Laying Down Tracks

Recording jazz onto multitrack tape meant that, while music continued to be captured onto tape in studios, albums could be constructed in postproduction: analogous to the way movies were shot on soundstages and assembled in editing rooms. Some musicians—especially Miles Davis and his jazz fusion bands—directed improvisations in the recording studio and left the task of assembling albums to their producers. Audiences for such albums heard, not studio games of cut 'n' paste, but tracks that resembled the turn-on-a-dime musical performances they heard in concert—performances which imitated techniques devised in postproduction. Enabling the naiveté of this audience is an overarching truth: jazz production almost always uses available technologies to ensure that in-the-moment performances are recorded (and, later, reproduced) as perfectly as possible.

Coda

Up until recently, I would say my role was to take the artist, his concept, and his point of view and put them down on tape—not really fool with it too much. Now I’m more particular. I think if somebody is choosing a piano player who is not especially good or there are ten guys who are better, I am going to say so. “I am okay if you want to use this guy because he’s in your band, but is he in your band because he’ll work for three hundred a week? You can do better.” I know the argument about loyalty, and I know the argument about closeness. I buy them. I think they’re good arguments, but you can also make records with musicians that are not quite up to the job, and you are not going to sell as many of them, I don’t think. The idea is to speak up and be more back-and-forth with the artist. Then again, some guys—especially jazz guys—know what they want....

Cutting Sides

Production before the advent of magnetic tape—in the era of 78-RPM records—emphasized "pre-production." A&R men (short for "artists and repertoire") chose artists to record, and they paired songs from the publishing firms of Tin Pan Alley with artists. The A&R work of Milt Gabler (at Commodore and Decca Records) and John Hammond and George Avakian (at Columbia) is exemplary. Gabler organized a series of jam sessions, which he recorded. Avakian produced Chicago Jazz (1940), the first jazz "album" of original material. As part of their popular music divisions the major labels—Columbia, Decca, and RCA Victor—record and market jazz. A number of specialty labels emerge: Commodore, Prestige, Contemporary, Verve, Blue Note, Atlantic, Riverside, and Savoy. Though dependent on pressing plants owned by the majors, they reflect the production philosophies of the connoisseurs who founded and owned them.

Cadenza

An interview with record producer Don Schlitten, serving as an overview (and survey) of jazz record production. It contrasts the recording of jazz with other types of popular music.

Recording to Hard Drive

When digital audio workstations (DAWs) do not multiply recording options to unthinkable levels of over-choice, they have simplified and automated tasks that were exceedingly difficult and time consuming to execute on analog tape. But they have informed jazz production most profoundly in the smallest sorts of ways. Fixing the little stuff that once marred, otherwise stellar, performances is now very quick and easy. A number of jazz recordings discussed in this chapter were not recorded digitally, and when they were, many of their producers merely treated digital tape and hard drives as the new, perhaps "improved," analog tape. Much of the time, in the world of jazz production a potentially revolutionary technology is just added to—and conceptualized in terms of–what was already available.

Rolling Tape

The A&R man became a record producer with the development of magnetic tape (a spoil of World War II) and the introduction of the vinyl long-playing record by Columbia Records in 1948. Producers could capture on tape—for reproduction and sale on records—jazz that had routinely happened for many years only on various stages. When recording technology caught up with the actual practice of improvising musicians, jazz discovered an ideal form in the "album." George Avakian's visionary work with Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Erroll Garner, Buck Clayton, and Dave Brubeck realized what could be done with the new format and technology. The productions of Milt Gabler, Bob Weinstock, Esmond Edwards, Don Schlitten Teo Macero, Bob Thiele, Orrin Keepnews, Nesuhi Ertegun, Creed Taylor, Lester Koenig, Nat Hentoff ushered in a golden age for jazz.