Bob Thiele autobiography

[GregK]

Has anyone here read this? It's called What a Wonderful World. It seems very short for someone who was involved in so much (only 168 pages!). Is there much mention of Coltrane in this book?

[Chuck Nessa]

I'd be very interested. What's the title?

[GregK]

Bob Thiele Bob Golden

What a Wonderful World: A Lifetime of Recordings

Oxford Univ Pr (T) null 01 May, 1995

ISBN: 0195086295

I found it on www.abebooks.com for $1.03 (!!), used. I will get it for that price, but I'm wondering how his career can be squeezed in to 168 pages.

[marcello]

I've had this for quite a while. It's very chatty; written in a "as I saw it" style. He runs down his career as a fan first, and as a A&R record man. He does talk about Coltrane, of course, but you won't find any new revelations. It seems that Coltrane was a man of very few words with Thiele and that they had enough mutual respect to not step on each others toes.

3/4ths of the book is not about Coltrane or the New Music or Impulse! for that matter, but about his relationship with others including Ellington and Buddy Holly and his independent labels like Flying Dutchman.

[Christiern]

Odd that--in the piece linked to--there is no mention of Baker's Chocolate, which was the source of his family's fortune.

[Chuck Nessa]

Yes, Bud Freeman called Thiele "son of the chocolate king".

[l p]

i think it's in that book that thiele states that the tunes for coltrane's 'ballads' album were all done in one take. why would he blatantly lie to us like that.

and as kofsky points out, why is he putting himself on the photos of the albums.

him and coltrane, deep in thought about what to write next...

[Christiern]

Bob Thiele had an ego that matched and may even have exceeded Orrin's. He constantly included photos of himself, even when the context did not call for it. He also had on his office walls gold records, etc. that should have been handed over to the artist--one that I remember in particular was a Coltrane gold disc.

John Hammond did the same thing. I received a telegram notifying me of the award, but never saw the actual Grand Prix du Disque sent to me by the Montreaux Jazz Festival, in care of John. That's show-biz, I guess.

[chris olivarez]

Ego or not I do enjoy the Flying Dutchman label.

[Chuck Nessa]

There are dozens of great recordings that would not exist without his work. He justified his ego.

[GregK]

Well, since I know nothing about him outside of his Coltrane work, I think I will order this book.

[Christiern]

I only mentioned the ego to explain why it is that Bob had his picture on just about everything he did. It has no bearing on his accomplishments as a producer.

[marcello]

His heart was in the right place when it comes down to it, right?

For every Teresa Brewer he produced there was a "The Kennedy Dream" or a "Three for Shepp"!

Edited March 15, 2005 by marcello

[l p]

LP-- i liked Kofsky when i was 16* but... i wdn't take anything in there ** too ** seriously at this point. (maybe the older guys never did?) if yr curious about the rhetoric/analysis, i suggest you get ahold of "Prison Writing in America," by H. Bruce Franklin & then "Who Killed George Jackson?" by Jo-Durden Smith. FK's interview of Coltrane is worth listening to but it ought not be too hard to guess who comes off best there... i don't think we'll EVER get a worthwhile poltical/economic analysis of jazz = art music writ at this point tho' it'd be instructive on many levels... but i digress.

... have you read "Ringolevio" by Emmett Grogan?

maybe when you were 16 you weren't mature enough for kofsky's books. kofsky is respected by many people who are not 16. there are a lot of truths/information about the business side of jazz in those books.

as for the books that you 'recommend', i googled them, and they have nothing to do with jazz. but thanks for your deep thoughts.

>>

FK's interview of Coltrane is worth listening to but it ought not be too hard to guess who comes off best there.

>>>

you mean that coltrane comes off better than kofsky? i don't understand your point.

[Christiern]

Kofsky wrote some truths regarding the music business, but his Marxist zeal often got in the way. He was, in many ways, a nut case with an agenda and little in the way of integrity. His writing is not to be swallowed whole.

[l p]

If Kofsky is yr fucking Virgil to either music or radical politics/social theory then you need a remedial education way beyond the scope of this thread, Comrade.

i am not interested in kofsky's political stance. i like his writing/reporting because i rarely see those subjects discussed as openly, and with apparantly good research in other jazz books. and don't worry, my music collection is not based on kofsky's taste in music.

it seems that you misunderstand, maybe because your life/work has a lot to do with politics - if your signature is correct. not everybody is interested in politics.

and i don't see anything radical about treating the jazz musicians fairly.

and you keep recommending books about blacks in prison, black power, marxism, etc.

recommend a book about black jazz music.

[l p]

actually, i meant - recommend a jazz book that gives examples that kofsky's ideology is wrong, or at least partially wrong. i've read notes and tones, and i believe that i read only the beginning of the hawes book (although i'm not positive about the hawes). are the musicians in notes and tones bragging about how well they were treated by the jazz business world?

as for kofsky being extreme, we really don't know that he is. instead of your take on kofsky, i would prefer opinions from black jazz musicians from the 60's/70's who are still alive. let's email ornette. or there must be published interviews where musicians are asked about kofsky's books.

btw, rahsaan roland kirk talked a lot during concerts, sometimes for 5-10min between tunes. his ideas about some of these subjects do not make kofsky seem like an extremist at all. and kirk's opinion is much more important to me than kofsky's. so, if you want to blame my taking 'inflammatory rhetoric at face value' on anyone, then i'd prefer the main source.

"it's still plantation earth" RRK - circa 1974/75.

see you in the politics forum. i'm there all the time.

[Christiern]

When Kofsky was around and writing for Bob Thiele's magazine, the musicians I associated with on a regular basis (and they were many) rarely mentioned him unless he made some outrageous claim. He actually never brought out anything that people in the business (including artists) did not already know an had not themselves expressed. He was a foul-mouthed, vindictive man who often expressed his personal likes and dislikes in print. There is nothing wrong with that, per se, but he colored the truth to suit his own agenda.

To illustrate how disingenuous Kofsky was, I'll repeat--in brief--an experience I had with him. When he had a hissy fit because I mentioned in a review that I had been unfamiliar with a certain local San Francisco bassist, he began a card-campaign in which he demanded that the editors of Stereo Review fire me. These were hysterical crank missiles that were not taken seriously on the other end, but they became increasingly venomous and Kofsky accused me of all sorts of things, and here is my point: He wrote that my book was full of factual errors, and thus worthless--it was, he said, fiction from beginning to end.

Well, imagine my surprise when I came across his web site, many years later, and found him foaming at the mouth about John Hammond and what a fraud he was. He was in many ways correct about that, but the funny thing was that he cited my ("worthless")book to support his claim. So, all of a sudden, because it fit into his agenda, my observations went from fiction to fact.

When I read that, I immediately sent Kofsky an e-mail message, but he was already dead. That fact, IMO, represented no loss to jazz.