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II ESP-Disk’ as Lived and Witnessed
- Wesleyan University Press
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II ESP-Disk’ as Lived and Witnessed [3.236.55.137] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:23 GMT) Naturally, every person has his or her own point of entry in ESP’s history. In seeking out these many witnesses to the label’s role in recent—and current—cultural practice,Iwantedtoreflectthewideperspectivethatisitslegacy.So,mostofthe people who speak here are musicians, and the majority of those played free jazz, or still do. But there are also idiosyncratic folkies, and rockers, and theater people , as well as a few writers and a recording engineer too. Nearly all of them were involved with one or more records in ESP’s original catalog; two appeared only on the revived label in recent years, and another, as archivist and researcher, brought forth historic new releases. The few musicians in these pages (and one adventurous producer) who did not work with ESP offer a sense of how the label was heard and received beyond its immediate sphere of action. Given the distance in time from ESP’s early burst of productions—four to four-and-a-half decades in most cases—I remained keenly aware of just how much I was asking of people to cast their memory that far back, to dredge up as many details as they could muster. Most respondents managed to do so marvelously well, though for some their powers of recall were inevitably frayed by the wear and tear of all those years on body and mind. Inherent to such an exercise is the curious play of emotion over time, and for any musician who had a relationship with the ESP label there were expectations and disappointments , pride and rancor, yet seldom indifference. Surely these reactions were a familiar palette of sentiments toward many record companies, yet somehow their vibrancy held special sway in regard to ESP. On the one hand, Stollman was known as a musician’s advocate; on the other, most of these musicians would not have recorded what and when they did if not for him, so they were in a vulnerable position. Perceived slights, largely about money, were quickly compounded by suspicion, hearsay, sloppy business habits, and a sinking reputation so that what he did wrong may well have paled in comparison to all he was thought to have done wrong. Still, if time does not entirely heal all wounds, it allows for nuance, understanding, or at the very least a recognition of the complexity of human interactions. Some musicians who speak here, therefore, offer a more generous outlook than they might have in earlier years. 81 82 There are, of course, those who got away. Some simply refused my request, fornoexpressreason—PharoahSanders,throughhismanager;HenryGrimes, through his wife. Others I almost sought out but did not get that far—Randy Burns, Perry Robinson, Mij—wishing to impose some degree of moderation on my project. The multiplicity of voices that follows already provides ample perspective on the label’s claim, “you never heard such sounds in your life,” and how that was lived through the course of these many paths. Still, there were others who would not yield, no matter how much I tried to elicit their cooperation in the interests of history, art, and science. Knowing my chances were slim, due to longstanding disputes, I persisted for a while in pursuit of the Fugs as well as Patty Waters. One of the Fugs, the late Tuli Kupferberg, had been in declining health, so he never replied to my letters and phone messages . The other, Ed Sanders, did send me one brief email message (March 7, 2009), laid out like a four-line poem: “I will be dealing with these / issues in the future, / and I am not at this time / giving interviews on this subject.” Patty Waters also replied by email (December 10, 2008) to say, “I am not anxious to be interviewed. I’m just one of many who felt disappointed that he didn’t pay royalties as he’d promised. My albums were enthusiastically received and sold quite well, I’m told.” A year later (November 15, 2009), declining my final effort , she added, “Bernard in 1966 had me sign giving him publishing rights to all my music. He has cleverly robbed me.” The conditions that gave rise to some of her claims are addressed in other parts of this book. Stollman points out, however, that at ESP “the publishing was shared, in contrast to the prevailing practice then, which was for the label...