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Letters

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Parent Issue
Day
31
Month
May
Year
1974
OCR Text

LETTERS

Impulse Responds

Dear Ann Arbor Sun,

I've just finished reading your May 17 article, "Charlie Haden: Liberation Music Orchestra vs. ABC", and I feel I must respond to it.

The idea to reissue the album in the first place was mine and the scenario that developed affected me and was affected by me; ergo, I feel I have the right to respond.

My own personal reason for wanting the album reissued was that under the old structure at Impulse, the album was never done justice. Under the structure that now exists, which includes a much better distribution system, Charlie Haden's music could reach initially about five times as many sets of ears as before. The music, I felt, deserved a great deal more public acceptance than it had received. Simple as that, but, as in most dealings with Charlie Haden, not quite so simple.

I'm not sure what I object to most; the sins of omission in the story; the false allegations; or Impulse having to take the rap for Charlie Haden's bitterness towards lots of other things. Let's start with the latter.

Charlie Haden hates Bob Thiele (not unjustifiably) - but Thiele has had nothing to do with Impulse for 4 or 5 years now, so why transfer that animosity to others that have nothing to do with that original pain.

He also, it seems obvious, despises the music industry and the entire corporate structure in America. Well, it seems to me that Impulse, were it not for his beef over this isolated reissue, (the factual aspects of which I will deal with later), would be about the most unlikely target for him to channel this negativity towards.

For the past few years, we have been the only major record company recording the most challenging, uncompromising contemporary music in America. One of the things I mean by uncompromising is a situation where the artist has total freedom to express his music however he sees fit, because the people recording for us happen to be the cream of the major innovators in modern music, and they know what they're doing. (An attitude hardly symbolic of "the very system that is stifling creative music and also perpetuating the shallow value system that everyone is raised under".) I know of no other major jazz record company that can say that.

If he, as an artist, can't appreciate that difference, it makes me wonder why the hell we even bother to fight for that artistic integrity, because, believe me, it is a fight.

In terms of the specifics of this reissue, it is pretty much an industry-wide practice for record companies, when reissuing albums, to simply put the albums out again. Almost never is any time, effort, or money sunk into these albums. Impulse is a rare exception to this rule. On almost all of our retrospectives, anthologies, samplers, and on "Liberation Music Orchestra", our only reissue, we have spent much time, effort, and money to improve the quality of the sound and the entire package. We do this because we feel that the above mentioned practice is wrong.

So, on Charlie Haden's album, Ed Michel spent the better part of two weeks in the studio remixing the inadequate first mix, mixing for quadraphonic compatibility, gaining about an octave above and an octave below the original -- so it would be right this time, for Charlie, for Impulse and for the consumer. He also called him up to ask if he wanted to help; another exception to the rule on a reissue. The same applied to his airfare to California and back. That is done on newly recorded albums, not on this kind of thing. They did, however, pay him for this.

In regards to the additional paragraphs of liner notes, it is my personal opinion that they were innocuous, harmless words that were, in and of themselves, hardly revelatory. But the reality is that ABC does own the tapes, does own the jackets on which the words are printed, and does own the company, and can put out or not put out what they choose. I heard things like, "this is a music company, not a forum for political ideas, radical or conservative" and "he should write a book if he wants to express these things." Whatever the basis for the decision, it is their decision to make, man.

The only wrong that they did was to tell Ed Michel that they would print them and then, when they changed their minds, not to advise him of the change. That put Ed in a bind with his artist, a situation he could not tolerate.

I must ask here, why, if one knows in front that dealing with the corporate structure in this world calls for an occasional concession, hopefully in the interest of getting something important accomplished, would one react this way on this particular situation, (when 99% of the developments are working in your favor and 1% is not).

His reaction to this paragraph omission seems to me to be so terribly lacking in understanding and perspective, that I can not help but feel that he would prefer to be a martyr in defeat than to risk having to change his attitude towards ABC by virtue of the fact that they were going to do something in his behalf.

Charlie Haden is the third most recorded bassist in the history of the Impulse label, and still continues to record for Impulse. He is one of the finest bass players in the world and has not come near earning what he is due. I could write about that subject (as I have many times in the past) for ten more pages and still not cover the reasons why.

Point is, I can't accept what he and the Ann Arbor Sun have done here in spreading this venomous one-dimensional point of view, and one of my main concerns here is that I can continue to appreciate his beautiful playing without letting this kind of shallow mediocrity get between me and my headphones.

Sincerely, Steve Backer  General Manager Impulse Records