By Dave Nathan
Noted not only for recording world class artists from every musical genre, especially jazz, Mapleshade Records has gained an excellent reputation with audiophiles and just plain music lovers for the high quality of its sound. Located in a quiet country setting of Upper Marlboro, MD, the county seat for Prince Georges County and almost equidistant from Washington, D.C. , Baltimore and Annapolis, it provides a setting eminently conducive to the production of good music. President, engineer and general factotum for the outfit is Pierre Sprey. For many years Sprey was an aeronautical engineer for the Pentagon. He was considered something of a radical there as he is now because of his unique approach to recording music. He was part of the military reform movement in the 1980s and believed that the simpler a weapon, the better. He helped design the A-10 and F-16 fighter jets before turning to consulting work and then eventually to the studio.
Mr. Sprey was interviewed on August 5, 2000 while he was at his country manse in Maryland and I was at my house in rural Eastern North Caroline Carolina. Nary an urbanized word passed between us.
DN. When did you form Mapleshade Records?
Sprey. Officially the label was created in 1989, but I had been recording professionally since 1986.
DN. What possessed you to get into the business.
Sprey. Music possessed me. I love it. I had been recording as an amateur for about 15 years while I was still working at the Pentagon. During the 1960's, Washington, D.C., had its own 52nd street jazz scene. There was a string of small, local jazz clubs along Rhode Island Ave. Not only were they loose in letting people sit in, but they let people like me with recorders come in and tape. I started with an ancient tape recorder, but eventually my equipment improved so the musicians started to look for me.
DN. Anybody in particular?
Sprey. Yes, and if there is any person that is responsible for me getting into recording professionally, it is the wonderful pianist/singer Shirley Horn. By the way, the former Bohemian Caverns in Washington, once a top jazz venue, has been reopened with Shirley as a frequent featured performer.
DN. What did Shirley do to encourage you?
Sprey. Well, when the quality of my "amateur" stuff got better, she would ask me to come and record her live gigs to develop an archive of her music. I'd go anywhere in the country she was playing to do this. Then when I bought the old mansion where I live and where our studios are, a 1911 Steinway piano came with it. But it was virtually unplayable and my conscience began to bother me that this masterpiece of an instrument was sitting there doing nothing. I got it restored and invited pianists to come in and play it. It turned out that it had an incredibly wonderful sound. Shirley came to play it and was so enthralled that she wanted to do her next album on this piano and wanted me to be her engineer.
DN. Did an album result?
Sprey. Yes, and it was called "Softly" and released by George Buck's Audiophile label. It was a lovely album artistically, but mastering which was done in Nashville was a botch job. I vowed then to maintain control over every technical audio aspect of my recordings. That and my experience with established record companies literally drove me to put together my own label. After recording Shirley, I began to do other artists and tried to sell the masters to existing companies. It was an awful experience. These people are terrible to deal with. So in 1989, Mapleshade was created and then Wildchild in 1995. We hooked up with a national distributor and things have been going pretty well.
DN. The music you cover with your labels is far more eclectic than one finds with most labels. You do jazz, and the full spectrum, vocals, mainstream and avant garde. Then you also record blues, R&B and classical. Why such a broad range?
Sprey. When I was younger there were only two kinds of music for me, jazz and baroque. I believed anything else was beneath me. Then I discovered that Duke Ellington was absolutely on the money when he observed "There are only two kinds of music, good music and bad music." At Mapleshade we record good music irrespective of genre.
DN. How do you decide which artists to record?
Sprey. Well of course they have to be extraordinary musicians. But that's a given. We are fortunate to have many good musicians here in the Washington, D.C./Baltimore area. There's Sunny Sumper, Steve Abshire, Keter Betts and, of course, Shirley Horn to name a very few. Also, musicians hear about what we are doing here in terms of quality recordings and just come to see us at the studio. That's how we got our Hamiet Blueitt's Exploration Series project going. I have what I believe is a unique arrangement with them. There is no charge for using the studio to record. But we share the revenues for album sales 50/50. That works for those who join us.
DN. Turning to a matter in the news that could affect Mapleshade, what's your feeling on the Napster controversy?
Sprey. No matter what the industry does, in the long run they are going to lose out. They are so narrow minded, that they can't cope with this threat. Right now I don't have to worry because the music downloaded from sites like Napster had two things going against it. First, most of it is bad music artistically and second, from an audio standpoint the quality is really bad. But as soon as the Internet is in a position to download good music combined with the ability to download it with good sound, the industry will be in deep trouble.
DN. One of the complaints of many who are attracted to Napster type sites is that record companies charge too much for CDs. What do think about that accusation?
Sprey. In fairness, if you compare the cost of a CD with what LPs cost in the 1950's and 1960's taking into account inflation, CDs are actually cheaper. But that's a good economic argument and doesn't help much when most people have just so much money they can spend on music. But still there is no reason why CDs should cost $15 to $17. One reason that the major companies have to charge this amount is to support their large bureaucracies. I assure you that problem does not exist at Mapleshade. That's one reason we charge $9.50 per CD, if you buy four. A good deal.
DN. Any final thoughts?
Sprey. Yes, a couple. I have been very fortunate with this label. Not only have we been able to attract musicians of the highest quality, but help has come in other areas. When you are "in charge" of your own company you do everything. I don't mind the technical stuff, that is, being recording engineer, mixing, mastering, etc. But the administrative stuff can sometimes be a pain. One of the worst is preparing the packaging for each album, the graphics and design. Not a problem anymore. We had a fine Brazilian percussionist, Gali Sanchez, on one of our albums. Gali now lives in Baltimore and he told his friends about how much he admired what we were doing at Mapleshade. One of his friends happened to be a top flight illustrator and designer from France. He came to me and said he wanted to design covers for jazz albums and offered to do it for a very reasonable price.
The other matter which I will just mention is that we are naturally proud of the sound on our CDs. We record direct to analog tape which results in far better sound than the analog used by most other companies. In fact, if the music buying public knew just how much distortion exists on most CDs, they would be shocked. But this could be the subject for another interview.
DN. Thanks for taking time to talk to me.
