Always in Trouble: An Oral History of ESP-Disk’, the Most Outrageous Record Label in America

I What Got into His Head: Bernard Stollman, Founder of the Label

I What Got into His Head bernard stollman, founder of the label in the great before 1 Who, Where, When Beginnings and Departures As the founder of a label unlike any other, Bernard Stollman shared the Jewish immigrant background of certain Hollywood moguls and also a few jazz impresarios, yet with many distinct turns. How he ended up in music, running a business that was hardly a business, seemed anything but a likely outcome. He recounts his own circuitous path along the way. My father, David, was born at the turn of the century, in the small Polish market town of Krynki [Krinik]. He was t he third youngest of nine c hildren whose father, a devout Orthodox Jew, labored for long hours as the foreman of a local tannery owned by his brothers. Th e rafters of their one-story house held stacks of curing hides, which gave off a terrible stench. My father attended yeshiva as a child, until he was apprenticed to a tailor at the age of twelve. One day, his closest friend came running to the shop to tell him excitedly that a traveling cantor had arrived in town and was auditioning boy singers to accompany him on his t our of the great synagogues of Poland and Russia. My father’s sweet voice won him em ployment, and the two boys found themselves celebrities, warmly applauded by congregations whose women showered them with attention and fine food. When a year had elapsed, his voice began to change with the onset of puberty. The First World War had begun and the cantor abruptly fled to America, abandoning him in a distant city without funds. Desperate, the boy approached a welldressed stranger on the train platform and told him o f his p light. He asked to borrow the train fare, requesting the man’s name and address, and insisted that he would repay the loan when he reached his home. The man gave him the fare and refused my father’s offer. This generous gesture left an indelible impression on him, and he recounted it with wonderment to me half a century later. 3 ...