Blues Record Label CEO's - L to R - Bruce Iglauer - Alligator Records, Jerry Del Guidice - Blind
Pig Records,
Bob Koester - Delmark Records and Michael Frank, Earwig Music
Part II - The Delmark Records recording legacy begins.
Buying and selling records produced by other record companies was to
be only a small part of Koester’s budding enterprise.
He also began actively seeking out artists and recording them. Artists
like Big Joe Williams, Speckled Red and J.D. Short all ended up with
long-players to their credit, thanks to Koester.
And it all started simply because Koester thought that the Windy City
Six should be recorded.
“That’s how it all started, he said. “Just that simple.”
It wasn’t long before he had a catalog of about seven LPs and five
10-inch recordings ready to go.
However, things were to go downhill before they started to climb upward
for the fledgling record company.
“Well, I had covers printed up for the second Dixie Stompers record and
I think maybe the Speckled Red, but I had to throw all that paper away
because the 10-inch LP, over the course of a weekend, was dead,” Koester
said.
While he was sinking into a hole, pulled down by the suddenly unpopular
10-inch format, Koester managed to keep his wits about him and his
legendary business sense began to develop into what it is today, as he
made the best of a potentially business-killing situation.
He went around to all the local distributors and started picking up the
now-defunct 10-inch records for about a buck apiece. He was then able to
turn them at regular price, which helped him absorb the loss of the
stuff he had to trash, while also enabling him to continue to record.
“I was able to get four 12-inch LPs out in a period of a year and a half
or two years and to pay off most of my debts. We had no advance warning
that the 10-inch was going out. I went down to Columbia Records on a
Friday night and bought 10-inch LPs for $2.10 and went back Monday and
was able to get them for $1.00. That’s how quickly this industry can
change.”
And that’s how quickly a business can go from one with a solid future to
one on teetering and unsteady ground.
“Well, the fall of the 10-inch LP cost me a lot of money because I had
to toss all that printing and of course it took me ages to get rid of
the 10-inchers that I’d had pressed, but I ended up buying Riversides
(record label) for half-a-dollar. They waited too long to dispose of
certain stuff. Bill Grauer told me that if I’d buy 200 at a time, I
could have them for half-a-dollar. And then I sold them for $3 or $3.85
– regular price. Eventually I had to close them out at $1.99, but I
still more than doubled my money.”
Koester really began to pick up steam when he started purchasing
masters, the first of which was a collection of material from the George
Lewis New Orleans Jazz Band collection, at the price of $500 for two
10-inch LPs.
One of Koester’s former partners came up with the cash for the first
round of George Lewis masters, but another source was the bankroll for
round number two of the Lewis material.
“Later, I learned there was enough material for two more LPs (of Lewis
music) and the guy that designed the Busch Bavarian Beer label, a guy
that I had gotten acquainted with when I did a lecture on the history of
jazz at the St. Louis Jazz Club, gave me the $300 to buy the rest of the
masters,” Koester said. “I don’t know why they only wanted $300 when I’d
paid $500 for the first two. But at any rate, that gave me a basic
catalog and was what really got me going.”
Not only did getting hold of master tapes give Koester, the music lover,
the power to bring forgotten gems back into the light of day, it also
made good economic sense for Koester, the businessman, to engage that
kind of business model.
“That’s what set the label off at the beginning. I mean, to record the
George Lewis Band for three 12-inch LPs would be several thousand
dollars, but I got the masters for $800,” he said. “Those masters have
paid for themselves many times over. They don’t sell that well now, but
back then, the George Lewis Band toured colleges a lot.”
That practice of owning masters soon helped Delmark build its catalog
and catch the attention of those inside and outside of the music
industry.
“Buying masters has been a major sideline for us. Buying United’s gave
us, what, 25 or 30 albums? It gave us Junior Wells, those three Memphis
Slim’s, Robert Nighthawk, and a bunch of anthologies, along with some
good jazz stuff,” said Koester. “And then we bought Apollo and that
added to our blues catalog, along with classic jazz like Charles
Thompson with Charlie Parker. And we later wound up recording Charles
Thompson again.”
An opportunity to land the recorded works of legends like Blind Lemon
and Ma Rainy would soon follow, as would a move to his current and
long-time home of Chicago in 1958.
“The first records that I bought wholesale to sell at jazz club meetings
and by mail, were from John Steiner, so I got to be fairly acquainted
with him. And one day I got a letter that said he was getting ready to
retire and was thinking about disposing of his Paramount (record label)
properties and wanted to work out a deal where I could have them,”
Koester said. “And he also said, ‘It might not be a bad deal to move to
Chicago and get going, young fellow.’”
That advice did not go unheeded and next thing you knew, Koester packed
up and left St. Louis for Chicago.
“Steiner encouraged me to move to Chicago and then he loaned me the
money – not very much – to buy Seymour’s Record Mart, which was a jazz
store in the Roosevelt U. Building on Wabash, near Congress. But I never
did get Paramount (Records) because his license deal with Riverside did
not have a term, so I wouldn’t be able to issue the Louis Armstrong’s
and the King Oliver’s – the stuff that Riverside had issued,” Koester
said. “And that deal is still enforced today. George Buck in New Orleans
owns the Paramount masters, but he can’t issue them.”
The Paramount hang-up turned out to be nothing more than a speed-bump
for Koester, nor did his aversion to the sounds of modern jazz turn into
a problem. Because he knew that in order to operate a successful jazz
record store, even though it wasn’t his favorite music at the time, he
was going to have to start selling modern jazz.
“My interest has been in traditional jazz and that’s continued. I’ve
always like the trad jazz more than the modern jazz,” he said. “That’s
why I recorded Art Hodes, the Salty Dogs, Albert Nicholas … and we
reunited the Dixie Stompers for a couple of sessions.”
And even though he wasn’t a huge fan of folk music back in the day,
Koester still decided to record Big Joe Williams, the King of the
9-String Guitar - with an eye squarely on that market.
“I wasn’t going to try and sell his record to black people – Trumpet had
tried that and not done too well – and VeeJay recorded him and didn’t
bother issuing more than one record, but in the liner notes to Piney
Woods Blues, I mention that my hopes are they’ll be an audience for
these blues records among the folk people, and with jazz fans who are
interested in the origins of jazz,” he said. “I think the name of our
series for that was Roots of Jazz, trying to make that tie-in. And by
the time I got that record issued (1958), the folk scene was happening
big. Back in the 50s, folk music was getting slammed by all the
right-wingers for being Communist propaganda, and so forth.”
Piney Woods Blues was the first release on Delmark Records, and its
initial success caught Koester a little bit off guard.
“I was surprised, but it sold 700 or 800 copies. And then we put out the
Speckled Red and it sold about 250 or 300 copies. And I thought the Red
would have been the bigger seller – I almost released it first,” he
said. “And had that happened, I might have been disappointed and might
not have issued the other for awhile.”
A lot was going on in Koester’s world in the early 1960s - he not only
found and recorded Sleepy John Estes, but at the same time, he was
forced to uproot his business and move it from Wabash to Grand Avenue.
“I recorded Sleepy John and then was having to move and open up a new
location and my business turned to zip. And that’s when I had to sell my
blues records,” said Koester. “I got $25 for one of my Robert Johnson’s.
Or that might have been one of Charley Patton’s on Paramount. And I
thought that was big money. But we were able to get the Estes record out
and that helped a lot. I think we shipped 1,700 copies. And that was
big-time.”
Koester also started to spend a considerable amount of time in the clubs
around Chicago and very soon became hip to the electric sound that was
starting to gather steam and turn people on in the 1960s.
“Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf had a lot to do with that – they knew how
to run a band. They were great singers and they were great band-leaders,
both of them,” Koester said. “They made their guys play together and not
fight each other for who was going to be the loudest.”
There was another happening young bluesman on the Windy City scene that
possessed a lot of the same qualities that Muddy and The Wolf were
blessed with.
Junior Wells.
“He was a singer, harmonica player and producer. Great on the stage. And
I thought, ‘People ought to hear this stuff - the way it sounds in a
club.’ So I brought Junior into the studio and told him to just play
like he did on stage, not to worry about running time or anything like
that,” said Koester. “And that’s what we did. In seven hours, we got a
nice album.”
Calling Hoodoo Man Blues a ‘nice album’ is like calling the Mona Lisa an
‘OK painting.’
Released in 1965, Hoodoo Man Blues has a spot reserved on the Mount
Rushmore of blues recordings and its impact on the blues genre, or
rock-n-roll for that matter, cannot be overstated. It is one of the most
important recordings of all time.
Koester’s forward-thinking approach let Wells and his band-mates do
their thing, showcasing just how powerful this new brand of electric
Chicago blues could be.
A key member of that seven-hour session was Wells’ guitarist, a
‘friendly chap,’ better known as Buddy Guy.
Not yet the icon and revered figure that he is today, Guy did have a
couple of sides of his own out on Chess Records at the time of the
Hoodoo Man taping.
“He (Buddy) was hoping to get seriously on board and he told me I’d
better call Leonard Chess and make sure it was OK for him to record,”
Koester said. “Leonard acted like he was under contract, but as we know
today, he didn’t have Muddy or Wolf or any of them under contract. But
he said, ‘OK, record the mother*#@. But, he doesn’t sing and you don’t
use his name.’ So that’s why ‘Friendly Chap’ appears on the earliest
7,000 first copies of that. A British kid that worked for me, Peter
Brown, said, ‘Well, if Buddy is a friend and a Guy is a chap, why don’t
we call him Friendly Chap?’”
The real kicker from those sessions?
“We had about 15 minutes of unissued music (including a duet between
Wells and Guy) that was essentially stolen – taped over by a band
rehearsing in the basement,” Koester said. “They were stealing records
from me, too. But I think they thought the tape was blank and they just
recorded over it.”
The album initially shipped 1,700 copies, but its appeal was not to be
denied.
Not by the blues-loving public and especially not by other record
companies.
“That had a lot to do with Sam Charters coming to Chicago to record that
anthology (Chicago/the Blues/ Today!) for Vanguard,” Koester said.
It took a few years for Koester to fully realize that he was standing at
ground zero of the electric blues movement the day that Hoodoo Man Blues
was given life at Sound Studios.
“Sales were good and the Vanguard series probably helped, but it took
ages before I realized that was the first time that a working Chicago
blues band had went into the studio to make an album,” he said. “And I
have to say working, because I, myself, presided over one of two
Prestige Records of Chicago blues bands, but these were not working
bands – these were pickup bands.”
Koester’s ‘hands-off’ approach in the studio always paid big dividends
for Delmark Records, giving each artist the freedom to create their
craft without fear of restrictions or guidelines, resulting in albums
that were true representations of what you would see if you went to a
club to watch the Chicago blues.
“My role was to keep the engineer from getting in the way,” he said.
“Most of the engineers we use understand that they’re also listeners.
The best engineers are musicians.”
Despite having a high-powered item like Hoodoo Man Blues in your
catalog, it can be a daunting proposition to keep a record label afloat.
Even a label with all the cache that Delmark has.
“Sales in the industry fall off about 95 percent after the first year
(of a release) and it can get worse. So if the artist will sell records
off the bandstand, that’s a major factor in our decision to record an
artist,” Koester said. “If a guy wants a record, but doesn’t want to
sell them, he probably won’t get recorded. A jazz artist damn sure won’t
get recorded. I hate that, because they are guys that I want to record,
but they won’t sell their records. After the first year, assuming he’s
working regularly, an artist can sell more records off the bandstand
than we could sell in the entire world.”
Even though the business of gathering masters and then re-releasing them
has been a major part of Delmark’s modus operandi the past several
decades, the label has certainly not turned its back on the cats that
are out there playing the blues today.
Witness releases by ‘newer’ artists like James Kinds and Toronzo Cannon
for proof. Highly-acclaimed releases, both of them.
“Well, I really feel like it’s more important to record people than it
is to acquire old masters, anyway,” Koester said. “I’d like to be able
to prove that the blues are not dying. Most of our releases these days
are stuff that we’ve recorded. We’ve pretty much exhausted the United
catalog. And we’ve got about one more good batch of Apollo stuff to
release.”
One thing Delmark has never been about is making a quick buck. While
that temptation has probably reared its head from time to time, Koester
and his label refuse to give in to the green demon.
“The main rule of jazz specialty recording companies has always been,
you’re not going to get your money back right away, like you would with
a hit. But you’re less likely to lose it all, too. A big percentage of
the pop records that get issued lose money for the company. And if they
spend a lot on promotion, they really lose money,” said Koester. “The
difference between jazz and pop is, pop tends to be disposable music.
It’s very easy to get into the record business, but it’s not so easy to
get out alive.”
Koester’s place in jazz and blues history is firmly cemented based
solely on what he’s done with Delmark and at the Jazz Record Mart.
But there’s also another Hall of Fame worthy accomplishment that he
needs to be noted for. He was an early boss, tutor, mentor and friend to
another couple of guys that have carved out their own space in the
annals of blues history – Bruce Iglauer and Michael Frank.
Before going on to form Alligator Records and Earwig Records
respectively, Iglauer and Frank both worked for Koester in the 1970s.
“Well, I think they both told me they wanted to start a label,” Koester
said. “So I told them – ‘Good. Let me help you.’ And I guess I gave them
a few pointers. Later on, they were the ones giving me the pointers.”
Koester’s influence doesn’t stop there with Iglauer and Frank, however.
That list also features: Chuck Nessa of Nessa Records and the
distribution company Master Takes; Jim O'Neal of Rooster Records and
Living Blues Magazine; and the late Bruce Kaplan of Flying Fish Records.
It’s amazing to think that all of those gentlemen at one time early in
their career were a part of either Delmark Records or the Jazz Record
Mart extended family.
“Yeah, we’ve given birth to a few jazz labels, too. But I think they
were going to be born whether they worked for Bob Koester or not,” he
said. “It’s a seduction.”
Koester’s role at both places has changed over the ensuing years; to the
point that now he’s almost taken on the position of CEO, turning over
the day-to-day chores of operation to his trusted aides.
“I’ve got good managers at both places. Steve Wagner pretty much runs
Delmark – he’s the engineer and handles the fine points of production.
He gets the cover designs together and I get to decide which one I like.
As for the store, Ron Bierma does a wonderful job of managing the
store,” Koester said. “And both managers know when to ask me and when to
just go ahead and do something. That’s the main thing you want in a
manager.” We’ve got a good staff, too. It’s a small group, but we all
get along.”
Koester, Delmark Records and the Jazz Record Mart have all seen their
share of slow times throughout the years.
From economic downturns to the changing tastes of music listeners,
through rising costs of shipping and production … even through the rise
and fall of disco … the three have all managed to stay the course. But
was there ever a time when Koester threw up his hands and screamed,
‘Enough is enough! I’m outta’ here!?
“No. It’s too much fun. I get to listen to all this music. If I go hear
a band, it’s tax deductable,” he said. “And I get in a lot of clubs for
nothing. I don’t drink, but I do drink water, so I’m a cheap date.”
And while it is way, way too early for Koester to ride off into the
sunset on his white horse, it’s not too early to remember the titan of
jazz and blues for his contributions to the history of recorded music.
“I’d like to be remembered by people buying the *&%#@ records,” he said.
“I have some hopes that when I’m gone, my family will continue running
the store with Ron. And I think it’s possible that Steve Wagner will end
up owning Delmark. I don’t know. I figure my wife will want to retire
one of these days. She’s the glue around here. I’m just at the sideline,
watching.”
He
sure didn’t do it because it was something that he wanted to do.
It’s
precisely that kind of desire to get the job done that has seen the
Kansas-based blues duo of Moreland and Arbuckle battle their way up the
ranks over the course of the last decade, never giving up, giving in or
throwing in the towel when things get tough.
That
work ethic has certainly paid dividends, and as of late, business has
certainly been booming for Moreland and Arbuckle.
Moreland,
too, has been turning heads as an accomplished guitarist for several
years now; weaving thick, chunky power chords into a delta blues
influenced tapestry. He’s also become known for his prowess on the cigar
box guitar, an instrument he got turned on to almost by accident.
The
next year, Moreland and Arbuckle took things a step farther and made it
all the way to the IBC finals.
John
Primer - Blues On Solid Ground
Omar
and The Howlers - I’m Gone
Mick
Clarke - The Rambunctious Blues Experiment
Killing
Floor - Rock ‘n’ Roll Gone Mad
Open
Blues – Piec Zlotych
The
Bluesmasters - Volume Two