April 2001

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"Label M is an anagram based on the first and last initials of my three favorite Jews: Lenny Bruce, Albert Einstein, Meyer Lansky."

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By Chris M. Slawecki

Ah, the classics. In every art form – painting, literature, architecture, dance, music – there are works which possess timeless beauty, works with themes that resonate emotionally across decades, through centuries, and are masterfully presented.

Joel Dorn’s name is indelibly written in the book of jazz classics, though he’s never written, hummed, strummed, blown, or otherwise struck a single musical note. He produced albums, in the 1960s and ‘70s, for a stable of Atlantic Records artists of enormous breadth and depth, including Max Roach, Keith Jarrett, Gary Burton, Les McCann and Eddie Harris (individually and together on the transcendent soul-jazz clarion call Swiss Movement), Mongo Santamaria and many others, claiming the Grammy Award for Jazz Album of the Year with Gary Burton and Keith Jarrett (1971).

Several years ago, Dorn formed 32 Jazz, a label dedicated to resurrecting and reconstructing gems from the catalogs of the Muse and Landmark jazz labels. Dorn’s current project, Label M, reissues classics from that storied Atlantic catalog that Dorn helped create; among the label’s most recent releases are sets from the Modern Jazz Quartet and multi-instrumentalists Yusef Lateef and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

Here Comes The Whistleman (1967) was the first of Dorn’s many collaborations with the mercurial saxophonist Kirk. It features the multi-talented Kirk blowing his nose flute (honest!) on the title track, digging heartily into gutbucket tenor on the opening “Roots,” flying through the traditional flute on Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays,” and scorching the earth with his alto on the set-ending “Step Right Up.” The Blue Yusef Lateef (1968) offers Lateef’s unique perspective on how to cloak the globe in blue from the opening “Juba Juba,” based on an African slave song, through “Moon Cup,” a Tagalog chant based on a indigenous Philippine dialect, and the honky-tonk stomps “Othella” and “Six Miles Next Door,” the latter nestled in soft, cushiony blue chords from guitarist Kenny Burrell.

Recorded in Stockholm and released in 1960, The Modern Jazz Quartet: European Concert is considered the penultimate album by this Percy Heath (bass), Connie Kay (drums), Milt “Bags” Jackson (vibes), and John Lewis (piano) collective. With definitive versions of “The Cylinder” and “Bags’ Groove,” it crystallizes their “third stream” synthesis of classical formalism and jazz improvisation and spirit; in a famous essay for The New Yorker magazine, Whitney Balliet described the effect of the MJQ as “…tintinnabulous. It shimmers, it sings, it hums. It is airy and clean. Like any great mechanism, its parts are as notable as their sum.”

AAJ is pleased to present the following interview with one of the true jazz legends, Joel Dorn.

CMS: How did Label M come about and what is the difference between Label M and what you were trying to accomplish with 32 Jazz?
JD: We were at 32, me and the guys. Now, everybody thought that was my label. I was a partner: There was an attorney, there was a Wall Street firm, and there was a bank. I was one member on a five man board. At the height of the internet craze, my partners decide that they want to go into the internet business. They borrowed a lot of money and, to finance their new venture, wanted 32 to pay it back. In other words, it was purely a business decision. Now, I don’t give a fuck about the internet. So the day that that went through, I just quit. I’m a record guy, I’m not a business guy per se. I go into business because I have to in order to do what I want in terms of records.

CMS: Will 32 Jazz continue?
JD: The label was foreclosed on two months ago. It’s been in foreclosure.

CMS: You’ve got to be like a proud father getting back for Label M some of your own original Atlantic titles.
JD: I was fortunate when I worked at Atlantic in that I could pretty much sign anybody I wanted, and artistically or creatively nobody was telling me what to do. So I could sign the guys I wanted and we could make the albums we wanted to make. So that led to Yusef, Rahsaan, Fathead, Hank, Les, Eddie…Jimmy Scott, Ray Bryant, Mose Allison, all those guys that I wanted to record. There was no interference when I worked for Neshui (Ertegun). It was hard getting the gig, but once I got it, he said, “Look, you’re a nice kid. I like you a lot. But you’ll live or die here based on the results of your work.” So basically, he gave me enough rope. And I’ve always used that same philosophy. What we do is, we hire people that we think can do the job, then we let them do it.

I’m really fortunate. I have an incredible team of people. In order for the label to be successful, we have to have kind of like a “Boston Celtics” kind of theme. You know, I’m a big Red Auerbach fan, and when he had those teams you always had like a Bill Russell or a Dave Cowens, somebody in the middle…you had the same team all the time, just with different people but the team played the same way all the time.

In the beginning, when we started 32, we tried a few things and some of them worked and some of them didn’t. But at a certain point about a year into it we put the team together. And you have no idea what kind of freedom it gives me. It makes me not have to be “the boss,” which I’m not good at anyway. It lets me go and do what I want to do, and I never worry. Everybody does their job. There’s only six of us.

CMS: What’s the greatest professional basketball team you ever saw?
JD: Well, everybody says the ’67 76ers, but…I can’t tell you what the best single team was. I think there was a series of best teams. I enjoyed, maybe because I was a kid, when the Warriors had a team with Neal Johnston and Paul Arazin, that was a good team. I would say the Celtics overall, as the best basketball franchise. And then you had the Sixers at a certain point, and you had the Lakers at a certain point, and then the Chicago teams with Michael were brilliant because of how the team was built around him. The ten years with Russell…

CMS: As much as I hate to admit it, that ’86 Celtics team was the best team I ever saw. With Walton coming off of the bench…
JD: I can’t stand Bill Walton. He was a great player. He’s just a schmuck to me. As an announcer, more than half of what he says just isn’t right. He just SAYS shit. At the beginning of the game, you know how they go, “Well, Bill, what should we look for?” and he’ll go, “Well, on defense…” Whatever he says ain’t it! He was a good player, but also…I just wasn’t caught up in his “earth-dirt-peace” bullshit. And that Deadhead view. Just play the fucking game, man. Play basketball, and when you’re done, go do something else.

Wanna know one of my favorite college teams of all time? The 1957 Temple team.

CMS: Harry Litwack (Litwack coached this team).
JD: ‘Cause I went to Temple, number one, so I was a Temple fan. But that team had…you know, that was back when college ball was pretty much the best guys from your area went to the colleges in your own town. That was Hal Lear and Guy Rodgers…

CMS: Guy Rodgers just passed.
JD: I know, man. When I was a disc jockey in Philly, every few months he’d come up and he’d do like an hour. He loved being a disc jockey – he was great. It was Hal Lear and Guy Rodgers; it was the best little backcourt I ever saw outside of the backcourt that the Minneapolis Lakers had when George Mikan played, when they had Slater Martin and Whitey Skoog.

CMS: Well, I’m in over my head at this point...
JD: But Hal Lear and Guy Rodgers were unbelievable. Guy was obviously the most underrated fuckin’ point guard ever.

CMS: Bill Lyon wrote a pretty insightful memorial column for “The Philadelphia Inquirer.”
JD: Let me tell you something: He was the transitional point guard between Cousy – who was not a pretty player to watch; he did good stuff, but Guy Rodgers was the prototype for the modern point guard. It was after him that you had all those Earl Monroes and all those people. It was all based on Guy Rodgers. I think Guy Rodgers changed the point guard game.

But Cousy, you know, he did it in that unappealing and unattractive, but effective, white guy way. But Guy Rodgers, he was a forgotten fucking player. One of the greatest players of all time.

Hal Lear never made it to the pros – he ended up playing in Harrisburg or someplace. But, boy, in college, they were something. It was Hal Lear, Guy Rodgers, Earl Rinefeldt, who went to a Philadelphia school. Tink Van Patten, was the center, he was 6’4” or 6’5” and it was like a big deal in those days! A guy who went to my high school, Yeadon High School, Freddie Cohen, was the forward. So I was really locked to that team. But Rodgers and Lear, man, forget about it. What was your question again?

CMS: What is Label M?
JD: For a reason that I still really can’t figure out, Atlantic Records was the last of the major jazz catalogs to convert their vinyl jazz to CD. They did very little of it, and then not such a good job when they finally did do it in the early ‘80s. They put out a few Coltranes, a few Minguses – you know, nothing major. They’ve got maybe got five or six hundred albums in the catalog and they maybe put out twenty.

I went to Rhino in the late 80s and the early 90s and I reintroduced the Atlantic jazz catalog to the digital world; we made twelve or thirteen box sets and another dozen or so compilations, and maybe reissued forty to fifty titles. But it left hundreds of titles that weren’t going to be released. And I have a tremendous emotional attachment to those personally. I have a responsibility to the artist – through no fault of their own, some of their best work was not in the marketplace. And I wanted to play tribute to Neshui, who was one of the great jazz producers, whose work was languishing someplace. Also, I’m not an angel sent from heaven – I also wanted my records out there, personally.

So I put as many of them out as I could while I was at Rhino and the whole thing fell apart again. Then they languished again because Rhino is not basically a jazz oriented label. So we put them out and that was it. But I wasn’t able to do any of the marketing and promoting, the kind of stuff we did at 32 and the kind of stuff we do at Label M.

When I started 32, we bought Muse and Landmark, which was the basis for our releases. At a certain point, what we did was request certain titles from Rhino, which administers the Atlantic catalog. They were kind enough to give us some. And we did very well with them, much better than they thought. So the door opened. Then, when we got lucky with our compilations – that “Jazz For” series – they allowed us to compile, so we did “Jazz For” the different seasons, all that stuff. At one time, we had about 25 or 30 of the Rahsaan-Yusef-Fathead-Hank-Les-Eddie-Mose titles. We did boxes, we did three albums on two CDs, four albums, we did those packages. And Rhino found a new profit center.

So I split from 32 and then I took the guys a few months later and started Label M. One of the first relationships we got going was with Atlantic. There’s a lot of that stuff that just should be out. For instance, The MJQ was an important act and not just for Atlantic, but so many people came to jazz in the fifties because of the Modern Jazz Quartet. And the stuff was not available. They wouldn’t license it to me when I was at 32, and they weren’t putting it out themselves. It was nuts! One day I get a fax, there were fourteen MJQs available and I grabbed three of them, the three that I thought I could put into the release schedule and then actually market and sell. I also got Collaboration with Almeida with Laurindo Almedia, and I got Live at the Lighthouse, so they’ll be coming out in the next six, eight months or so. And there were Minguses that, you know, got put out and disappeared, or hadn’t been put out, so I got Oh Yeah. And then finally one of the albums which was a real pleasure to be associated with the making of, the Jimmy Scott album The Source. There was a Hubert Laws album that was a favorite of his that I wanted to hit the street, the Wildflower album. There was Les and Eddie’s second album, Second Movement. There was a Fathead album with Blue Mitchell that I liked. What else was there? The best selling album we have right now is our flute compilation, Heavy Flute. And a bunch of others that just don’t belong in the unreleased bin.

CONTINUE