That Big River called Jazz
How I got caught in the current...
When I landed at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport in November 1985, I was a 23 year old Army officer starting my first assignment. It was while stationed in the Netherlands and later in Germany that I was caught in the current of Jazz, like a canoeist meandering the headwaters and suddenly noticing they are in the current of a big river heading down stream. It seems like Yesterday….
This makes me think of the great Jerome Kern classic from the 1933 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie Roberta. Here’s the sheet music:
While you read on, listen to Yesterdays played by Paul Chambers from his great Blue Note LP Bass on Top. Put on your headphones first though for this one.
That is Hank Jones on the nice piano accompaniment.
Before I made that journey across the pond, I spent 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 9 months studying Dutch in the Defense Language Institute at Presidio of Monterey. I loved it. There were two of us in the Dutch program, Captain James Wright and me. We had 5 instructors: one from the Dutch Antilles; one from Indonesian; one from Suriname; one from Maastricht, a town in Limburg from the southern part of the Netherlands where they speak a Dutch dialect, Limburgish; and one from The Hague. Margaret van Daalen was our instructor from The Hague. True confession, I had a little crush on her. She told me to forget about Amsterdam. The Hague (or Den Haag, as she would say) was the hip place in the Netherlands, and that “Everyone goes to Amsterdam. You’ll get a much better taste of Holland, if you spend your time in Den Haag, the administrative capital and home of the court and government.” So when I got to the Netherlands, the first place I went on my free time was Den Haag.
I was stationed at ‘t Harde, a Dutch Kaserne between Utrecht and Zwolle. While there, I stayed in a hotel in the tiny town of Elburg, a very cool Medieval city with a moat around it.
I remember that first trip to Den Haag: the excitement of taking the train to Den Haag Centraal train station, walking toward the Binnenhof, and stumbling onto Cafe Schlemmer.
Cafe Schlemmer was then an artists' café, which is logical given that the Koninklijke Schouwburg theatre is just around the corner, with many actors, directors and guests of the Art Academy. It seems a bit more upscale now. Back then, it had only been open about a year and the times I was there it was always full and fun. I remember sitting at a table and looking up to the wall and seeing this single framed 8 X 10 photograph - pretty much the only thing on the wall. I had to get up close to read the name at the bottom: Paul Bowles. I had never heard of him and this started a lifelong interest in his work.
I asked the waitress if she could recommend a I good local bar, and she said, “You must go to De Paap on Papestraat (The Pope on Pope street).”
It was a cool walk to De Paap along Doelenstraat through a sally port into the Binnenhof courtyard, which looks like this:
…then through another sally port at the other end and out to the Buitenhof toward old city hall. Take a right at Oude Molstraat and another right on Papestraat. And there you are.
I love the De Stijl look of this place. Classic.
However, and more importantly, on the way to De Paap, I found the Jazz Inn RecordShop. I still have the bag they gave you when you bought a record:
I believe it was here, when I walked through the doors of the Jazz Inn Recordshop, that I started my journey down that Big River called Jazz.
As I look back now. I think three things were most responsible for this embarkation: two record shops and the Blue Note LP reissues; The Wire magazine; and the Soho Jazz Festival. Let’s look at the first two now.
Two Seminal Record Shops
1.) Jazz Inn RecordShop Den Haag:
This is like something you’d hear when you walked into the Jazz Inn. It also happens to be one of the first Blue Note reissues I bought there - I think I just liked the cover.
Just like in the West Point library, I picked records out of bins if I liked the album cover. For the most part, I think it worked for me. Interestingly, West Point’s Jazz record collection featured scores of original releases almost entirely from music recorded in New York by companies like Atlantic, Columbia, and CTI. For example, this one:
This was recorded in 1966 at Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. That’s Ray Barretto on congas. The library had almost no Blue Note or West Coast label records. So the Blue Note re-issues were important because I had never really seen them much. Michael Cuscuna was named special consultant, producer, and reissue director of Blue Note Records in 1984, so about the time Tower in New York was stocking them up I was leaving for Airborne school.
The Jazz Inn was loaded up with Blue Note LPs and cassettes. Like this one from Joe Henderson:
2.) Ray’s Jazz Sop London:
When I had a long weekend, I’d generally take the longer trip and go to London. I’d ride my car to Calais and take the ferry over to Dover and catch a train to London. I loved Dire Straits’ song Wild West End, which was popular in the early Eighties. So when I got to London, the first place I went to was Soho to find “Angelucci’s for my coffee beans.”
Once again, and even more importantly, along the way there I ran into Ray's Jazz Shop on Shaftesbury avenue.
Ray’s was and still is the best record store I have ever been in. It had it all - new and used. But best of all, the staff was legendary. I still have the T-shirt I bought there.
This is vintage relic from the day. I picked up this great Tina Brooks LP there too.
Ray and the guys that worked there wrote the book on Jazz records, Blue Note in particular. Literally, Glyn Callingham, who managed the record store back then co-wrote The Cover Art of Blue Note Records: The Collection.
I remember walking in one day and finding this 1947 Lennie Tristano 78rpm box set. No one was really interested in 78s back then, let alone Lennie Tristano, who I had recently read about in The Wire magazine.
In order to understand the euphoria in England during the mid-Eighties Blue Note re-issue campaign, we need to understand the history of Blue Note records in England. The four big modern jazz labels in 1960 were Prestige, Contemporary, Riverside and Blue Note. The first two had deals with British companies, and their product came out with British-manufactured discs and sleeves - wonderful music but not nearly as sexy to look at. The other two labels had no British partners, so you couldn’t get Blue Note records in Britain at all. The Blue Note re-issues changed all that and really played an important role in the jazz revival in the mid-Eighties.
The Wire Magazine
The Wire was a British magazine published in London. The first release was the Summer of 1982 and in the beginning came out quarterly. Originally, it covered the British Jazz scene with an emphasis on avant-garde and free jazz. Although I was not listening to free jazz at that time, I was familiar with it and found reading about it and learning about it interesting. Later on, the magazine would play a big part in my testing those waters.
Here’s the first Wire magazine I bought, the April 1986 edition - by then it was coming out monthly. This was issue #26.
I bought it at the NAAFI shop on the Bergen-Hohne Garrison in Germany. This was a major British Garrison during the Cold War period located near Bergen in Lower Saxony. By then, I was stationed at a German military site in Barme near Verden.
I remember looking through the magazine racks and trying to find something interesting. When I pulled out this one, with Lester Young’s picture AND Young Gerry Mulligan listed on the cover, that was it. I had found the Holy Grail. That magazine changed my life and was truly the Point of Departure. The article on Gerry Mulligan mentioned The Original Gerry Mulligan Quartet boxed set from Mosaic records. I mail ordered it from Germany and a few weeks later, there it was at the Post Office. Many more Mosaic boxed sets followed: Art Pepper, Thelonious Monk, Ike Quebec, Tina Brooks, to name a few. These early Mosaic boxed sets were also put out by Michael Cuscuna and featured primarily Blue Note and Pacific Jazz releases.
You’ll note on the cover two names: Sun Ra, my hero, who I had never even heard of then and probably didn’t more than scan that article; and Baz Fe Jaz, who I would soon follow at the Wag Club in London. Here he is in 1986 with another DJ Andy McConnell:
Note the cool Ray’s Jazz Shop cameo at the start and the record case Andy carries into the Wag. More on these guys next week, when we’ll look at the third thing most responsible for my jazz embarkation: the Soho Jazz Festival and the Knights at the Turntables, who championed the cause of spinning Jazz records to a new public….
If you like what you’ve been reading and hearing so far on our journey, please share my newsletter with others - just hit the “Share” button at the bottom of the page.
Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that….
Until then, keep on walking….
a few from your initial list for me here! love!