Michael Cuscuna has died at 75

[sgcim]

On 4/23/2024 at 9:03 PM, felser said:

So do I.

I was reading "Unfinished Business" The Life and Times of Danny Gatton, and I just found out that Jorma and Jack Cassidy both came from Washington DC, and Jack used to play jazz with Danny and his pianist Dick Heintze aboard some steamboat gig they had sailing across the Potomac in a band they formed called The Soul Mates in 1966. They got a kick out of the black tape that Jack used to put on his sunglasses(!). Jack also used to play with a band they played in called the Offbeats in 1962.

After the gig in 1966, Jack and Jorma decided to take off for the West Coast, and Jack wanted Danny and Dick to go with them, but they felt they decided they were too young to leave DC, and six months later they found out that jack and Jorma played on a hit record called "Somebody To Love"!

[bertrand]

Another big Airplane fan here, especially Jack Casady.

[clifford_thornton]

Casady is such a great bassist; I didn't really think about him as an instrumental soloist until I saw the Tuna live. Things definitely clicked. Tuna fans are pretty rabid, too, and it's always fun to talk to someone wearing one of their t shirts.

[Dan Gould]

Not that I expect to learn anything extra but the NYT seems especially late on an obit. 

[felser]

21 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

Casady is such a great bassist; I didn't really think about him as an instrumental soloist until I saw the Tuna live. Things definitely clicked. Tuna fans are pretty rabid, too, and it's always fun to talk to someone wearing one of their t shirts.

Check out Casady on this long instrumental from their great 1967 album After Bathing at Baxter's (my favorite of their albums):

 

9 hours ago, sgcim said:

I was reading "Unfinished Business" The Life and Times of Danny Gatton, and I just found out that Jorma and Jack Cassidy both came from Washington DC, and Jack used to play jazz with Danny and his pianist Dick Heintze aboard some steamboat gig they had sailing across the Potomac in a band they formed called The Soul Mates in 1966. They got a kick out of the black tape that Jack used to put on his sunglasses(!). Jack also used to play with a band they played in called the Offbeats in 1962.

After the gig in 1966, Jack and Jorma decided to take off for the West Coast, and Jack wanted Danny and Dick to go with them, but they felt they decided they were too young to leave DC, and six months later they found out that jack and Jorma played on a hit record called "Somebody To Love"!

Great story, thanks!

[bertrand]

Those long jams like Spare Chaynge, Bear Melt and Thing are the Airplane at their best. Spencer Dryden is great too.

[clifford_thornton]

1 hour ago, felser said:

Check out Casady on this long instrumental from their great 1967 album After Bathing at Baxter's (my favorite of their albums):

 

Great story, thanks!

Yes, my favorite of their LPs no question. But seeing him is very different from listening to the records!

[mjzee]

5 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

Not that I expect to learn anything extra but the NYT seems especially late on an obit. 

The Times has now published an obituary (a pretty good one, too).

[Eric]

42 minutes ago, mjzee said:

The Times has now published an obituary (a pretty good one, too).

Agreed!  I absolutely love the photo of him with McCoy, Bobby Hutcherson and his young daughter.

[Brad]

5 hours ago, mjzee said:

The Times has now published an obituary (a pretty good one, too).

It sure took them long enough. 

[Dan Gould]

14 hours ago, mjzee said:

The Times has now published an obituary (a pretty good one, too).

Does this ring true to others? Cuz it doesn't to me. They make it sound like he found all the prints and negatives hidden behind a big stash of Trainwreck reels or something. 

Mr. Cuscuna’s archival dives at Blue Note also turned up tens of thousands of photographs taken in the studio by Francis Wolff, one of the label’s founders. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/arts/music/michael-cuscuna-dead.html

 

When Michael told me about his cancer, I was hoping for the best but expecting the worst. Esophageal cancer has a very low survival rate, but I held out hope that he would be one of the survivors.

[Chuck Nessa]

2 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

Does this ring true to others? Cuz it doesn't to me. They make it sound like he found all the prints and negatives hidden behind a big stash of Trainwreck reels or something. 

Mr. Cuscuna’s archival dives at Blue Note also turned up tens of thousands of photographs taken in the studio by Francis Wolff, one of the label’s founders. 

IIRC, Michael got the Wolff images from Ruth Lion.

[Dan Gould]

9 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

IIRC, Michael got the Wolff images from Ruth Lion.

I was thinking that or from Wolff's family.  They weren't somewhere in the BN archive.

[mjzee]

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.

[Big Beat Steve]

26 minutes ago, mjzee said:

 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.

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?

[mjzee]

6 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

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?

Huh.  I just looked at Discogs, and all titles have names.  Why did I remember "Untitled Original"?  Bad memory about this, I guess.  Apologies.

[clifford_thornton]

40 minutes ago, mjzee said:

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. 

Fascinating.

[mjzee]

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.

Edited April 26 by mjzee

[mjzee]

And this is from the obituary on the BN website:

Just before he passed, Alfred Lion, the founder of Blue Note, sent Cuscuna a steamer trunk holding all the photographs shot by Lion’s partner at the label, Frank Wolff.

https://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/michael-cuscuna-1948-2024/

[bertrand]

On 4/26/2024 at 10:33 AM, mjzee said:

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.

It is too bad I was not old enough to be in the loop back then. All of these tunes had lead sheets deposited for copyright. I had a bunch of copyright deposits pulled in the 90s for many composers and they are now collected in boxes, accessible to researchers in the Music Division at the Library of Congress. It is not advertised on their website, however.

This is the same source used for many of the unrecorded pieces that the Herbie Nichols Project premiered.

Now, the Nichols family found more music in a trunk, and Ben Allison just recorded 6 of them.

Bertrand.

 

Edited April 27 by bertrand

[Chuck Nessa]

Michael was a friend since 1967 - I just ran across this today.

[bertrand]

Wow! So frustrating. If I had just connected with Michael we could have figured it all out at the Library of Congress, but I was not digging through copyrights yet when Michael was working on this. What year was it? I am pretty sure I was still in grad school.

Edited April 29 by bertrand

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Michael was a friend since 1967 - I just ran across this today.

NOT from Art McFarland, then?

[Chuck Nessa]

1 hour ago, bertrand said:

Wow! So frustrating. What year was it? I am pretty sure I was still in grad school.

I'd guess late '70s.

Edited April 29 by Chuck Nessa