(Blue Note has announced the passing of Michael Cuscuna at 75.)
Thelonious Monk died in 1982. The boutique reissue label Mosaic started a year later: Mosaic’s first release in 1983 was the deluxe four LP set The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Thelonious Monk. The producer of the set was Michael Cuscuna.
It’s hard to remember now, but at the time it was immensely difficult to simply get the information. First, so many of the records were impossible to find! Hearing the sounds required an advanced degree in record store archeology. The Mosaic label thrived because they organized some of the finest music of the 20th Century in a satisfying fashion.
In addition, the secondary sources were scattered and incomplete. There were some books, and if you were lucky you had a few back issues of some magazines, but what were usually in front of you were liner notes. Liner notes were actually incredibly important.
The notes of The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Thelonious Monk were written by Michael Cuscuna. Within the substantial booklet, Cuscuna included a complete discography of Thelonious Monk (not just the Blue Note sessions featured in the box), a historical overview, and a play-by-play of each track.
It was a labor of love. At the time it was certainly the best information about Thelonious Monk extant.
Amusingly, Mosaic had to include an errata sheet for that first Monk box. I reprint it only to show how small scale and analog everything was. Cuscuna and Charlie Lourie were wrestling with tape boxes, typewriters, a pressing plant, and reams and reams of paper. After they got the expensive booklets back from the printers, they noticed a few errors. (Despite time and distance, I can almost hear them swearing at each other.) They then typed up this sheet, because they just didn’t want any mistakes gumming up the works for future researchers. They wanted to get it right.
Mosaic had a special relationship with Blue Note, because Michael Cuscuna had spent several years in the vaults in charge of sorting what was not yet issued. It’s still hard to believe, but dozens of spectacular sessions were left on the shelf at the time of recording in the 1960s. Cuscuna oversaw the first release of Lee Morgan Sonic Boom, Wayne Shorter Soothsayer, Grant Green Solid, Andrew Hill Dance with Death, Jackie McLean Consequence, Bobby Hutcherson Spiral, and many other great LPs in the late ‘70s and ‘80s.
Sometimes these Blue Note issues were packaged as two-fers: The 1976 Booker Ervin set set Back to the Gig was particularly awesome, and had particularly good liner notes by Cuscuna himself. At that time these notes were surely one of the most helpful secondary sources about Ervin. (Stanley Crouch followed up with good notes to the Ervin two-fer The Freedom and Space Sessions a few years later in 1979. Between these notes by Cuscuna and Crouch, I believe that’s about it in terms of solid Booker Ervin historical data to this day.)
Cuscuna did not just work with Mosaic and Blue Note. He did time with many other labels as producer, A&R man, and who knows what. Special mention must go to a shining moment at Arista Records in the 1970s, when Steve Backer and Michael Cuscuna signed Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, and other avant-gardists to a major label. As a producer, Cuscana was not as hands-on as Alfred Lion, let alone Manfred Eicher or Creed Taylor, but it was entirely Cuscuna’s idea to have Braxton, Lee Konitz, and Roy Haynes meet on a Dave Brubeck record, All the Things We Are.
A nice and detailed interview with Cuscuna by Willard Jenkins is at Open Sky Jazz.
The twelfth Mosaic release in 1985 was The Complete Black Lion and Vogue Recordings of Thelonious Monk, which included Monk’s final interview and helpful notes by Brian Priestley, who had observed the 1971 Black Lion session in person fourteen years earlier. It worked like this: First I got the two Mosaic boxes (Blue Note and Black Lion/Vogue) and then I got the huge complete Riverside set produced by Orrin Keepnews, so all I needed to collect were what I could find of the Columbias. Thanks to these boxes, I had learned almost all of the 70+ Monk tunes by the time I graduated high school. (Again, doing this today would be easy, but at the time it was bit harder to sort it all out.)
The Mosaic box of Herbie Nichols included liner notes by Roswell Rudd. I suppose whatever scribbling I do as a critic is essentially forever an emulation of Roswell Rudd’s commentary on Herbie Nichols.
Another set of notes that were notably important for my development were on the back of Paul Bley Turns, a 1987 Savoy issue/re-issue of 1964 music with John Gilmore, Gary Peacock, and Paul Motian. Those truly informative and helpful notes were written by Michael Cuscuna….
…After I posted a long overview of Keith Jarrett with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Paul Motian, Michael sent me an email, saying how impressed he was that I knew all that history, including Paul Bley and Lowell Davidson. I wrote back saying that it was all his fault, that his notes for Bley’s Turns were where my researches began.
A year later Michael wrote me again, this time in his hallowed role as researcher, organizer, and historian. “Hi Ethan, I see you are signed to Blue Note. Congratulations. Hey, can you remind Don Was and the team to make sure the recording dates are always listed on all current Blue Note releases?”
When I was in high school in Wilmington, Delaware, I first heard Michael as a DJ on the University of Pennsylvania radio station WXPN. He broadened my listening habits a bit by what he played on his show that, if I remember correctly, started at 10 pm. He is/was only 5 years older than me, but the difference between 16 and 21 can be quite sizable. A few years later he was on WMMR playing mostly “free-form” rock. These are just early memories and his great contributions via Mosaic and the Blue Note archives are what I most thank him for! I have a Woody Shaw and a Louis Armstrong Mosaic set and the booklets/notes are incredibly informative! A person like Michael, who obviously loved the music and respected the musicians, made big contributions and I thank him for them.
And his time on the radio in Philadelphia.....