Label Watch
October 1998 By Josef Woodard
Label Watch: Aleph Records
Artist-run record labels, an important footnote in jazz history, are a seductive, dangerous business, often destined to fly, fail, or both. The problems encountered usually revert back to the truism that musicians aren’t always business people by nature...
June 1998 By Bill Milkowski
Label Watch: Cannonball Records
After a lengthy and productive relationship as house producer with Rounder’s Bullseye Blues and Black Top imprints, veteran bluesman Ron Levy relocated to Minneapolis and joined forces with Scott Haidle, president of the Paulstarr record distribution network...
June 1998 By David Zych
Label Watch: Higher Octave Music
Matt Matthews has been the president of Higher Octave Music for about 13 years, and he has seen his new-age label prosper in that time with recordings that range from the meditative to the up-tempo. It’s a format, he says, that represents a lifestyle and...
April 1998 By David Zych
Alchemy Records: Into the Void
For guitarist Jon Durant, president of Alchemy Records, musical expression takes precedence over the marketability of the music he records, and that fact, he asserts, has been the key to keeping his label on the cutting edge of progressive jazz. “When a...
April 1998 By Bill Shoemaker
Screwgun: Berne’s Turn
When it comes to making records, composer-saxophonist Tim Berne has done it all. His idiosyncratic take on post-Coleman jazz first gained notice during the late ’70s-early ’80s heyday of artist-operated labels via five titles issued on his self-produced...
January/February 1998 By David Zych
Label Watch: Louisiana Red Hot
Robert Parker is an audio engineer, an audiophile, and a passionate enthusiast for the brilliance that is early classic jazz. Put those ingredients together and you have Bix Beiderbecke in full fidelity stereophonic sound with nary a pop or a hiss. It may...
January/February 1998 By Bret Primack
Label Watch: American Clave
It all started with a film that never got made. Kip Hanrahan, a Bronx-born composer, producer and bandleader hoped to bring together the texts of Ishmael Reed and the music of Cecil Taylor. But it eventually became apparent to Hanrahan, who had worked on...
December 1997 By Tom Terrell
Label Watch: Giant Step
For better and for worse, we seem to be in the middle of a jazz boom. The better: a plethora of labels major and independent, a surplus of first-class, multi-disciplined musicians, expanding markets (cable/online). The worse: stylistic sameness, label conservatism...
December 1997 By David Zych
Label Watch: TCB
Peter Schmidlin started TCB records back in 1988 with a motherlode of material. Schmidlin, you see, is a drummer who, for 11 years prior to forming his record company, gigged with the house band at a Zurich radio station that featured live jazz concerts...
November 1997 By David Zych
Label Watch: Arkadia
About 15 years ago, back when blank video tapes cost $15 each and the Beta-versus-VHS wars were going on, Bob Karcy started V.I.E.W. Video, a cutting-edge company that brought prerecorded video culture into the homes of thousands. Today, Karcy’s video company...
