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  • Topics

  • Posts

    • OK, I found it.  In the booklet to Blue Note's Nichols 3-CD complete set, Cuscuna wrote: PRODUCER'S NOTE During 1980 and '81, I systematically listened to every tape in the Blue Note vaults. Among my discoveries were 8 previously unissued compositions by Herbie Nichols, but no titles were provided for them. Circulating tapes among musicians brought only one title, "Riff Primitif," provided conclusively by Roswell Rudd. The search for the Blue Note recording files was still on and getting nowhere. When Hitoshi Namekata asked me to put together a 3-LP set of unissued tracks from the Blue Note 1500 series, I used "Riff Primitif" and another original that had similarities to a Herbie Nichols composition, "Argumentive". So I called it "Argumentative Variations" (it turned out to be called "Trio"). Herbie's music is so startlingly original that making it available became something of an obsession. When there appeared to be no hope of finding Herbie's own titles for the new-found material, Charlie Lourie and I began researching a definitive set of Herbie's music. Roswell Rudd researched Nichols' life and edited the booklet for the eventual Mosaic collection, and I resigned myself to using "Untitled #1", et cetera, for the unissued material. Alfred Lion, Blue Note's founder and the producer of these sessions, was as disappointed as I was about the absence of titles, explaining that Herbie put a great deal of thought and meaning into his titles. But as luck would have it, while searching through the Francis Wolff photographs of Blue Note sessions that were in his possession, Alfred accidentally came upon the long-lost Blue Note session logs. Suddenly, we had titles. But more importantly, we had a road map to these five sessions of brilliant, complex music. With this priceless navigational chart through the session reels, it soon became evident that a wealth of worthy and different alternate takes existed. Added to the 2 tunes already issued and 6 more to come, we found 18 enlightening alternates.
    • Huh.  I just looked at Discogs, and all titles have names.  Why did I remember "Untitled Original"?  Bad memory about this, I guess.  Apologies.
    • OT, and yet ... The above statement is a bit ambiguous. Are the tune titles on the "brown bag" Herbie Nichols twofer alrerady those that Michael Cuscuna was able to reassign according to the session notes or are they non-definitive "provisional" titles?
    • Cuscuna himself told the story in the intro to (IIRC) the first book of Wolff's photos.  He started Mosaic with Charlie Lourie, and put out the Monk box.  One day, he got a long-distance call, and he recognized the voice from listening to BN session reels.  Lion demanded to know who Cuscuna was and who gave him permission to release the Monk sessions.  Cuscuna spent the phone call calming Lion down, and a friendship developed.  Cuscuna would call Lion to see if he had any memories of particular sessions, and Lion would also call Cuscuna to chat.  One day, a huge trunk arrived: Lion entrusted Cuscuna with Wolff's negatives.  Even better, lurking in the trunk were session notes for many sessions that had no documentation.  For example, when Herbie Nichols's "The Third World" brown bag was released, many tracks had no names.  These notes contained the composition names, which is how they appeared in Blue Note's "The Complete Blue Note Recordings" package.
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