The revived company has occupied the Brooklyn offices since 2007. The not-quite-finished remodeling of the front half of the floor, where a small record store opens onto the street and taped drywalls mark off a distinct storage room, leads past several mixed-use corners into a central area with a cluster of separate desks where the staff performs various tasks of production, promotion, layout, accounting, and research. The patchwork repair of the place grows more ragged still in the ample room at the back, with its several patterns of old tin ceiling and a motley assortment of hanging lamps; the bathroom and a small kitchen are located in the rear, while along one wall stands a row of file cabinets stacked with big boxes and a TV. Across from these, Stollman’s long desk, reflecting constant activity, is piled with CDs, papers, a computer, and a phone.
That phone is steadily occupied throughout the day. Besides representing several musicians and the estates of Eric Dolphy, Bud Powell, Art Tatum, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and others in the global administration of their recording and publishing rights, he is also pursuing a number of far-flung possibilities for release on ESP or a subsidiary imprint. Recently, these have included a trove of unreleased performances by Jimi Hendrix; recordings from Soviet archives of concerts in Moscow by Paul Robeson and Yves Montand in the 1950s; a recent stand-up comedy performance in an L.A. club by Mort Sahl; new archival projects of music by Horace Tapscott, Phineas Newborn Jr., and Eric Dolphy; and, surely the most unexpected, rare performances by Kate Smith. Stollman does not worry too much about diluting or confusing the label’s identity. Even as it continues to offer sounds that may never have been heard before, he clearly enjoys unearthing little-known finds, the rare jewels that deserve to be made available. Unpredictable in genre and direction, the label maintains its ability to challenge expectations, including those built by its own practices.
In light of these multiple projects, the time seems ripe to tell the story of the label, from before its beginnings right up to the ever-moving present. After meeting with Bernard Stollman for a few hours, I became convinced that the only way to present that story was straight from the source. Complaints have circulated since the original releases about royalties not paid beyond the small advance; Stollman recognizes where proper accounting was lacking and to make up for that lapse is one reason he plunged back into the fray. But he also acknowledges that most of the records never sold very much when the company previously existed. What seems certain is that he never got rich off of anyone, far from it.
As an oral history, then, this book is divided into two main parts. In the first, based on many hours of interviews through the latter half of 2008 and regular visits over the following year, Stollman gets to tell his story, the only comprehensive account possible, despite its gaps. Edited to follow a more or less chronological order, it incorporates certain thematic chapters to focus on specific areas of activity. I retain some scaled-down version of my questions to him (except in a few chapters) to help direct the narrative through its many turns but also to keep a space open for interstitial remarks. At eighty-one, Stollman stands tall, straight-backed, and strong. Though longevity runs in the family, the fact is he was always inclined toward clean living. His memory still seems remarkably clear, and his outlook remains curiously upbeat. No question, this is what he wants to be doing more than anything, running the record label that he founded long ago, before he knew better.
Inasmuch as the label is largely the story of one man’s instincts and eccentricities, it also belongs to all the musicians and others who have had a role in its history, and even to those far away in place and time, for whom ESP-Disk’ served as an example or inspiration (a full discography can be found online at the ESP website, www.espdisk.com). Therefore, the second part of the book accommodates their varied perspectives, comprising more than three dozen interviews. These are meant to recount not only their own individual share in the story but also the artistic ideas and tendencies that animated them; moreover, these interviews reflect, whether briefly or at some length, the remarkable lives that converged for a time in the singular course of ESP’s trajectory, while offering a glimpse in many instances of how those lives carried through to the present.
Brooklyn, September 2010
I
What Got into His Head
BERNARD STOLLMAN, FOUNDER OF THE LABEL
IN THE GREAT BEFORE
1 Who, Where, When
Beginnings and Departures
As the founder of a label unlike any other, Bernard Stollman shared the Jewish immigrant background of certain Hollywood moguls and also a few jazz impresarios, yet with many distinct turns. How he ended up in music, running a business that was hardly a business, seemed anything but a likely outcome. He recounts his own circuitous path along the way.
My father, David, was born at the turn of the century, in the small Polish market town of Krynki [Krinik]. He was the third youngest of nine children whose father, a devout Orthodox Jew, labored for long hours as the foreman of a local tannery owned by his brothers. The rafters of their one-story house held stacks of curing hides, which gave off a terrible stench. My father attended yeshiva as a child, until he was apprenticed to a tailor at the age of twelve. One day, his closest friend came running to the shop to tell him excitedly that a traveling cantor had arrived in town and was auditioning boy singers to accompany him on his tour of the great synagogues of Poland and Russia. My father’s sweet voice won him employment, and the two boys found themselves celebrities, warmly applauded by congregations whose women showered them with attention and fine food.
When a year had elapsed, his voice began to change with the onset of puberty. The First World War had begun and the cantor abruptly fled to America, abandoning him in a distant city without funds. Desperate, the boy approached a well-dressed stranger on the train platform and told him of his plight. He asked to borrow the train fare, requesting the man’s name and address, and insisted that he would repay the loan when he reached his home. The man gave him the fare and refused my father’s offer. This generous gesture left an indelible impression on him, and he recounted it with wonderment to me half a century later.
My mother, Julia Friedman, lived in Jurewicz, a small town on the border of Lithuania and Poland. She had four sisters and a brother. Her father had attended university to study accounting, and he was the town scribe as well as a schochet [kosher butcher]. She and her brother, Boris, were raised by their grandmother, a strong woman who owned the town’s livery stable, which housed the coaches that the czar would use when visiting the region. My mother attended the local grade school for three years under the new communist regime. Her father had left his family to go to the United States in 1913, in order to earn enough money to bring them over. When the war broke out in 1914, he could not return. His family was stranded without funds, so their living conditions were very harsh. The money that he accumulated was lost to a swindler. He was finally able to return in 1920. When she saw him, my mother angrily accused him of abandoning them.
When she arrived in the United States at the age of thirteen, she attended high school at night and worked in a department store during the day. She learned English and eventually spoke impeccably. My father was twenty-two when he arrived. He learned to speak reasonably well, with almost no accent. Both had come to the United States in 1920, the last year the doors were open to immigration. They met for the first time two years later, in the balcony of a Yiddish theater on the Lower East Side. She was not interested in him, but she had three older unmarried