Orrin Keepnews : 'I refuse to feel venerable'
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ANDREW GILBERT: JAZZ TALK
'I refuse to feel venerable'
By Andrew Gilbert
TIMES CORRESPONDENT
Orrin Keepnews could easily look back contentedly upon one of American
music's most illustrious careers.
Now in his 50th year guiding jazz artists through the often
nerve-wracking process of documenting their music, Keepnews has
overseen classic recording sessions by many of jazz's most creative
and important figures, including Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans,
Cannonball Adderley, Wes Montgomery, Sonny Rollins, Benny Golson, Joe
Henderson and McCoy Tyner, to name just a few.
He has won four Grammys and founded three record labels: Landmark,
Milestone and, most importantly, Riverside, which from 1953-1964 was
one of the most important independent outlets for modern jazz.
He has been lauded in numerous publications and reference books,
including the "All Music Guide to Jazz," which refers to Keepnews as
"prime mover in post World War II jazz." And he's been the focus of
star-studded tribute concerts, such as the one staged on his behalf by
the San Francisco Jazz Festival in 1997.
In March, Keepnews turned 80, a time when many artists are happy to
take stock of their accolades and reflect on their experiences.
Don't count Keepnews among them, however.
"The hell with that," he said during a recent interview at his house
in a quiet San Francisco neighborhood nestled between Pacific Heights
and the Richmond. "I didn't ask for (the honors). I don't have to let
it cramp my style."
Instead, Keepnews is working on recording and promoting two Bay Area
artists -- saxophonist Dave Ellis and singer Roberta Donnay -- he
hopes will one day add to his canon of memorable jazz recordings.
"I know that (80 years old) is a venerable age," Keepnews said. "I
refuse to feel venerable. I'm in reasonably good health. I'm active.
But I realize there is a kind of limbo. If I drop dead tomorrow,
nobody could say I had a short life. On the other hand, Benny Carter
just checked out at 95. If I use him as an example, it gives me a lot
of leeway. Why not make myself formally more active?"
Collaboration is key
Keepnews' energy is fueled by his passion for jazz music as well as
the opportunity to collaborate with more and different artists.
"The amount of music he has been involved in is quite incredible,"
said Bay Area pianist and arranger Mike Greensill, who has spent
considerable time in the studio with Keepnews while accompanying
singer Wesla Whitfield. "He did record with just about every major
jazz musician."
Keepnews' latest phase of activity actually started several years ago,
after a 15-year period in which he devoted most of his time to
producing boxed-set collections and reissues of classic albums. One
such set, RCA Victor's 24-disc "Duke Ellington Centennial Edition,"
won him a Grammy in 2000.
Keepnews was coaxed back into the recording studio by EMusic, a Bay
Area music company that aspired to pioneer music distribution over the
Internet.
EMusic's plans slowed considerably during the high-tech meltdown, and
Keepnews eventually purchased the master recordings of the five albums
he produced for the company, including alto saxophonist Lee Konitz's
live duo session with pianist Alan Broadbent (recently released as
"Live-Lee" on the Milestone label); and "September Songs," the Kurt
Weill/Alec Wilder/Harry Warren HighNote album by Wesla Whitfield, with
whom Keepnews has worked steadily since the late 1980s.
"I kind of got bitten again at that point," Keepnews said. "I was
feeling impatient with not working enough."
In his new phase as a producer, Keepnews is looking to advance the
careers of several gifted young musicians, which is what led to his
latest undertaking, "Orrin Keepnews Presents: Dave Ellis & Roberta
Donnay," a weekly showcase at the Plush Room on Monday and Aug. 18.
The concerts pair the East Bay-based tenor saxophonist Ellis, who was
an original member of guitarist Charlie Hunter's trio, an integral
part of San Francisco's acid-jazz scene in the '90s and former member
of the post-Grateful Dead band the Other Ones, with rising San
Francisco singer/songwriter Donnay, who has been honing her jazz chops
over the past year. Ellis and Donnay also perform together in
September at the Monterey Jazz Festival.
Keepnews originally produced Ellis' new album, "State of Mind," for
EMusic and wound up releasing it earlier this summer on Milestone. He
helped Donnay with a demo session that effectively captured the
singer's lovely voice and sprightly delivery, but the labels he
approached said they wanted to see the singer in action. So in his
first venture as a concert presenter, Keepnews thought it made sense
to pair Donnay with Ellis' working quartet in the hope of attracting a
label's interest.
"It's certainly not my intention to get back to anything like the
incredible activity of my youth," Keepnews said. "When I look back
now, it absolutely terrifies me how much time I was spending in the
studio. My new motto is, as long as producing jazz records doesn't
involve much heavy lifting, there's no reason why I shouldn't. I'd
like to have three or four artists that I'm working with on a regular
basis. I'd like to establish a formal working relationship with one or
two labels and have a guaranteed outlet for my product."
'Freedom' for a legend
Though his words might sound like those of a savvy music businessman,
it has been Keepnews' personal approach that has won him such trust
and admiration within the jazz music community.
Sonny Rollins was the most influential tenor saxophonist in jazz when
he started recording for Keepnews' Riverside label as a freelance
artist. One project was his politically charged 1958 album "The
Freedom Suite," in which the music and particularly the liner notes
delivered a fiery protest of American society's endemic racism.
"At the time, it was a somewhat controversial record," Rollins said in
a recent phone interview. "It was sort of a black consciousness record
made before the civil rights movement took off, and I'm not sure that
a lot of other producers would have allowed that record to be made
with the sentiments that I expressed. I thought (Keepnews) had to be a
standup guy to do that, and that's some extra added respect I've had
for him all these years."
Keepnews has weathered numerous changes in the music business. He grew
up with "not a drop of music" in a middle-class Jewish household in
upper Manhattan. His mother was a public school teacher and his father
worked for the Department of Welfare, civil service jobs that shielded
the family from the brunt of the Great Depression.
After graduating from Columbia University and serving in the Army
during World War II, he returned to New York City and took a job as a
junior editor in a publishing firm. When his college buddy Bill Grauer
took over the Record Changer, a jazz music publication, Keepnews came
on board as editor, following his burgeoning passion for 1920s jazz.
Though at first unimpressed with bebop, the modern jazz movement that
had come to the fore during the war years, he had the musical insight
to champion an obscure pianist/composer named Thelonious Monk. It
began a relationship that changed Keepnews' career, and jazz music,
forever.
Keepnews' 1948 Record Changer piece was one of the first ever written
on Monk, and in comparing the pianist to Jelly Roll Morton and Duke
Ellington, he was certainly the first nonmusician to foresee the
central role Monk would play in post-war jazz.
The Monk years
Keepnews soon went from writer to participant. In 1952, he and Grauer
founded Riverside Records as a vehicle for reissuing classic
recordings by early jazz stars such as Morton and Louis Armstrong. By
1954, they were ready to start producing new music, signing pianist
and budding composer Randy Weston as their first artist. But Riverside
really made its mark when it signed Monk, whose career had been
languishing at two more-prominent labels, and who remembered Keepnews
and his Record Changer article.
At the time, most jazz critics regarded Monk as an interesting
composer with deficient keyboard technique and a penchant for
eccentricity and trouble. The situation was exacerbated when a drug
bust cost him his all-important cabaret card, which prevented him from
taking extended engagements in New York City.
Keepnews orchestrated Monk's reintroduction to the public with an
album titled "Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington," and another
titled "The Unique Thelonious Monk."
The recording sessions were not without their bumpy moments. In his
collection of jazz writings, "The View From Within" (Oxford Press),
Keepnews describes how Monk arrived at his first Riverside "Ellington"
recording session seemingly unfamiliar with the Ellington material he
was supposed to record. Keepnews' reaction was one of patience, and it
paid off. "I was in the process," he wrote, "of learning that the most
important thing is to get the job done, not to be the winner in a
clash of wills."
The two albums allowed many listeners put off by Monk's opaque public
demeanor or baffled by his compositions to hear him in a new light. By
the time Monk left Riverside for Columbia in 1961, he was recognized
as a giant of 20th century music, a pervasively influential pianist
and inimitable composer.
Keepnews credits Monk with providing an invaluable education in how to
relate to artists in the studio, an education that has clearly served
the producer well.
"I learned not just how to deal with a flaky genius, although that's a
pretty valuable thing, too, but in a very practical sense how to
conduct myself in the studio, what the relationship between the artist
and the producer should be," Keepnews said. "Sonny Rollins makes the
point that a guru is someone who makes it possible for you to bring
out the best in yourself. Monk did it for me."
Keepnews was also instrumental in convincing a reluctant, largely
unknown pianist named Bill Evans to make his first recording as a
bandleader in 1956. By the time he returned to the studio in 1958, he
was a rising star with the Miles Davis Sextet, and he started
recording a string of hugely influential albums that culminated with
"Sunday at the Village Vanguard," a session that became a template for
musical interplay among piano trios.
By listening to the advice of his musicians, Keepnews was often able
to sign brilliant players who had been overlooked by other labels.
Trumpeter Kenny Dorham tipped him off to tenor saxophonist, arranger
and composer Jimmy Heath. Trumpeter Clark Terry introduced him to the
Adderley Brothers, who became jazz stars with the release of the 1959
Riverside album recorded at North Beach's Jazz Workshop, "The
Cannonball Adderley Quintet Live in San Francisco." And it was
Cannonball who turned Keepnews on to a little-known guitarist living
in Indianapolis.
"Cannonball came busting into my office and said, 'I heard this
incredible guitar player Wes Montgomery and we've got to get him on
the label,'" Keepnews recalled. "My principal artist referred to the
label as 'we!' That's what it's all about. I've devoted my life to
this thing, and I must have done something right."
Mutual respect
Perhaps that attitude is why musicians who have recorded with Keepnews
are less interested in discussing his legacy as one of jazz's greatest
producers than in talking about the man himself. Jimmy Heath had been
off the scene for several years when Keepnews signed him to Riverside
in 1959. He was also being courted by bigger labels, but Heath decided
to go with Keepnews.
"The thing that strikes me as unique about Orrin is that he allowed me
to choose my material and instrumentation -- in other words artistic
freedom," Heath said. "He was also a good friend of my whole family,
my mom and pop. My wife, Mona, was close with his wife, Lucy. It was a
family affair."
Keepnews and Lucy (who passed away in 1989) moved to San Francisco in
1972 when Berkeley's Fantasy Records bought two of his labels and
hired Keepnews as head of developing jazz music. Unfortunately, the 30
or so albums Keepnews produced for his Landmark label in the late
1980s, including releases by Kronos Quartet, Bobby Hutcherson and
Mulgrew Miller, have been out of print for years, though they've
recently been purchased by the Savoy label. But Keepnews isn't too
worried about whether or not the old albums resurface. He's thinking
about the albums that have yet to be made.
"The very first projects I ever in the very early '50s did were
reissues," Keepnews said. "In the '80s I had come full circle,
producing these CD reissue projects. But one of the things that
happens when you get to be 80, you're entitled to do more than a full
circle. I've gone at least 370 degrees and I'm well into my second new
creativity phase."