Advent of the Permeable Vault Door

Europe has long emanated status as an environment more receptive to and enamored of jazz than the States. Evidence is everywhere, from the periodic exoduses of American musicians over the decades, to healthy government-subsidized scenes in various countries, to the recent influx of labels that capitalize on the comparatively lax nature of European commercial copyright laws. It’s that last category I’d like to elaborate on in this post, having been following the activities of a handful of such companies, sometimes with interest, sometimes with concern for the past few years.

Imprints like Classics, which specializes in the systematic excavation of catalogs of swing and bop pioneers and more recently Lonehill, which doesn’t appear to have much in the way of constraints in what it releases, other than a preference for pre-1970 jazz, are probably well known to readers. Disconforme’s province is later swing through hardbop. JSP and Proper have cornered the market on cheap box set samplers of a single artists and sprawling genre overviews. The reissue and center sale sections of Cadence Magazine are often dominated by product from several of these European-based labels. Given the publication’s long-standing stewardship of independent artists/labels and a readiness to confront corruption in the industry, the embrace of what, at best, seems “gray market” merchandise seems strange. Looking closer, Cadence’s readership extends to the European community where labels’ activities are presumably legal. In light of this reality, coverage of the titles makes more sense.

At first, I assumed the guiding parameter on such products was grudging respect for a (seemingly arbitrary) European statute dictating a 50-year buffer on any attempts to market U.S. copyright-protected music. That no longer seems the case, as the Lonehill folks have expeditiously reissued material well within the temporal borders of that no-fly zone. I also received a much-needed education from a reader in the pages of Cadence, calling into question my claim of the Classics label’s diligence in securing rights to the music sold under their name.

U.S. jazz reissue bellwethers like Blue Note and Fantasy (now Concord) have presumably absorbed the brunt of the sales hit. When I was first delving into jazz in the mid-1980s, the storied vaults of these companies were the recipients of much conjecture and downright desire. Repeatedly perusing a copy of Cuscuna and Ruppli’s The Blue Note Label: A Discography (now largely duplicated online) in a grad school music library in the early 90s, my mind reeled at the aural possibilities of unissued sessions contained therein. The Blue Note vaults were a place of mystery and promise, their contents doled out in sometimes painfully piecemeal fashion. Reflecting back in the context of today’s reissue-rife market that sort of cultivated anticipation now seems nostalgic. Label’s like Disconforme and Proper have broken the locks and cracked the combinations. The reinforced steel doors have swung wide and ingress into the vaults is no longer circumscribed.

Smaller, more financially vulnerable imprints like Uptown are also in the crosshairs of these trans-Atlantic plagiarizers. Chuck Nessa has repeatedly gone on record lamenting the costly legal rigmarole he was forced to engage in with a European label that copied the meticulously mastered music on an Uptown Charles Mingus reissue and passed it off as its own. It’s hard to imagine how infuriating such an experience must have been. There’s also the persuasive point of musician’s royalties and the probable statistic that familial estates aren’t receiving dime one from these enterprising entities. Why send a check on to a widow, child or sibling when there’s no legal apparatus in place to mandate such an action?

Even with all the obvious evidence, the flipside of this argument is a compelling one too. First, there’s the reality that a significant slice of what these labels release is either not currently of commercial of interest to the American companies that hold the rights or slow to draw their notice. Lonehill, in particular, has brought into recirculation a startling body of 50s jazz that has yet to receive formal reissue on stateside shores. The packaging and documentation isn’t always the most diligent or accurate, but their multi-disc retrospectives on musicians like Illinois Jacquet, Gigi Gryce, Lennie Niehaus and French horn obscurist John Graas, are difficult to beat in terms of comprehensiveness and price. There’s also a wealth of single and double disc titles like the Earl Bostic two-fer that combines his hen’s-teeth soul jazz dates with Richard “Groove” Holmes and the Complete Gerry Mulligan Original Sextet Studio Master Takes (a set itself trumped by another set that also includes live material).

To the jazz junky, cheap and convenient access to this sort of stuff makes moral quandaries surrounding its provenance more difficult to reprove. I was just a record shop yesterday and discovered a pair of reissues on the Gambit label that instantly put this dilemma to the test. Also based in Spain (the Wilmington, DE for “gray market” reissues), Gambit’s licensing practices are unclear, but given their current catalog holdings (albums on labels as diverse as Verve, Contemporary, Columbia and United Artists) the Stateside legality of their program does seem suspect.

The two titles that caught my notice were a two-fer of Lee Konitz’s Very Cool and Tranquility, two highly sought after Verve sides that have yet to be reissued outside of expensive Japanese paper sleeve-pressings, and The Complete “Jazz Guitar” by Jim Hall, a set that purportedly presents the guitarist’s legendary debut on Pacific Jazz in unexpurgated form for the first time. I have an old CD release of the Hall album that includes edited versions of many of the tracks (solos by sidemen Carl Perkins and Red Mitchell were excised by producer Richard Bock) and had long been curious about the music in its earlier unabridged form. Also sweetening the pot on the Hall set, five bonus tracks featuring the guitarist in the company of various members of the Modern Jazz Quartet, including an eleven-minute duet with John Lewis from 1957. The Konitz is arguably even more tantalizing. The first session features his alto in the company of Trisantoites Don Ferrara, Sal Mosca and Peter Ind along with wildcard Shadow Wilson on drums. The second relies on a rhythm section comprised of Billy Bauer, Henry Grimes(!) and Dave Bailey, the latter two men Gerry Mulligan’s tandem of the time. Needless to say, I parted with the necessary ducats to bring both home, a needling conscience barely perceptible through the euphoria that ensued upon auditioning the sounds.

If the Dusty Groove inventory is any barometer of sales success, Gambit seems to be doing quite well. Over half its back catalog is out of stock on the site. Other “gray market” labels appear to be well in the black as well and not all of the income is financing nefarious designs. Sales of Lonehill and Disconforme product through Trem Azul has contributed to the financial solvency of the Clean Feed label. The proceeds, in turn, help Clean Feed release new releases by European and free jazz musicians both established and up-and-coming, a positive outcome by any free jazz fan’s estimation.

Still, the questions of legality and ethics persist. The presence of this sort of product across the retailer spectrum from online behemoths like Amazon.com to local brick & mortars like the one I visited yesterday seems to suggest a general acceptance of its viability as a lucrative earnings venture. People are selling it. People are buying it. But who’s being squeezed and abused in the bargain. These are vexing issues, ones I’m still pondering as the piquant strains of Konitz and his compatriots pipe through my stereo speakers.