Dave Lambert drops in

It was about four in the morning on June 30th, 1965 that Dave Lambert came to the WBAI studio on East 39th Street, carrying several reels of tape. WBAI was the non-commercial listener-sponsored radio station that I had worked at, and I had recently been appointed its manager, inheriting a debt that required us to raise $25,000 or risk going out of business.

The day before, I had lunch with our News Director, Joanne Grant, whom I had hired a couple of weeks earlier. My predecessor was a man of independent wealth who vacationed in Europe at the time when the stationed needed him the most. Summer was always the slowest month for donations and it was the manager's job to raise it. As Joan and I discussed the problem, it occurred to me that, since our unorthodox, eclectic programming and total absence of commercials was the reason why people sent us money, we should underscore the seriousness of our situation by taking it all off the air until we have the $25,000. By the time we had finished our dessert and coffee, we had a loosely formulated plan. I would break into the middle of Joan's 6 PM newscast and make the announcement: no more regular programs until we have $25,000 in pledges, and if we don't get it, there's a very good chance that we will have to go off the air and somebody else will be heard playing bubblegum music. Our phones started ringing immediately.

A couple of hours earlier, we made some calls to people who might help us pitch for money, and the response was fantastic. When pianists Herbie Hancock and Roger Kellaway said they'd be there, we had a major problem: no piano. John Corigliano, our Music Director (and subsequent Oscar winner) ran home a picked up his electric keyboard—it would have to do until the real thing came along. Bear in mind that electric pianos were not taken very seriously in 1965, for good reason, and this one was strictly for working at home—no frills. That day, Herbie had his first experience with a plugged-in keyboard, and Roger Kellaway did quite well accompanying Joe Williams on it. The following day, a real upright would be delivered, with a lot of help from a friendly piano dealer.

L to r: Dave, bassist John Simmons, Chubby Jackson, George Handy 

and Dizzy Gillespie(photo by William Gottlieb

Back to Dave Lambert. He heard what we were doing and came in to help. As you will hear, we played some of his tapes, featuring airchecks of Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan (Annie Ross had left) and other Lambert groups—Dave was always assembling interesting vocal groups. At one point, he spotted the keyboard in the studio and tried it out—that will give you a good idea of its limitations, but Dave had fun with it.

Chaotic and spontaneous though it was, the fundraising marathon was a huge success. We returned to normal programming as soon as our goal was reached in pledges, and we actually received far more money that pledged. Our parent foundation was so impressed that they asked me to repeat the experiment at our two California stations, and the practice has, unfortunately, since become a regular part of the network's fundraising. I bemoan the fact, because it has been abused to a point where it is playing a significant part in the imminent demise of WBAI.

Our efforts were spirited, collective, honest, and limited to one annual event of a few days' duration. Elsewhere in this blog, you will find several musical performances from the first and second marathons. Here are direct links to two of them:

Ronnie Matthews

Clifford Jordan

Shortly after his visit, Dave accepted my invitation to conduct a one-hour weekly show on WBAI. He was coming in to tape a segment in October, 1967, when he was fatally struck by a car while changing a tire on the Connecticut Turnpike—he was only 49. These recordings of his marathon visit were recently recovered from—would you believe—the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen. How they got there is another story; that they were retrieved (along with other tapes that you will be hearing here soon) is something we can thank my old friend, Storyville Records' Mona Granager, and engineer Jørgen Vad for.

Rememberance of Christmases past...

I never was a believer in any man-made religion, nor were my family, but we always celebrated Christmas as a special time of the year, a time for happy exchanges that did not have to be of the material kind. As an adult, deeply involved in the jazz world, I used to receive and send quite a number of cards as the holiday neared, but that has proven to be as ephemeral as one might reasonably expect—the years have robbed me of many very dear friends, but each as left lasting memories behind. They, too, will of course accompany me as my time to depart comes. 

Click here to see my video card. It is, by design, personal, allowing me to recall shared ups and downs, tears and laughter, smiles, and invaluable friendships. How fortunate I have been to work in a field that offered me so much pleasure and gave me such a great group of friends. As I share my video card with you, I hope it brings a smile to your face and that some of the names will evoke your own memories of music and performances that is their legacy.

Giving thanks...

Here in the U.S., this day is known as Thanksgiving. It is  really an ongoing propaganda campaign to whitewash the injustices done to the real Native Americans. That said, the idea of giving thanks is a splendid one all-year-round.

A Jam-filled Veterans Day revisited...

Clicking on above image will enlarge it.

Here is the link. What you will hear is a bit chaotic, Danish musicians, some of them not yet ready for prime time get in the way a bit, but my B&O recorder captured the atmosphere and at least one solo by Clifford Brown.

A 1972 talk with Ornette Coleman

I first met and interviewed Ornette Coleman in 1959 or 60, when his unorthodox approach to jazz was better known than the music itself. He was just coming out, as it were, and booked into The Showboat, one of Philadelphia's two main jazz venues at that time. I was then a dj at WHAT-FM, a pioneering 24/7 jazz station whose on-air guys knew jazz mainly from reading liner notes and were yet to catch up with Coltrane. They did not play Ornette's debut album on the air, nor were they at all interested in catching him live. 

Elmer Snowden, Duke Ellington's former boss, came from a musical era that preceded flappers and bathtub gin, but he had natural curiosity when it came to music and he had not been among those veterans who thought Bop was the cat's meow—literally. When I asked him to come with me to the Showboat, he said, "Ornette Coleman, that crazy guy? Yeah, have to hear him."

Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman. 1959 photo by Clemens Kalischer.

It was not a big room, but it could hold a decent-sized crowd and, on this night, they were standing in line on the sidewalk. However, nobody had to wait long that night, for this radical Texan reed player attracted an amazingly transient audience—it seemed that every jazz fan in the city wanted to hear him and his bizarre group, but most of them only wanted a taste.

At this point, I need not go into Ornette's unconventional approach to the music, but the untethered style in which he and pocket trumpeter Don Cherry played stood in odd contrast to the hard-driving, almost conventional rhythm of the bass and drums. When I say "almost conventional," it should be noted that I am talking about Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins. It took some adjustment on the part of the listener, so most didn't stick around. Elmer was busy counting measures, but nothing seemed to ass up, he said. I found it rather intriguing and secured from Ornette some time for an interview on the following day. 

I wish I had that tape, but it's long gone, What you will hear in the four audio links that follow is an interview I did about 12 years later. By this time, Ornette was well established, we had passed an "avant garde" phase in jazz trends, and the formerly outré sounded okay. The sound quality is not very good, but this interview was never meant to be heard as such—it was for a print piece, and it begins with reference to the Showboat gig and deals mostly with the ugly (i.e. business) side of the entertainment industry.

1

Ornette Coleman. Photo by Austin Trevett

Ornette Coleman. Photo by Austin Trevett

The interview continues with Ornette talking about his amazing self-produced/ self-financed Christmas Eve 1963 Town Hall concert. It was an ambitious project that featured Ornette in a variety of musical environments. He also recalls coming home to find all his belongings piled up curbside, which is what New York did to evicted tenants in those days. 

2

In part 3 of the interview, Ornette talks about record producer Bob Thiele and whites who see themselves as "rescuers" of black people, how record companies shuffle artists, and the unhealthy attitudes among club owners that make working for them unpleasant. Racism, sexism, and avarice are problems he quietly takes note of.

3

The concluding segment has Ornette talking about early jazz figures like Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, among other things. Bad audio notwithstanding, I hope you found it interesting.

4

I took the photo on the left at Lincoln Center Jazz when Ornette became a 2008 inductee into Nesuhi Ertegun's Jazz Hall of Fame. Others inducted that year were Bessie Smith, Gil Evans and Mary Lou Williams.