John Coltrane Impulse masters destroyed?

[monkboughtlunch]

Anyone read this New York Times report published this week about the 2008 Universal Fire?  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html

It's titled The Day The Music Burned.

 

Among the incinerated Decca masters were recordings by titanic figures in American music: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland. The tape masters for Billie Holiday’s Decca catalog were most likely lost in total. The Decca masters also included recordings by such greats as Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five and Patsy Cline.

 

The fire most likely claimed most of Chuck Berry’s Chess masters and multitrack masters, a body of work that constitutes Berry’s greatest recordings. The destroyed Chess masters encompassed nearly everything else recorded for the label and its subsidiaries, including most of the Chess output of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, Etta James, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy and Little Walter. Also very likely lost were master tapes of the first commercially released material by Aretha Franklin, recorded when she was a young teenager performing in the church services of her father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, who made dozens of albums for Chess and its sublabels.

 

Virtually all of Buddy Holly’s masters were lost in the fire. Most of John Coltrane’s Impulse masters were lost, as were masters for treasured Impulse releases by Ellington, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders and other jazz greats. Also apparently destroyed were the masters for dozens of canonical hit singles, including Bill Haley and His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock,” Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats’ “Rocket 88,” Bo Diddley’s “Bo Diddley/I’m A Man,” Etta James’s “At Last,” the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” and the Impressions’ “People Get Ready.”

 

The list of destroyed single and album masters takes in titles by dozens of legendary artists, a genre-spanning who’s who of 20th- and 21st-century popular music. It includes recordings by Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway, the Andrews Sisters, the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers, Lionel Hampton, Ray Charles, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Clara Ward, Sammy Davis Jr., Les Paul, Fats Domino, Big Mama Thornton, Burl Ives, the Weavers, Kitty Wells, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Bobby (Blue) Bland, B.B. King, Ike Turner, the Four Tops, Quincy Jones, Burt Bacharach, Joan Baez, Neil Diamond, Sonny and Cher, the Mamas and the Papas, Joni Mitchell, Captain Beefheart, Cat Stevens, the Carpenters, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Al Green, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Buffett, the Eagles, Don Henley, Aerosmith, Steely Dan, Iggy Pop, Rufus and Chaka Khan, Barry White, Patti LaBelle, Yoko Ono, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Police, Sting, George Strait, Steve Earle, R.E.M., Janet Jackson, Eric B. and Rakim, New Edition, Bobby Brown, Guns N’ Roses, Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, Sonic Youth, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails, Snoop Dogg, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Hole, Beck, Sheryl Crow, Tupac Shakur, Eminem, 50 Cent and the Roots.

Edited June 13, 2019 by monkboughtlunch

[jazzbo]

Previous discussion: 

 

[monkboughtlunch]

 

It's amazing that most of John Coltrane's Impulse master tapes (among those of many other artists) were destroyed by the 2008 fire and it took the media 11 years to call B.S. on Universal's spin job.  Think of all the unreleased outtakes and alternates lost to the ages.   The Universal CEO back in 2008 said "nothing irreplaceable was lost."

[bertrand]

The lost 1963 sessions came from a copy that Coltrane took home. The copy was in Naima's possession, along with outtakes from the Johnny Hartman sessions etc.

But there are also unissued sessions from 1967. Those may have been lost in the fire. But was Coltrane still taking tapes home at that point? Those would not have been in Naima's possession, of course. Alice would have had them. Was she as meticulous at keeping material as Naima was? I asked this question on Facebook and tagged Ravi, but nothing so far. He does not pop up a whole lot.

Between this and the Atlantic fire, a lot of priceless items may have been lost. BUT there may be second generation copies of some of the material floating around. The existence of these for at least two of the Atlantic sessions has been discussed on this board, and at least one is about to come out.

It behooves the Jazz community to put their thinking caps on and try to figure out what could still be salvaged. Some ideas to start:

1. How did those Atlantic tapes surface and could the same source(s) be in possession of other tapes? I have heard the argument 'they would have surfaced by now' but that is nonsense. Things surface every day, e.g. the Larry Young Paris tapes. I knew years before Feldman that tapes existed, but I never knew if they would ever surface. There are 7 billion people on earth, anyone of them could find a tape, in theory.

2. Was Coltrane the only one who took tapes home from the RVG studios? Did any other studios let artists take tapes home? Were ALL these tapes lost when the artists got divorced or died? Maybe some widows have tapes at home they never thought of telling anyone about. Take the Mingus Detroit sessions. Roy Brooks had them and his widow kept them. Yes, families are often clueless, but not always.

3. And then there can be some flukey situations. For example, very few people seem to be aware that Rutgers has copies of some Blue Note tapes. Despite my best efforts, I could never find out what they have. All I wanted to do was make an inventory. Are they copies of what is in the Capitol vaults, or tapes that exist nowhere else?

Just some thoughts.

Bertrand.

 

 

 

 

[Teasing the Korean]

i had read that impulse masters were trashed prior to the 2008 disaster.

[bertrand]

That may be true.

[monkboughtlunch]

31 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

i had read that impulse masters were trashed prior to the 2008 disaster.

I got the impression that a lot of the Impulse source tapes that Cuscuna used for the 1990s and 2000s CD reissues were from LP production master tapes.  So they would be at least a generation removed from the session reels.  Maybe the session tapes were already gone before the 2008 fire and what burned up were the 2nd gen LP production masters used for the CD reissues? 

[felser]

While I am sorry for the MCA fire, I'm glad it didn't occur in, say, 1986.   At least a LOT made it onto CD.

[Teasing the Korean]

8 hours ago, monkboughtlunch said:

I got the impression that a lot of the Impulse source tapes that Cuscuna used for the 1990s and 2000s CD reissues were from LP production master tapes.  So they would be at least a generation removed from the session reels.  Maybe the session tapes were already gone before the 2008 fire and what burned up were the 2nd gen LP production masters used for the CD reissues? 

Apparently, MCA - which is really the first of a mega-conglomerate labels as we know them today - was concerned about shelf space, and they supposedly trashed multi-track masters and mono mixes from all of the labels the acquired, but simply kept the mixed stereo masters for future use.  I would not be surprised if a lot of the fringe music that I love was entirely trashed - mono, stereo, multi-tracks - before it was ever digitized. 

[Shrdlu]

Someone at Impulse threw out nearly all of the session reels in the 70s. Only the masters for the LPs were kept. A small amount of the tapes survived, e.g. the tapes of Trane's November 1961 Village Vaguard performances, which were issued in a 4 CD set. Some dribs and drabs came out on vinyl before that. All of the 90s Impulse CDs have nothing on them that had not been issued on vinyl. The tracks on the three "Definitive Jazz Scene" LPs provided a few tracks that were included on the CDs.

No Impulse out-takes or unissued tracks were lost in that terrible fire. But it does seem that the main LP masters were lost.

[Teasing the Korean]

15 minutes ago, Shrdlu said:

Someone at Impulse threw out nearly all of the session reels in the 70s.

Wouldn't that have been "someone at MCA" at that point? 

[Shrdlu]

Who knows? No doubt some ignorant worker at whatever music empire made that decision.

[Pim]

My God what a waste. So I guess this is all about sessions like these:

John Coltrane Quartet

John Coltrane, tenor sax; Alice Coltrane, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rashied Ali, drums

John Coltrane Quartet

same personnel.

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 29, 1967

90784	Number Eight	Impulse! lost
90785	Number Seven	-
90786	Number Six	-
90787	Number Five	-
90788	Number Four	-
90789	Number Two	-

And:

John Coltrane Quintet

Pharoah Sanders, flute, tenor sax, percussion; John Coltrane, tenor sax, percussion; Alice McLeod, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rashied Ali, drums.

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 21, 1966

90536	Darkness	Impulse! lost
90537	Lead Us On	-
90538	Leo	-
90539	Peace On Earth

Edited August 17, 2019 by Pim

[mikeweil]

On 14.6.2019 at 4:45 AM, bertrand said:

1. How did those Atlantic tapes surface and could the same source(s) be in possession of other tapes? I have heard the argument 'they would have surfaced by now' but that is nonsense. Things surface every day, e.g. the Larry Young Paris tapes. I knew years before Feldman that tapes existed, but I never knew if they would ever surface. There are 7 billion people on earth, anyone of them could find a tape, in theory.

Not all of Atlantic's tapes were stored at the warehouse that was destroyed by fire, many were in their New York facilities for various reasons, like surveying them for future releases.

Edited August 17, 2019 by mikeweil