The Jazz.com Blog
February 09, 2009 · 8 comments
Nat Hentoff on Jazz: Remembering Nesuhi Ertegun and Joel Dorn
Jazz.com is delighted to introduce Nat Hentoff as a new contributor. Few individuals have done more for the jazz art form than Mr. Hentoff. Hence, it came as little surprise when, back in 2004, he was the first non-musician to be honored as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. Below Hentoff writes about two other important jazz advocates: Nesuhi Ertegun and Joel Dorn. T.G.
I've only had a few years of experience as a producer of jazz recordings. First, I worked for Lester Koenig's Contemporary label in the 1950s. Lester was a valuable teacher: "Let the musicians breathe," he said, "and the music will."
Then, for a couple of years, I had complete reign as the A&R man at Candid Records, where my releases included recordings by Charles Mingus, Booker Little, Otis Spann and Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite.
As a reporter on the jazz scene, I had watched in studios as some longterm producerswith their egos and sales figures in mindacted as if the music had their bylines, considerably diminishing what Whitney Balliett described as jazz's "Sounds of Surprise."
Once a leader agreed to come to Candid, I didn't interfere with the music, except for the rare occasion when an arrangement was so thick the players got stuck in it. I'd suggest a free blues, and the players came back to life.
But over the years, I was privileged, as were listeners around the world, to have my spirits lifted by the work of the very model of a jazz musician's A&R man, Nesuhi Ertegun. At Atlantic Records, Nesuhi let Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Ray Charles, Ornette Coleman, and many others, breathe naturally. Nesuhi understood thatas John Coltrane once told meto jazz players, "this music is as important as life itself." And Nesuhi got to know the source of what he was hearing by connecting with musicians' lives. Said Yusef Lateef:
Talking to Nesuhi was like talking to a brother or a father. When I returned to the U.S. from Nigeria, it was because of Nesuhi that I was able to do an album that won a Grammy.
I often heard my friend, Charles Mingus, berate the unjustified hubris of the music business powers he had to deal with, but he was never critical of Nesuhi. As Sue Mingus, who keeps expanding her husband's legacy around the world, wrote in her memoir Tonight At Noon: A Love Story:
Nesuhi's warmth and friendship for Mingus lasted a lifetime He gave him complete artistic freedom. Nesuhi had always come to his rescue without question when Charles needed a friend.
When Nesuhi died at 71 in 1989, too little notice was paid in the jazz world, let alone elsewhere. There were passing accolades, but when compared to the large-scale attention paid over the decades to his brother Ahmet, the chairman and cofounder of Atlantic, Nesuhi's profound impact on the jazz canon through his relationships with the musicians he recorded has been neglected.
At last, however, the scope and depth of what Nesuhi bequeathed to players as well as us non-musicians has been grandly released in a Rhino Handmade CD box set: Hommage Nesuhi, subtitled "Atlantic Jazz, A 60th Anniversary Collection."
This tribute would not have come about had it not been for another master producer and historian, Joel Dorn. After yearning to work with Nesuhi, Joel became his assistant at Atlantic in 1967, and was instrumental in a number of their lasting creations.
Joel died in 2007 at 65. For years, he brightened my life with his stories of the lives as well as the music of the players he had worked with and, like Nesuhi, with his unfailing integrity. Often sardonic, without a trace of political correctness, Joel had an infectious love of life. "I don't do things to do them," he told Marshall Bowden during a conversation on jazzitude.com. "I really only do what I want to do, which is a tricky way of living." But it's also a jazz way of living.
For a long time, Joel talked to me about what was to be his last major productionfinally getting Nesuhi his due. I was honored, I kid you not, when he asked me to write a reminiscence of Nesuhi for the liner notes of the Rhino set alongside others written by Sue Mingus, Michael Cuscuna, Ira Gitler, Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, Mirjana Lewis (John's wife), Gunther Schuller and David Ritz. Ritz recalled their first meeting, when he told Nesuhi:
"When I was a kid, your records made all the difference."
Nesuhi responded that he felt the same way, "but they weren't mine."
"You produced them!" David protested.
"'Facilitator,' Nesuhi answered, "is a more accurate term than 'producer'."
As Joel Dorn says in his contribution to the liner notes, "Nesuhi possessed a thundering lack of ego."
Among the jazz treasures Nesuhi 'facilitated,' which can be found in this Rhino collection for the agesif the world survives not global warming, but massive inhumanityare the following tracks, along with previously unpublished "decisive moment" photographs by Lee Friedlander:
Big Joe Turner's "Cherry Red;" Ray Charles's "I Got A Woman;" John Coltrane's "Giant Steps;" Charles Mingus's "Passions of a Man;" Milt Jackson's "The Spirit-Feel;" The Modern Jazz Quartet's "The Golden Striker;" Ornette Coleman's "Ramblin';" and Laverne Baker's "Empty Bed Blues."
The five-volume set is a limited edition of 3000, available through the Rhino website for $149.98. However, if there is a demand beyond that number, more sets will be made. I expect that once the word gets around, there will be more than 3000 listeners around the world who fill feel as intense a need to have this as Joel Dorn did to convince Rhino to issue it.
In his notes, Dorn, never one to dilute his passions, says: "If you ever wanna believe anything I tell you, believe this: Nesuhi was the soul of Atlantic Records back when Atlantic Records actually had a soul."
This blog entry posted by Nat Hentoff
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Nesuhi was one of the most cultured and gracious people I ever knew. He was passionate about music and had an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz. Although Ahmet may have been the more well-known of the Ertegun brothers, for all of his life, Ahmet referred to Nesuhi as his idol and his hero. Incidentally, Nat, you may remember that like you, Nesuhi also worked at Contemporary Records. I share your sentiments that although he was a giant, on Nesuhi's death in 1989, there wasn't a lot of public recognition of the magnitude of the loss. However, I do recall that when he died, those of us who loved him -- and there were more of us than people know -- did our best to make his legacy live on. I remember in particular that when a well-meaning, but inept memorial was published in Billboard, Michael Cuscuna wrote a trenchant, no-holds-barred rebuttal to set the record straight. Those of us who knew Nesuhi appreciated it and I know that many of us, including me, let Michael know that we were grateful for his having borne Nesuhi's cudgels. And it should be said, even today, there is still a host of A-list insiders in the music business who regard Nesuhi as one of the great men in the history of the business in general and of jazz in particular. I still miss him -- and Ahmet.
Welcome to the fold, Nat. I became acquainted with the Erteguns when I was with Down Beat. While Ahmet was hard to reach Nesuhi was always available to talk jazz. I got the feeling that Nesuhi was kept in the background. There were times when I felt Ahmet was giving not only Nesuhi the back of his hand but all the jazz on Atlantic as well. Didier Deutsch and I partnered a managment company, Tancrede, which morphed into a pr firm. It was Didier who was closer to Nesuhi than I but we shared some moemnts. I still lament that Nesuhi left us with a void at Atlantic. I'd love to hear Bob Porter's take on this. I wish Jerry Wexler was here to share some thoughts. - ajs
AJS, Ahmet NEVER gave Nesuhi the back of his hand. He once recountecd to me an incident where he, Ahmet, had done something I regarded as peculiar (at least un-Ahmet-like) in business and I asked him why. He replied to me -- and this is an exact quote -- "Because Nesuhi wanted me to and he was my older brother, so I had to obey him." Enough said. Ahmet loved jazz. He could tell you who played 2nd alto sax on the most obscure recordings by the territory bands. He also knew the lyrics to a dazzlingly massive array of songs from the great American songbook, as well as jazz standards and novelty tunes. In that regard, he was probably second only to Bobby Short. As you may have gathered, I knew both of the Ertegun brothers intimately. Nesuhi was the courtly, suave, sophisticated older brother and Ahmet was the wilder, equally sophisticated, but perhaps less mannerly younger brother. They were both great men and both did a tremendous amount for jazz including supporting many of its great practitioners when they were down on their luck. But it is important to remember that without the success of Atlantic Records, this could never have happened. As the result of Atlantic's success, it was able to amass a great, venerable jazz catalog that was created with care and respect by Nesuhi, by and large. But Ahmet's first love was jazz and to sit down with him and talk about jazz with him was to hear things like accounts of being read the riot act by Hot Lips Page when he was caught out in a Harlem club ordering whiskey as a teenager. Or playing poker backstage with Dinah Washington. Or being asked by Fats Waller to write a broadway show with him. Or, before the advent of Atlantic, talking about starting a record company with Lionel Hampton, to be called Hamp-Tone Records, and years later, when Lionel visited Ahmet in his office at Rockefeller Center, looking around and saying, "Just think. All of this coulda been mine!" Nesuhi and Ahmet were both great men and brothers who were loyal to each other and to jazz. Regards, John K.
John K: I never doubted for one nano- that Ahmet didn't know his onions. It's just a feeling I got when I was around the two of them. As I didn't know them as well as you, I bow to your intimacy. - ajs
I just hope that one day somebody put together an hommage a Joel because he truly deserves one for all the great music he brought to us.
Thanks Nat for remembering Joel with such gracious words. A lot of jazz purists and stodgy journalists took swipes at the "Masked Announcer" over his career, so caught up in their own intellectual mumbo jumbo that they missed the subversiveness, the humor, the improvisational dance he brought to his life. Dorn was indeed a living manifestation of the jazz life.
nice, really nice!
Thanks for the information. I was not aware of these early Jazz people.