the might of corporate Blue Note. I did not blame him. I blamed the Bob Blumenthal syndrome. I got similar remarks from the producer of the Stephen Scott disc as well however they (Verve) went with them.

The first [Chicago artist] to offer assignments was Malachi Thompson, for whom I wrote for his first domestic debut for Delmark (a great Chicago indie). However, because of a remark I made in an article about a beloved ‘white’ DJ Dick Buckley, label owner Bob Koester considered me an outcast – even to the extent of unofficially banning me from the Jazz Record Mart (which he owned. We’ve since patched up the rift and moved on. He is also the owner of Delmark and has offered me liner assignments).

Herein lies the situation for Black musicians and artists. Who owns the labels from which they are afforded the opportunity to record? The Black Jazz label of the early 70s sought to rectify or balance the artistic outlets available. As did countless other independent efforts Black Jazz died. Economics, media exposure, ad nauseam. Yusef Lateef’s own YAL label is perhaps the only self produced ‘black’ owned and operated label, outlasting all others in the past two decades.

End of Part 1: Stay tuned for Part 2