White Bicycles (11 page)
Half an hour later, I was standing beneath the orange motorway lighting with my thumb out hoping for a London-bound lorry. Finding a Yank by the roadside in darkest Yorkshire was entertaining enough, but as the night wore on and I climbed into my fourth truck, I started embellishing the tale in order to keep both the drivers and myself awake. Dawn found me on the A1 just north of London telling a gripped cockney that I had been chased out of Hull by a jealous boyfriend wielding a butcher’s knife. He was sufficiently impressed to treat me to breakfast in a café hidden in a cul-de-sac filled with bare-knuckle fighters and other East End hard men finishing off their night with a fry-up.
Back at Bill’s, Bert Lloyd paid a call and we all went out for a curry. A. L. Lloyd was a short, round man, with immense eyebrows and a perpetual expression of delight and surprise. If a bio-pic had been made of his life, Ralph Richardson would have been perfect casting. He told us tales of collecting music in Albania, Bulgaria and the farther reaches of the Soviet Union. That lunch excited dreams of travelling the world to record music, undaunted by the fact that I hadn’t produced anything in English yet. Bert sang in a thin high tenor with a wide grin: sea shanties, ribald ditties, war songs and tragic love ballads. His whole being exuded a delight in the melodies and lyrics he had collected from farmers, tinkers and old ladies the length of Britain. Although he was considered joint founder of the British traditional folk movement along with Ewan MacColl, I had difficulty imagining the two as cohorts. MacColl always seemed terribly self-important and rigid; Bert had an ego, but never appeared to take himself too seriously. He was endlessly helpful to young singers and, in later years, when Fairport Convention began to amplify traditional music, he gave them valuable advice and support.
I wasn’t keen on singer-songwriters in those days, but their ranks were growing. People spoke of a girl named Sandy Denny with a powerful voice. I heard her sing early on and wrote her off as too American-sounding, which, considering how I came to love and mourn Sandy and her music, shows how narrow minded I was in 1965.
Equally parochial was my attitude towards the British school of guitar virtuosi. I thought the likes of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn were just emulating American noodlers such as John Fahey and Sandy Bull and unworthy of much attention. But the modernizing trail that led through Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Richard Thompson to Kate Rusby began with an elusive guitarist I never heard perform live, Davey Graham. Being in and out of rehab did not prevent Graham from revolutionizing English folk music with a series of albums that combined blues and hillbilly techniques, jazz chords and traditional melodies. Renbourn and Jansch, along with John Martyn, Donovan, Roy Harper and Robin Williamson, studied these records closely. And while I never entirely embraced the genre, I worked successfully with many of its adherents.
My enthusiasm for traditional music, combined with these trips to the hinterlands, marked me down as an eccentric to many of my London friends, most of whom had never ventured north of Watford. In later years, when I would hand out copies of new releases on my Hannibal label, I would get effusive thanks for Cubanismo, Taj Mahal and Virginia Rodrigues CDs, and tight little smiles and nods for the Richard Thompson and Fairport Convention reissues or the Mercury Prize-nominated CD by Norma Waterson. In February 2000, Taj Mahal came to London to receive a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ from
Folk on Two
, BBC Radio’s lone outlet for traditional music. The folk-averse love Taj as a paragon of blues authenticity, but that night he was hitting my arm and making faces of astonished delight as the Copper Family from Sussex sang their unaccompanied harmonies. Taj recognized soulful music when he heard it. For the grand finale, when the Coppers were joined by the remaining Watersons, John Tams, Eliza Carthy, Kate Rusby and the rest of the English folk establishment, you couldn’t keep Taj in his seat. He quickly learned the chorus and his gruff baritone boomed out amid the English voices on ‘Thousands Or More’, a song traceable to seventeenth-century Hampshire. Afterwards, he and Bob Copper swapped record-collecting anecdotes: it came as no surprise that the rural Englishman had sent away for 78s by Sleepy John Estes, Big Bill Broonzy and Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the 1940s. It seemed perfectly reasonable to Taj, and his grin testified to the pleasure that evening’s music gave him. Perhaps it’s easier for foreigners.
THE SUMMER OF 1965 didn’t see me much farther along in my ambitions to become a record producer, but working in Newport, Rhode Island, as production manager of the Jazz and Folk Festivals wasn’t so bad. We had offices in one of the robber-baron mansions that line Newport’s rocky sea coast and cruised around in immense Oldsmobile convertibles loaned by a local auto dealer. The cars smelled of fake leather, but the radios had powerful speakers and I flipped contentedly between R&B and the Top Forty while exploring short cuts to the festival site north of town. The opening of the Jamestown Bridge that year had begun Newport’s transformation from a hard-to-reach aristocratic resort into a crowded tourist centre. Soaring property values would eventually turn Festival Field into a tract of mock-clapboard housing.
The airwaves may have been full of Byrds, Dylan and Sonny & Cher, but the Jazz Festival line-up spoke of a genre at its peak: Dizzy Gillespie, the Modern Jazz Quartet, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Earl Hines, Frank Sinatra (with orchestra conducted by Quincy Jones), Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Herbie Mann, Dave Brubeck, Buddy Rich, Illinois Jacquet, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Carmen McRae, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Joe Williams, Stan Getz, Abdullah Ibrahim (then known as Dollar Brand), Lee Konitz, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Haden, Elvin Jones, Cecil Taylor, Carla Bley, Paul Bley, Memphis Slim, Bud Freeman, Muddy Waters and, bizarrely, in Thursday’s opening night show, Pete Seeger. There were seven concerts spread over the 4 July weekend with tickets at $3.50 to $6.
I had a reunion with Muddy Waters on Thursday night; George had booked the whole band this time. Muddy was up for my suggestions now, so Gillespie’s saxophonist James Moody joined them for the finale and battled James Cotton’s harmonica for chorus after chorus.
Friday afternoon was the avant-garde show, with Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor and the newly divorced leaders of the white contingent – Paul and Carla Bley. Paul was there with his girlfriend, Annette Peacock, later a cult figure in underground music circles. They seemed like the kind of people I had hung out with in Harvard Square a few years before – smart, hip, middle-class kids, a bit more adventurous and talented than their suburban neighbours. The innovative end of the jazz world had good energy in the summer of 1965. I had been to hear Cecil Taylor in New York in January and the club was packed. The Newport show was intense, exciting and provocative. You had the feeling that out of their collective talents would emerge something central to our culture. But the growing anger of the black militants made audiences wary of ‘free jazz’ and the outrage it expressed. The jazz avant-garde would soon be shunted to a siding to languish and shrink.
On Friday evening, a long, perfect summer dusk was beginning as the musicians gathered backstage. George was standing near the artists’ entrance talking with Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island and Elaine Lorillard, tobacco heiress and long-time backer of the Jazz Festival. They looked up as Elvin Jones, Coltrane’s drummer, arrived. The Jones brothers – Hank (the pianist), Thad (George Russell’s trumpet player) and Elvin – constituted one of the most talented families in jazz, and also the most striking looking. Elvin’s head was shaped like a Benin bronze, with sculpted cheekbones and the darkest of skin tones. He was wearing a black suit with a bright orange shirt and restraining a huge Dobermann on a leash. On his other arm was a tall redhead with pale white skin, a low-cut sheath dress and an expensive coat draped casually over her shoulders as she stepped delicately across the grass in stilettos. The VIPs stopped and stared, providing George’s cue to bridge the gap between the worlds of politics and money and the mysterious domain of musicians. ‘Hey, Elvin, baby, how’s it going?’
Elvin looked over at George and grinned, then leaned down and put his arm around the neck of the dog. Like a coach having a last word with a substitute before sending him into the game, he pointed towards George. ‘Ajax, go on over there and suck George Wein’s cock.’ The trio gaped, then quickly turned back to their chat.
The evening began with the Art Blakey Quintet with Lee Morgan on trumpet. This was not the Jazz Messengers, but I had grown up listening to those ‘Orgy in Rhythm’ records and loved the unique propulsion Blakey gave his bands. The group was tight and powerful, a fitting opening for a great evening.
I may have been alone in viewing Carmen McRae as filler, but I never liked her supper-club style. It seemed out of place as a preface to Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. To define what modern jazz was in 1965, you could just sit back and listen to that concert. Miles was with his legendary Quintet – Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams – yet they were eclipsed first by Monk with Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales and Ben Riley, and then by the unforgettable closing set by Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Jones. These were arguably the greatest line-ups the three giants would ever have. I lay on the grass and contemplated my good fortune as chorus after chorus of ‘My Favourite Things’ washed over me, the stars came out and a breeze blew in off Narragansett Bay.
The next night we had limos and a military helicopter for Sinatra and Quincy Jones. The festival was a huge success. Most of the shows were sold out, but the changes that were undermining jazz would soon be felt. The smart, rebellious students who in years past had donned black turtlenecks and headed for the local hipster hang-outs would soon be strumming electric guitars and listening to Beatles, Stones, Who, Byrds and Dylan LPs. Some jazz clubs had already started programming folk singers and comedians while others would soon be taken over by rock entrepreneurs. Jazz had comfortably coexisted with R&B and rock’n’roll, but the Birth of Rock elbowed it out of the way.
ON MONDAY MORNING, WE BEGAN preparing for the complex logistics of the Folk Festival coming up in three weeks. Jazz musicians appeared on stage every week but many folk artists had never even used a microphone. I decided that all performers would make an advance trip to the site to be sound-checked. My self-appointed mission was to ensure that the fuzzy balances I remembered from my visit to the 1963 festival would not diminish the music this time.
In years since, I have been known to climb over fellow concert-goers and run to the sound controls when an artist of mine is performing. ‘It sounded just fine before!’ say my friends. Perhaps. But I know that if, for example, you bring the backing voices up just a little to create a tension between the lead voice and the sonic cushion of the chorus, or add some low frequencies so the richness of the harmonies can be felt as well as heard, the mood in the hall changes. The excitement grows, the intensity builds, performers and audience feel it, though no one can tell you why. Only when the sonic image is right can I relax and enjoy the music, and I was determined to enjoy Newport that summer. With free lodging and a few ‘kin passes’, I lured Paul Rothchild up to mix the sound. He owed me: the Butterfield Band hadn’t even finished recording their first album and already they were hot.
The mix of festival performers – urban folkies with record contracts, Appalachian hillbillies who had barely been out of their valleys, an advance guard of ‘world music’ groups twenty years ahead of their time and professional blues, gospel and country artists who rarely performed in front of middle-class audiences – were all paid the same: room and board plus $25 a day. Invitations represented an opportunity to appear before thousands of the most aware and influential kids in America, to say nothing of the worldwide media. Like knighthoods, they were seldom turned down.
The festival was run by a non-profit foundation advised by George but headed by a board of veteran New York folkies: Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax, actor/singer Theo Bikel, singer Jeanne Ritchie, musician/folklorist Ralph Rinzler and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary. Rules governing invitations were strict, deliberations were tortured and the April deadlines supposed to be absolute. When Yarrow tabled a motion in June that the Butterfield Band be extended a late invitation, the rest of the board were shocked.
Yarrow was the joker in the board’s deck, a young man trying to live down his role in that squarest of groups. Peter, Paul & Mary were managed by Albert Grossman, a former Chicago club owner who had become folk’s answer to Brian Epstein. Early photos show a pudgy crew-cut man with narrow eyes behind rimless glasses: a single-minded accountant in a seersucker suit and carefully knotted tie. Now he sported a shaggy grey mane and blue jeans. His wife Sally, whose photo graced the cover of
Bringing It All Back
Home
, was young and beautiful. In a milieu with no tradition of aggressive management, Grossman had masterminded PP&M’s rise and was now engineering Dylan’s. To a stable of older artists such as Odetta, he had recently added the Kweskin Jug Band, as well as Butterfield. His compound in Woodstock, NY, was rumoured to contain a connoisseur’s cellar of the strongest marijuana from every corner of the globe. The board of the Newport Folk Foundation, with the exception of the loyal Yarrow, loathed him.
Yarrow’s request seemed like just an errand for his sinister manager, but it was undeniable that everyone was suddenly talking about Butterfield. His band was unlike any other revivalist group and multiracial besides. There may have been a feeling that it was important to invite new and exciting artists, not just the well-established ones from the coffee house and concert circuit. I was summoned to testify that it would be possible to move the group’s amplifiers quickly on to the small stage at the end of the blues workshop on Saturday afternoon. (All performers had one ‘workshop’ performance and one set on the main stage.) In the end the well-respected Rinzler came out in favour and the racial aspect probably swayed the rest of the Board. Grossman had flexed his muscles and pulled it off for his new clients. One key element of the Newport drama was in place.