I've known Hank O'Neal since the start of JazzWax in 2007. An information hound since his days with the CIA, he somehow found out about me and JazzWax early on and was always there to help me track down legends to interview. In fact, I think George Wein hipped Hank to JazzWax and me to Hank, now that I recall.
Hank, a prolific author and wonderful photographer, has always been a generous jazz angel. He's been there for many people who love jazz and share his passion for the music. Most of all, Hank knows just about everyone who is connected to jazz and knew all of the legends. Recently, another dear friend, Fred Seibert, of Frederator Studios fame who art directed the original MTV logo (see my interview here), suggested I reach out to Hank for the Chiaroscuro story.
Recently I caught up with Hank to find out how Chiaroscuro came to be and what's going on now with the label:
JazzWax: What made you start a record company in 1969?
Hank O’Neal: The record company that would become Chiaroscuro began in 1969 as a three-way partnership between legendary entrepreneur Sherman M. Fairchild, renown pianist Marian McPartland and me, a young, unknown CIA operative.
JW: Who was Sherman Fairchild?
HO: Sherman was a serial entrepreneur who founded 220 corporations, 70 major businesses, was the first major tenant of what is now called Silicon Valley, built more models of aircraft than anyone in the U.S. and, at the time of his death in 1971, was the largest single shareholder in IBM, a company his father had founded at the turn of the 20th century. He also loved Willie the Lion Smith, Fats Waller and Art Tatum and once upon a time had hired them all for private gatherings.
JW: Why a jazz record company?
HO: In 1969, there were few if any independent jazz record labels and the majors were concentrating on product they thought they could more easily market. Many major mainstream jazz artists hadn’t recorded for years, often since the 1950s. We wanted to offer these men and women an opportunity. For example, Marian was eager to make records and invite her friends to participate. We had a free studio at our disposal in Sherman’s home and he was more than willing to pay the bills. We had no illusions that our venture would be profitable.
JW: Yet in 1971, you hit a bump, yes?
HO: That year, there was friction in the Chiaroscuro partnership. Sherman had bought out Marian’s interests in 1970 and returned to her the masters she had recorded, as well as her label name, Halcyon. We had issued four records on Halcyon by that time, albums by Earl Hines, Bobby Henderson, Marian and Willie the Lion Smith. Sherman and I planned to go it alone and continue recording projects that interested us. But our plans were derailed. Sherman became ill in February 1971 and died unexpectedly that March. The record company was the last corporation Sherman founded, there was no mention of it in his will and it was a worrisome blip on a massive, otherwise well-organized estate.
JW: So what happened?
HO: A meeting of the Executor and other interested parties was called, and I was advised of this. Fortunately for me the Estate had come up with a plan they felt would be equitable, legal and in line with Sherman’s interests. When the company was founded, the three partners each put $500 into the partnership. I was told if I returned Sherman’s original $500 investment, I could have the corporation, all the stock, the finished masters, inventory and even the bank account. There was about ten cents in the Bank of New York account. But in some ways, this was perhaps the most valuable asset because it was a special account that had been established by someone with more than 10 cents.
JW: Is that what you did?
HO: I came up with the $500, paid the Estate and they did all the paperwork. I changed the name of the company to Chiaroscuro and by July 1971, I had my own tiny record company, three masters and far too many ideas. Chiaroscuro just celebrated its 50th birthday.
JW: With the rise of album rock and soul in 1969 and the early ‘70s, you seemed to be moving against the tide. Did you realize that at the time?
HO: We knew from the outset that we were running against the flow, not only within the record industry but even within the tiny niche that jazz occupied. But our goal wasn’t to compete with the major labels or even the minor ones. We all had other jobs, and the creation of exciting new records by great artists who’d been forgotten, left behind or under recorded was a labor of love, work we did after hours. Many of the finest jazz artists have been woefully under recorded. We hoped to do what we could for as many artists as possible.
JW: Tell me the story of how you came up with the name. Guitarist Eddie Condon and a clothing store played a role?
HO: In 1968, I undertook what was to be my first book, collaborating with my neighbor down the street, guitarist Eddie Condon. That’s when I first heard the word “chiaroscuro.” I wasn’t illiterate, but I hadn’t majored in art history. The first person who used the word “chiaroscuro” in a jazz context was Phyllis Condon, Eddie’s wife. She was a very intelligent lady and a major force in the world of advertising. She ranged widely: She coined the phrase “The Real Thing” for the Coca-Cola Company and named The Lark for Studebaker. She had a way with words and knew how to use them. She took one look at the concerts Eddie was promoting in the 1930s and decided it would make sense to publicize the fact that these concerts didn’t just have the usual suspects but featured Black artists as well.
JW: Why was Condon’s wife so busy in his affairs?
HO: Eddie could only hear out of one ear and he was color blind as well, at least in terms of the musicians he hired. Eddie Condon’s Hot Shots and the Mound City Blue Blowers were mixed-race band in the late 1920s. Nobody else was doing that at the time. Phyllis thought it would add something to call them “Chiaroscuro Concerts,” special concerts with Black and white musicians.
JW: What about the clothing store?
HO: In the late 1960s when Eddie and I were putting the book together, I’d pass by a little dress shop on MacDougal Street called Chiaroscuro. They only sold black and white clothes. In 1971, after Sherman died, I didn’t have the resources to record anyone significant. Besides, no one had used the name for a record label. It probably wasn’t the best choice I could have made. It was hard to say, and the world was obscure. It turns up more in 2021, but that’s fifty years later. Some people even referred to the label as Obscuro and possibly still do. That was mean.
JW: How did you know what to do and what you needed?
HO: I learned the basics of recording and turning the results into a finished LP in about 1966, when I was still living in Washington, D.C. I used Squirrel Ashcraft’s Ampex tape recorder, a couple of Electrovoice microphones and Squirrel’s house for the sessions. We recorded Johnson “Fat Cat” McRee. The first record for Fat Cat, a really good one built around Zutty Singleton, was done with Squirrel’s equipment. I was green as grass, but it worked out just fine.
JW: How did you work that out?
HO: After Sherman Fairchild died, his studio was no longer available, I built my own at 173 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. The first studio was called WARP Studio. When I expanded in to 16-track, it became Downtown Sound.
JW: When did recognition pick up?
HO: Eventually, really great people came by, such as John Hammond and George Avakian. The word got out that WARP/Downtown was a great acoustic jazz room, where really good, relaxed records could be made. The clocks were slow and there was no hype or pressure. Dozens of the best independent jazz labels of the 1970s made records at the studio—Enja, Black Lion, Sonet, Progressive, MMO, Phontastic, Black and Blue, DRG, Tomato and many others. And people used the studio for movies and videos as well.
JW: What did you admire about John Hammond?
HO: In terms of producing the records, he considered himself an enabler and that’s what I wanted to be, to create an environment or circumstance where Earl Hines or Mary Lou Williams or whoever could do what they did best. I would never presume to tell someone like Earl or Mary what to do.
JW: What was the biggest hurdle?
HO: Funding and distribution. Funding for both paying musicians and manufacturing product. In 1972 and early ’73, I worked out an arrangement with the Record Club of America (RCOA). They distributed Chiaroscuro via their catalog. But more importantly they manufactured the records and allowed me to buy back product at their cost. I was paying about 50 cents for a finished LP. RCOA failed toward the end, in 1973, and I then worked out an arrangement with AudioFidelity Enterprises to distribute my label. And, of course, I continued mail order sales.
JW: Where did funding come from?
HO: Funding for recordings came from five sources. The first was revenue from direct mail order sales. Second, there were modest receipts from the recording studio. Third, there were “advances” from the AFE distribution agreement. Fourth, once a year I would get an income tax refund and I’d put it into a large-scale recording like a Buck Clayton jam session with a dozen musicians. And finally, I made two or three records with the proceeds of cashing out my government pension when I “retired” from the CIA in 1976. I eventually got in trouble with the income tax refund. I did this for about four or five years.
JW: How did you get in trouble?
HO: I made the mistake of combing my CIA salary with the recording company income (always a loss) when I filed my return. The loss from the record company meant I always had a refund coming from the CIA withholding. Mid-decade, the IRS audited me and claimed the record company was just a hobby and I owed a zillion dollars in back taxes.
JW: What did you do?
HO: My friend, Johnson McRee, the same Fat Cat I’d helped with Zutty Singleton and the Manassas Jazz Festival, fought them like crazy. It dragged on and on and then AFE decided they wanted to buy me out and we made a deal whereby they’d give me complete ownership of Downtown Sound, the new construction of which they’d partially funded in 1975, and a pile of cash. This proved my little record company wasn’t a hobby and the case was dropped.
JW: As owner-producer, what did you enjoy doing most?
HO: I always had more ideas than the resources or time to complete various projects. You have to remember, that for most of the time during Chiaroscuro's analog years, between 1971 and 1978, I was a full-time CIA employee. I had people running the recording studio. That was the easy part. But I had to handle all the record-company activity after hours and on the weekends. It took a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. I’ve often wondered what could have happened had there been sufficient funding and I was not otherwise employed. I resigned from the CIA in October 1976. From the end of 1976 until the end of 1977, I recorded and released about an album a week. Prior to that, it had been about one a month.
JW: What was the biggest thrill?
HO: It was wonderful coming up with an idea and somehow managing to pull it off. But it took great artists like Earl Hines or Mary Lou or Joe Venuti to make it possible. I was lucky, I’d heard the Earl Hines QRS solo recordings, not on the 10” Atlantic LP from the 1950s but from brand new copies in Dick Spottswood’s collection. I asked Stanley Dance in 1970 if he thought Earl would be willing to recreate them, and he was brilliant. It was a good time to ask largely ignored mainstreamers to do records. There was no competition in the U.S. and almost no one said no. especially if the musician was asked by a pal.
JW: How so?
HO: Illinois Jacquet or Roy Eldridge could say no to me but would have a hard time saying no to Buddy Tate, and they didn’t. It may be hard to imagine but people weren’t clamoring for an Earl Hines solo LP. The solo recording with Mary Lou Williams was her first in forever and in any context since 1955. Dave McKenna since the early 1960s. And the same for Gene Krupa and Jonah Jones. And no one had explored the idea of a violin/piano sonata outing like with Venuti and Hines, or Venuti and McKenna.
JW: Did you try to get these tapes picked up by major labels like RCA and Columbia?
HO: I did, but it was hard trying to get any traction. I would visit with Neshui Ertegun or Jerry Wexler at Atlantic and suggest they should consider this or that. It was always “no," but I’d wind up with, “I hear you have a great new tape with Pee Wee Russell, could you make me a copy?” I remember Ahmet Ertegun wanted a picture of Pee Wee for his wall. I brought him one in a nice frame. He took down a photo of Mick Jagger to make room for it.
JW: Had the number of jazz fans in the music business dried up?
HO: In those days, the record business was littered with executives who were jazz fans but couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything for the music. Of course, ECM and other European labels were doing great records of younger musicians and exceptional but largely ignored smaller domestic labels were recording the and issuing exceptional music from the most adventuresome Black avant-garders. Think ESP, Stata-East or Carla Bley and Escalator Over the Hill.
JW: Which artists were a struggle to record?
HO: It was usually the opposite. People wanted to make a record in the 1970s. It was somewhat more complicated in those days. You couldn’t make a recording on your iPhone and post it the next day on YouTube. Those technologies didn't exist, of course. It was always a struggle to get Dave McKenna into the studio because he claimed he didn’t know any tunes. But he did and appeared on 10 Chiaroscuro LPs and CDs to prove it. The first Borah Bergman LP took two years and 40 or 50 sessions. Bill Evans and the National Jazz Ensemble took one. Earl Hines always took one three-hour session or less. Teddy Wilson held the record in the 1970s for number of takes required to get something he was satisfied with: 24 takes for What a Little Moonlight Can Do.
JW: What were the biggest sellers?
HO: There were no big sellers. The only time Chiaroscuro ever appeared on the Billboard charts, the jazz chart mind you, was with a record that was licensed from a South African company: Abdullah Ibrahim’s Capetown Fringe. He was known as Dollar Brand in those days, and we even went so far as to present him in concert at New York's Alice Tully Hall in 1977, to publicize Capetown Fringe. We recorded Abdullah’s Alice Tully Hall band the next day. it was a great group, with Don Cherry, Hamiet Bluiett, Carlos Ward, Roy Brooks and a bunch of others. It didn’t sound like Capetown Fringe and didn’t chart.
JW: When did you start thinking about selling the company?
HO: I never did, and even though Chiaroscuro is now owned and managed by WVIA, an exceptional NPR radio and television affiliate, I’m still involved with the company, usually on a daily basis. There are two incarnations of Chiaroscuro. The analog records released from 1969 to 1978 and then the digital recordings beginning in 1987 until today.
JW: Was that always the plan?
HO: The plan in 1978 was to sell or trade the Chiaroscuro catalog to AudioFidelity Enterprises and wind up with a pile of cash and full ownership in Downtown Sound and launch a new record company with George Avakian and the participation of various artists. We called the company Pegasus, with a subsidiary label, New York Records, a trademark George owned.
JW: Why George Avakian in those years?
HO: George had an incredible inventory of unissued material by Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Benny Goodman and Erroll Garner—all artists who were his close personal friends. I had much material that was unissued on Chiaroscuro and the first musician to join forces with us was Gerry Mulligan. [Photo above of George Avakian]
JW: What did Mulligan do?
HO: Gerry furnished five albums to the project, including the one with his Concert Jazz Band. We started it in 1979 and finished a dozen sessions later in early 1980. I suggested to Gerry it was about time he won a Grammy and the best way to do that was for a major, deserving artist, to release an exceptional record in a category with little competition, such as big band jazz. It was a perfect plan and it worked. Walk on Water won the Grammy in 1982 for best big band jazz record.
JW: What became of Pegasus?
HO: By that time, the label was no more. Despite all his contacts, recorded inventory and good will, George couldn’t get a distribution deal with anyone and Gerry’s record was licensed to DRG, which issued it.
JW: Must have been a let-down, yes?
HO: George and I were discouraged. I closed Downtown Sound in December 1980 and, with John Hammond and John Moore, launched Hammond Music Enterprises in January 1981. We had a CBS distribution deal but it didn’t work out.
JW: Why?
HO: John Hammond resigned in 1983, and I was gone by 1984. My plan was to concentrate on music festivals, which I did. In 1985 I met Andrew Sordoni at one of the Floating Jazz Festivals. In 1986, he suggested we make an effort to acquire the rights to Chiaroscuro from the then faltering and soon to be bankrupt AudioFidelity Enterprises. We managed to do this, for far less than I’d sold the company to them. The timing couldn’t have been better. If we hadn’t done what we did, when we did it, all the Chiaroscuro analog masters would have been lost or stolen, which is what happened to all the AFE masters while they were in bankruptcy court. [Photo above of Andrew Sordoni III]
JW: What did you and Andrew do next?
HO: We organized ourselves, came up with a working business plan and in early 1989 we released CR(D) 301, The Return of Mel Powell with Mel, Benny Carter, Howard Alden, Milt Hinton and Louie Bellson. This album put Chiaroscuro in the digital era, where we remain to this day.
JW: Who are some of the artists you wish you had recorded but it didn’t work out?
HO: There were so many. Of the younger guys who were in bands that recorded at the studio, Tom Harrell and Gregory Herbert come to mind. Of the older people who were recording for others, Dorothy Donegan, Hazel Scott, Sadik Hakim and Jimmy Rowles. I had always wanted to do a Texas tenor album, with the older guys and the younger guys, all mixed up, with Buster Smith writing all the arrangements. It never worked out. At one time or another, four or five of them were at the studio in one capacity or another but never together.
JW: What was another big idea?
HO: I thought about what Ornette Coleman might sound like if surrounded by the kind of musicians he grew up with in Fort Worth, Texas. I was convinced he could probably play that way and it might be interesting. We all know how John Coltrane sounded in his mature years. I heard Coltrane on a bill with Count Basie in 1958. Milt Hinton was on bass and Elvin Jones was on drums. The other horns were Pepper Adams, Bob Brookmeyer and Zoot Sims.
JW: Looking back, what would you have done differently?
HO: I wouldn’t change much. Maybe the name Chiaroscuro. It was too hard to pronounce. It also would have been nice to have somewhat better distribution in the beginning and regular financing. But all things considered, I was extremely lucky to have access to and friendships with so many exceptional, artistically inclined men and women who have been part of hundreds maybe thousands of recordings, concerts, festivals, movies and the like. And so many who still are. It’s a long way from hearing that first Artie Shaw 78 record in 1954, the one my mother bought by mistake in 1939. The way forward has been pretty good and still is.
JW: Which of your recordings stand out?
HO: From the analog years, there are a bunch of high points and the same for the digital. But from the olden days, a couple of tracks on Jazz at the New School with Eddie Condon, Gene Krupa and Wild Bill Davison along with Kenny Davern and Dick Wellstood stand out. Almost all of the two LP set with Earl Hines and Tiny Grimes, the one we did live for a week and Earl waited until the last set of the last night to play the dozen songs that had been selected to record. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, put it on the music stand and went from top to bottom and each song was a masterpiece. I wound up with two LPs instead of one.
JW: What’s the latest?
HO: We have just reissued John and Joe, a 1977 recording with Flip Phillips, Kenny Davern, Dave McKenna, George Duvivier and Bob Rosengarden. It is exceptional as is another brand-new reissue, Pure as Rain, the debut recording of Gil Goldstein as a leader. It is also from 1977 and features Gil with Toots Thielemans, Jeff Berlin, Bob Moses and a few others.
JW: And Eddie Condon?
HO: Stay tuned for the last project I did with Eddie in 1970, featuring Lee Wiley. It’s coming soon. [Photo above of Eddie Condon]
Hank, a prolific author and wonderful photographer, has always been a generous jazz angel. He's been there for many people who love jazz and share his passion for the music. Most of all, Hank knows just about everyone who is connected to jazz and knew all of the legends. Recently, another dear friend, Fred Seibert, of Frederator Studios fame who art directed the original MTV logo (see my interview here), suggested I reach out to Hank for the Chiaroscuro story.
Recently I caught up with Hank to find out how Chiaroscuro came to be and what's going on now with the label:
JazzWax: What made you start a record company in 1969?
Hank O’Neal: The record company that would become Chiaroscuro began in 1969 as a three-way partnership between legendary entrepreneur Sherman M. Fairchild, renown pianist Marian McPartland and me, a young, unknown CIA operative.
JW: Who was Sherman Fairchild?
HO: Sherman was a serial entrepreneur who founded 220 corporations, 70 major businesses, was the first major tenant of what is now called Silicon Valley, built more models of aircraft than anyone in the U.S. and, at the time of his death in 1971, was the largest single shareholder in IBM, a company his father had founded at the turn of the 20th century. He also loved Willie the Lion Smith, Fats Waller and Art Tatum and once upon a time had hired them all for private gatherings.
JW: Why a jazz record company?
HO: In 1969, there were few if any independent jazz record labels and the majors were concentrating on product they thought they could more easily market. Many major mainstream jazz artists hadn’t recorded for years, often since the 1950s. We wanted to offer these men and women an opportunity. For example, Marian was eager to make records and invite her friends to participate. We had a free studio at our disposal in Sherman’s home and he was more than willing to pay the bills. We had no illusions that our venture would be profitable.
JW: Yet in 1971, you hit a bump, yes?
HO: That year, there was friction in the Chiaroscuro partnership. Sherman had bought out Marian’s interests in 1970 and returned to her the masters she had recorded, as well as her label name, Halcyon. We had issued four records on Halcyon by that time, albums by Earl Hines, Bobby Henderson, Marian and Willie the Lion Smith. Sherman and I planned to go it alone and continue recording projects that interested us. But our plans were derailed. Sherman became ill in February 1971 and died unexpectedly that March. The record company was the last corporation Sherman founded, there was no mention of it in his will and it was a worrisome blip on a massive, otherwise well-organized estate.
JW: So what happened?
HO: A meeting of the Executor and other interested parties was called, and I was advised of this. Fortunately for me the Estate had come up with a plan they felt would be equitable, legal and in line with Sherman’s interests. When the company was founded, the three partners each put $500 into the partnership. I was told if I returned Sherman’s original $500 investment, I could have the corporation, all the stock, the finished masters, inventory and even the bank account. There was about ten cents in the Bank of New York account. But in some ways, this was perhaps the most valuable asset because it was a special account that had been established by someone with more than 10 cents.
JW: Is that what you did?
HO: I came up with the $500, paid the Estate and they did all the paperwork. I changed the name of the company to Chiaroscuro and by July 1971, I had my own tiny record company, three masters and far too many ideas. Chiaroscuro just celebrated its 50th birthday.
JW: With the rise of album rock and soul in 1969 and the early ‘70s, you seemed to be moving against the tide. Did you realize that at the time?
HO: We knew from the outset that we were running against the flow, not only within the record industry but even within the tiny niche that jazz occupied. But our goal wasn’t to compete with the major labels or even the minor ones. We all had other jobs, and the creation of exciting new records by great artists who’d been forgotten, left behind or under recorded was a labor of love, work we did after hours. Many of the finest jazz artists have been woefully under recorded. We hoped to do what we could for as many artists as possible.
JW: Tell me the story of how you came up with the name. Guitarist Eddie Condon and a clothing store played a role?
HO: In 1968, I undertook what was to be my first book, collaborating with my neighbor down the street, guitarist Eddie Condon. That’s when I first heard the word “chiaroscuro.” I wasn’t illiterate, but I hadn’t majored in art history. The first person who used the word “chiaroscuro” in a jazz context was Phyllis Condon, Eddie’s wife. She was a very intelligent lady and a major force in the world of advertising. She ranged widely: She coined the phrase “The Real Thing” for the Coca-Cola Company and named The Lark for Studebaker. She had a way with words and knew how to use them. She took one look at the concerts Eddie was promoting in the 1930s and decided it would make sense to publicize the fact that these concerts didn’t just have the usual suspects but featured Black artists as well.
JW: Why was Condon’s wife so busy in his affairs?
HO: Eddie could only hear out of one ear and he was color blind as well, at least in terms of the musicians he hired. Eddie Condon’s Hot Shots and the Mound City Blue Blowers were mixed-race band in the late 1920s. Nobody else was doing that at the time. Phyllis thought it would add something to call them “Chiaroscuro Concerts,” special concerts with Black and white musicians.
JW: What about the clothing store?
HO: In the late 1960s when Eddie and I were putting the book together, I’d pass by a little dress shop on MacDougal Street called Chiaroscuro. They only sold black and white clothes. In 1971, after Sherman died, I didn’t have the resources to record anyone significant. Besides, no one had used the name for a record label. It probably wasn’t the best choice I could have made. It was hard to say, and the world was obscure. It turns up more in 2021, but that’s fifty years later. Some people even referred to the label as Obscuro and possibly still do. That was mean.
JW: How did you know what to do and what you needed?
HO: I learned the basics of recording and turning the results into a finished LP in about 1966, when I was still living in Washington, D.C. I used Squirrel Ashcraft’s Ampex tape recorder, a couple of Electrovoice microphones and Squirrel’s house for the sessions. We recorded Johnson “Fat Cat” McRee. The first record for Fat Cat, a really good one built around Zutty Singleton, was done with Squirrel’s equipment. I was green as grass, but it worked out just fine.
JW: How did you work that out?
HO: After Sherman Fairchild died, his studio was no longer available, I built my own at 173 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. The first studio was called WARP Studio. When I expanded in to 16-track, it became Downtown Sound.
JW: When did recognition pick up?
HO: Eventually, really great people came by, such as John Hammond and George Avakian. The word got out that WARP/Downtown was a great acoustic jazz room, where really good, relaxed records could be made. The clocks were slow and there was no hype or pressure. Dozens of the best independent jazz labels of the 1970s made records at the studio—Enja, Black Lion, Sonet, Progressive, MMO, Phontastic, Black and Blue, DRG, Tomato and many others. And people used the studio for movies and videos as well.
JW: What did you admire about John Hammond?
HO: In terms of producing the records, he considered himself an enabler and that’s what I wanted to be, to create an environment or circumstance where Earl Hines or Mary Lou Williams or whoever could do what they did best. I would never presume to tell someone like Earl or Mary what to do.
JW: What was the biggest hurdle?
HO: Funding and distribution. Funding for both paying musicians and manufacturing product. In 1972 and early ’73, I worked out an arrangement with the Record Club of America (RCOA). They distributed Chiaroscuro via their catalog. But more importantly they manufactured the records and allowed me to buy back product at their cost. I was paying about 50 cents for a finished LP. RCOA failed toward the end, in 1973, and I then worked out an arrangement with AudioFidelity Enterprises to distribute my label. And, of course, I continued mail order sales.
JW: Where did funding come from?
HO: Funding for recordings came from five sources. The first was revenue from direct mail order sales. Second, there were modest receipts from the recording studio. Third, there were “advances” from the AFE distribution agreement. Fourth, once a year I would get an income tax refund and I’d put it into a large-scale recording like a Buck Clayton jam session with a dozen musicians. And finally, I made two or three records with the proceeds of cashing out my government pension when I “retired” from the CIA in 1976. I eventually got in trouble with the income tax refund. I did this for about four or five years.
JW: How did you get in trouble?
HO: I made the mistake of combing my CIA salary with the recording company income (always a loss) when I filed my return. The loss from the record company meant I always had a refund coming from the CIA withholding. Mid-decade, the IRS audited me and claimed the record company was just a hobby and I owed a zillion dollars in back taxes.
JW: What did you do?
HO: My friend, Johnson McRee, the same Fat Cat I’d helped with Zutty Singleton and the Manassas Jazz Festival, fought them like crazy. It dragged on and on and then AFE decided they wanted to buy me out and we made a deal whereby they’d give me complete ownership of Downtown Sound, the new construction of which they’d partially funded in 1975, and a pile of cash. This proved my little record company wasn’t a hobby and the case was dropped.
JW: As owner-producer, what did you enjoy doing most?
HO: I always had more ideas than the resources or time to complete various projects. You have to remember, that for most of the time during Chiaroscuro's analog years, between 1971 and 1978, I was a full-time CIA employee. I had people running the recording studio. That was the easy part. But I had to handle all the record-company activity after hours and on the weekends. It took a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. I’ve often wondered what could have happened had there been sufficient funding and I was not otherwise employed. I resigned from the CIA in October 1976. From the end of 1976 until the end of 1977, I recorded and released about an album a week. Prior to that, it had been about one a month.
JW: What was the biggest thrill?
HO: It was wonderful coming up with an idea and somehow managing to pull it off. But it took great artists like Earl Hines or Mary Lou or Joe Venuti to make it possible. I was lucky, I’d heard the Earl Hines QRS solo recordings, not on the 10” Atlantic LP from the 1950s but from brand new copies in Dick Spottswood’s collection. I asked Stanley Dance in 1970 if he thought Earl would be willing to recreate them, and he was brilliant. It was a good time to ask largely ignored mainstreamers to do records. There was no competition in the U.S. and almost no one said no. especially if the musician was asked by a pal.
JW: How so?
HO: Illinois Jacquet or Roy Eldridge could say no to me but would have a hard time saying no to Buddy Tate, and they didn’t. It may be hard to imagine but people weren’t clamoring for an Earl Hines solo LP. The solo recording with Mary Lou Williams was her first in forever and in any context since 1955. Dave McKenna since the early 1960s. And the same for Gene Krupa and Jonah Jones. And no one had explored the idea of a violin/piano sonata outing like with Venuti and Hines, or Venuti and McKenna.
JW: Did you try to get these tapes picked up by major labels like RCA and Columbia?
HO: I did, but it was hard trying to get any traction. I would visit with Neshui Ertegun or Jerry Wexler at Atlantic and suggest they should consider this or that. It was always “no," but I’d wind up with, “I hear you have a great new tape with Pee Wee Russell, could you make me a copy?” I remember Ahmet Ertegun wanted a picture of Pee Wee for his wall. I brought him one in a nice frame. He took down a photo of Mick Jagger to make room for it.
JW: Had the number of jazz fans in the music business dried up?
HO: In those days, the record business was littered with executives who were jazz fans but couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything for the music. Of course, ECM and other European labels were doing great records of younger musicians and exceptional but largely ignored smaller domestic labels were recording the and issuing exceptional music from the most adventuresome Black avant-garders. Think ESP, Stata-East or Carla Bley and Escalator Over the Hill.
JW: Which artists were a struggle to record?
HO: It was usually the opposite. People wanted to make a record in the 1970s. It was somewhat more complicated in those days. You couldn’t make a recording on your iPhone and post it the next day on YouTube. Those technologies didn't exist, of course. It was always a struggle to get Dave McKenna into the studio because he claimed he didn’t know any tunes. But he did and appeared on 10 Chiaroscuro LPs and CDs to prove it. The first Borah Bergman LP took two years and 40 or 50 sessions. Bill Evans and the National Jazz Ensemble took one. Earl Hines always took one three-hour session or less. Teddy Wilson held the record in the 1970s for number of takes required to get something he was satisfied with: 24 takes for What a Little Moonlight Can Do.
JW: What were the biggest sellers?
HO: There were no big sellers. The only time Chiaroscuro ever appeared on the Billboard charts, the jazz chart mind you, was with a record that was licensed from a South African company: Abdullah Ibrahim’s Capetown Fringe. He was known as Dollar Brand in those days, and we even went so far as to present him in concert at New York's Alice Tully Hall in 1977, to publicize Capetown Fringe. We recorded Abdullah’s Alice Tully Hall band the next day. it was a great group, with Don Cherry, Hamiet Bluiett, Carlos Ward, Roy Brooks and a bunch of others. It didn’t sound like Capetown Fringe and didn’t chart.
JW: When did you start thinking about selling the company?
HO: I never did, and even though Chiaroscuro is now owned and managed by WVIA, an exceptional NPR radio and television affiliate, I’m still involved with the company, usually on a daily basis. There are two incarnations of Chiaroscuro. The analog records released from 1969 to 1978 and then the digital recordings beginning in 1987 until today.
JW: Was that always the plan?
HO: The plan in 1978 was to sell or trade the Chiaroscuro catalog to AudioFidelity Enterprises and wind up with a pile of cash and full ownership in Downtown Sound and launch a new record company with George Avakian and the participation of various artists. We called the company Pegasus, with a subsidiary label, New York Records, a trademark George owned.
JW: Why George Avakian in those years?
HO: George had an incredible inventory of unissued material by Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Benny Goodman and Erroll Garner—all artists who were his close personal friends. I had much material that was unissued on Chiaroscuro and the first musician to join forces with us was Gerry Mulligan. [Photo above of George Avakian]
JW: What did Mulligan do?
HO: Gerry furnished five albums to the project, including the one with his Concert Jazz Band. We started it in 1979 and finished a dozen sessions later in early 1980. I suggested to Gerry it was about time he won a Grammy and the best way to do that was for a major, deserving artist, to release an exceptional record in a category with little competition, such as big band jazz. It was a perfect plan and it worked. Walk on Water won the Grammy in 1982 for best big band jazz record.
JW: What became of Pegasus?
HO: By that time, the label was no more. Despite all his contacts, recorded inventory and good will, George couldn’t get a distribution deal with anyone and Gerry’s record was licensed to DRG, which issued it.
JW: Must have been a let-down, yes?
HO: George and I were discouraged. I closed Downtown Sound in December 1980 and, with John Hammond and John Moore, launched Hammond Music Enterprises in January 1981. We had a CBS distribution deal but it didn’t work out.
JW: Why?
HO: John Hammond resigned in 1983, and I was gone by 1984. My plan was to concentrate on music festivals, which I did. In 1985 I met Andrew Sordoni at one of the Floating Jazz Festivals. In 1986, he suggested we make an effort to acquire the rights to Chiaroscuro from the then faltering and soon to be bankrupt AudioFidelity Enterprises. We managed to do this, for far less than I’d sold the company to them. The timing couldn’t have been better. If we hadn’t done what we did, when we did it, all the Chiaroscuro analog masters would have been lost or stolen, which is what happened to all the AFE masters while they were in bankruptcy court. [Photo above of Andrew Sordoni III]
JW: What did you and Andrew do next?
HO: We organized ourselves, came up with a working business plan and in early 1989 we released CR(D) 301, The Return of Mel Powell with Mel, Benny Carter, Howard Alden, Milt Hinton and Louie Bellson. This album put Chiaroscuro in the digital era, where we remain to this day.
JW: Who are some of the artists you wish you had recorded but it didn’t work out?
HO: There were so many. Of the younger guys who were in bands that recorded at the studio, Tom Harrell and Gregory Herbert come to mind. Of the older people who were recording for others, Dorothy Donegan, Hazel Scott, Sadik Hakim and Jimmy Rowles. I had always wanted to do a Texas tenor album, with the older guys and the younger guys, all mixed up, with Buster Smith writing all the arrangements. It never worked out. At one time or another, four or five of them were at the studio in one capacity or another but never together.
JW: What was another big idea?
HO: I thought about what Ornette Coleman might sound like if surrounded by the kind of musicians he grew up with in Fort Worth, Texas. I was convinced he could probably play that way and it might be interesting. We all know how John Coltrane sounded in his mature years. I heard Coltrane on a bill with Count Basie in 1958. Milt Hinton was on bass and Elvin Jones was on drums. The other horns were Pepper Adams, Bob Brookmeyer and Zoot Sims.
JW: Looking back, what would you have done differently?
HO: I wouldn’t change much. Maybe the name Chiaroscuro. It was too hard to pronounce. It also would have been nice to have somewhat better distribution in the beginning and regular financing. But all things considered, I was extremely lucky to have access to and friendships with so many exceptional, artistically inclined men and women who have been part of hundreds maybe thousands of recordings, concerts, festivals, movies and the like. And so many who still are. It’s a long way from hearing that first Artie Shaw 78 record in 1954, the one my mother bought by mistake in 1939. The way forward has been pretty good and still is.
JW: Which of your recordings stand out?
HO: From the analog years, there are a bunch of high points and the same for the digital. But from the olden days, a couple of tracks on Jazz at the New School with Eddie Condon, Gene Krupa and Wild Bill Davison along with Kenny Davern and Dick Wellstood stand out. Almost all of the two LP set with Earl Hines and Tiny Grimes, the one we did live for a week and Earl waited until the last set of the last night to play the dozen songs that had been selected to record. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, put it on the music stand and went from top to bottom and each song was a masterpiece. I wound up with two LPs instead of one.
JW: What’s the latest?
HO: We have just reissued John and Joe, a 1977 recording with Flip Phillips, Kenny Davern, Dave McKenna, George Duvivier and Bob Rosengarden. It is exceptional as is another brand-new reissue, Pure as Rain, the debut recording of Gil Goldstein as a leader. It is also from 1977 and features Gil with Toots Thielemans, Jeff Berlin, Bob Moses and a few others.
JW: And Eddie Condon?
HO: Stay tuned for the last project I did with Eddie in 1970, featuring Lee Wiley. It’s coming soon. [Photo above of Eddie Condon]
This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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