Old Business
There was quite a bit of feedback to our assertion that many powerful
people in the
jazz record industry are failed musicians. Accordingly, I've created a
special feedback
page. Each week, I'll take the best responses and reprint them here.
New Business
Some Questions I just can't seem to answer (with apologies to Larry
King):
Why are there so few black record company executives at major Jazz
labels? There's
Brian Baccus at Blue Note (in a job with very little in the way of
real power), Branford
Marsalis at CBS/Sony (from his output thus far, really nothing more
than a figurehead),
and that's it! Oh yeah, at one of the mid-sized labels, N2K Encoded
Music, there's
Carl Griffin. Aside from those three cats, I'm at a loss to name
another. Why?
Why aren't there any women Jazz record company executives? Aren't
there any
qualified candidates?
Why are all the major Jazz record labels still recording and releasing
"product" even
though they've been crying the blues about poor sales for as long as
anyone would
listen. And, here's a good one, if jazz music is such an economic
failure, how come
these same individuals are still running the business? Of course there
are always the
new recruits, as I mentioned last week, but their altruism doesn't
last long.
This mindset of failing to sell "product" is how the executives in the
business punish the
musicians for what they themsevlves failed to do.
One of their favorite lines is, "we're documenting your music." That's
exploitation on the
grounds of supposed economic failure. The company is recording the
music for
altruistic reasons as opposed to doing business. There's only one word
for this, bullshit
with a capital B. Companies put out records to sell them, not for
art's sake.
So, tune in next week for Part 3 of My Enconium to Our Major Jazz
Record Labels, in
which I'll ask the age old question, why do executives make more than
musicians?
One more thing, before they break down my door with a subpoena, how
many Jazz
musicians do you know who've ever received a royalty statement from a
record label?
