Debut Records - Part 4

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In 1997, Fantasy Records followed the 1990 release of the 12 CD Debut Records Boxed set with a more affordable 4 CD set - Debut Records, 4 DCD-4420-2].

The booklet notes were written by the esteemed Jazz author and critic, Dan Morgenstern. 

In the interest of presenting as much background from the Jazz literature as possible on Debut Records, its principals, history and music, the introduction to the booklet notes to the 4CD set are produced below followed by Harvey Pekar’a review of the set which appeared in the October 30 - Nov. 5, 1997 issue of Metro.

Dan Morgenstern

“The Debut story is, first of all, a fascinating chapter in the life of Charles Mingus, the label's co-founder and guiding spirit. (His partners were his wife Celia, Max Roach, and Roach's friend Margo Ferraci.) In 1952, it was an audacious move for jazz musicians to form their own label. There were scant precedents: clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow started his King Jazz label in 1945; it lasted a couple of years and was almost entirely devoted to Mezz's collaborations with Sidney Bechet. Bassist Al Hall's Wax imprint was next; it was born in 1946 and folded three years later.

Debut's five-year lifespan was considerably longer. One of its advantages was that the advent of the LP improved the marketability of recorded jazz; the other was the imagination and commitment that Mingus and his associates brought to the label. The breadth and scope of the Debut catalog was most impressive, and while the co-founders (and Mingus in particular) participated in the bulk of the recordings, this was by no means a two-man show.

The Debut sessions in which Mingus participated as a player have been fully documented in Fantasy's 12-CD boxed set Charles Mingus: The Complete Debut Recordings (issued in 1990), and I'm much indebted to Ira Gitler's excellent annotation to that set — especially his history of the label. This new compilation also takes into its purview sessions on which the great bassist-composer-arranger did not play.

When Debut was founded, Mingus was in a temporary hiatus from music. He had left the Red Norvo Trio not long after his marriage to Celia, settled in New York, and gone to work (as had his father) for the post office. Of course, he didn't stop writing, thinking, and even occasionally playing music. And then came the Debut idea.

"Originally," Celia Mingus Zaentz told Gitler, "there were two jazz fans who wanted to be part of it, but ultimately they declined and Mingus just made up the money. It was Max Roach and his girlfriend and Mingus and I. And my mother gave me a little bit of money. That's why we didn't need anyone else. We started with practically nothing. You know how little it cost to make a session in those days. And one of those jazz fans did give it the name of Debut — Larry Suttlehan."

In any event, it was Celia who wound up taking care of most of the company's business. "Mingus was great at getting an idea," she recalled, "like when he said to me, 'We'll start a recording company,' like he knew how to go about recording. And he said to me, 'And you find out how to run a record company'

And I did it. It was a wonderful experience because how do you start a record company? It isn't just making the sessions. It's how do you make a label? How do you make an album? Who presses it? What does it cost? Who distributes the records? How do you deal with them? How do you get your money?"

As Roach recalled, "I was on the road, working. Celia and Mingus manned the store, so to speak." And pianist Mal Waldron, a member of the Mingus Jazz Workshop (a concept that evolved during the Debut years), remembered a time "when we were all working in the Debut office. We were putting records in boxes to send them off. That was a way to supplement our income because we weren't making too many gigs."

Debut took wing with the release of the first of the 10-inch LPs devoted to the now-legendary "Jazz at Massey Hall" concert. Though the recording of this event — as it turned out, the last at which the co-creators of bebop, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, were captured together by a recording device — at first was offered to Norman Granz by Mingus and Roach (Parker was then under contract to Granz), issuing the music on Debut was a boon to the fledgling enterprise. (Parker had to be billed as "Charlie Chan," but nobody was fooled by that pseudonym.)

Among other things, the Massey Hall LPs, alongside Granz's "Jazz at the Philharmonic" output, were milestones in the annals of "live" jazz recording, and spurred by their success, Debut followed up with the 4 Trombones LP, recorded at Brooklyn's Putnam Central Club, and later, Mingus at the Bohemia, the first of many Mingus-led non-studio dates.

Debut was true to its name. It issued first leader recordings by Roach, Kenny Dorham, Paul Bley, Thad Jones, Sam Most, Jimmy Knepper, Ada Moore, Alonzo (Lonnie) Levister, Teo Macero and John LaPorta, and among notables who made their first sideman appearance on records for Debut were Walter Davis, Jr. and Hank Mobley. Quite a track record! And the music covered the spectrum, from straight-ahead to experimental. Unlike other independent jazz labels, Debut had no special niche within the music, but seemed open to everything that caught the fancy of Mingus's big ears.

Helpful, too, was an early association with the fertile European jazz market. Mingus leased a portion of the catalog to a Danish enterprise, authorizing them to use the Debut imprint. Yet things were never rosy for the label. Independent record operations — to this day, though things have improved

quite a bit — have problems with proper promotion, distribution, and, especially, collecting from the distributors. As Roach recalled, "Mingus and I were still involved with our musical careers. You had to lead a band, and compose and perform, and also run up to Boston to deal with distributors; or go down to the docks here in New York and see your records sitting there because you hadn't made the right connections with the unions to ship your stuff to Europe. Just a number of things that befall small businesses. It was too much. Celia perhaps had more problems than any of us. She had to live with it."

Further, the marriage of Mingus and Celia was winding down, though they were to remain good friends. In fact, the survival of the Debut catalog, intact and under one roof, was due to Celia's post-Mingus life. She moved to California, and went to work for Saul Zaentz, who was then sales manager for Fantasy Records and eventually became the label's owner and Celia's husband. Much of the music issued on Debut — and some that hadn't been issued before  —was kept alive under the Fantasy roof, and here is another reincarnation, including a good deal of rare stuff reissued for the very first time.

It stands up well. As Roach summed up to Ira Gitler: "Debut Records served as a springboard for both Mingus and myself and some of the other artists to sign with major labels. And Debut recorded some of the most interesting people, musicians who are now really just legends in their own time." One of those, Paul Bley, is among the very, very few musicians who've attempted running labels of their own — his was called Improvising Artists, and survived, true to form, for just a few years. Debut stands alone as a musician-operated jazz label of more than footnote consequence in the annals of this great music.”

A new reissue chronicles Debut Records' jazz highlights of the 1950s

By Harvey Pekar

“DEBUT RECORDS was one of the first record labels owned by musicians-and not just any musicians, but jazz legends bassist Charlie Mingus and drummer Max Roach, who established Debut in 1952. Some of the best of their seminal recordings from the five years the label existed have been recently reissued by Fantasy as a four-CD set titled The Debut Records Story.

Mingus played a more active role in the operation than Roach did and, more than anyone else, was responsible for building Debut's unique and superb catalog. Much of the music here could be labeled "third stream," although that term was coined several years after Debut was founded. Musicians in the "third-stream" movement synthesized jazz and classical genres. Many of the wonderful recordings of the movement have been neglected, but they remain as fresh today as ever.

There are also a number of outstanding bop and postbop selections on The Debut Records Story, including one of the most storied live jazz concert recordings of all time: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Roach and Mingus performing as a quintet at Toronto's Massey Hall in 1953. Some privately recorded sessions from the late '40s by Parker groups also turn up on the collection, along with important early postbop tracks by the combos of Kenny Dorham, Roach and Oscar Pettiford.

Some of the groups Debut recorded featured unusual instrumentation, such as one containing four trombones (including J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding) and a rhythm section, and a Miles Davis quintet that used a trombonist (Britt Woodman) and a vibist (Teddy Charles) instead of a saxophonist and a pianist. Mingus, however, came to the fore as an avant-garde composer/arranger bassist, and not surprisingly, this side of him was well represented on Debut, where he was free to create without the constraints of other producers. Mingus had demonstrated his classical influences and advanced thinking in the 1940s with Lionel Hampton and on a few of his own 78s. At Debut, he had free reign and, happily, gave it to the other musicians he recorded as well.

Among the first selections Mingus cut were "Extrasensory Perception" and "Portrait" by a quintet including alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and pianist Phyllis Pinkerton, both disciples of the great Lennie Tristano, who founded a school of modern jazz that was an alternative to bop in the 1940s. Tristano was actually the recording engineer for these two provocative tracks, on which a cellist also appears. "Portrait" and "Paris in Blue" also feature Jackie Paris' poignant, melancholy vocals.

Mingus opened the door for many superb, innovative musicians. Among those making appearances early in their careers on Debut were John LaPorta, Thad Jones, Shaft Hadi, Teo Macero, Paul Bley, Tal Farlow, Jimmy Knepper, Dannie Richmond, Bob Dorough, Hank Mobley and Mal Waldron.

A particular favorite of mine is pianist John Dennis, who died in 1963 at the age of 33. On the basis of his only two recordings, both cut for Debut, a trio and unaccompanied solo date on which he was the leader, and as a sideman with Thad Jones, I'd call him a great musician. His "Variegations" is one of the first recorded free-jazz performances, and he demonstrates tremendous technique and a good deal of melodic imaginativeness.

Much of the material on this set is taken from in-print Fantasy discs, but some important Debut albums by, among others, Alonzo Levister and LaPorta have not been re-released in their entirety by Fantasy. With luck, they too will be repackaged, so that we can complete the Debut story.”

From the Oct. 30-Nov. 5, 1997 issue of Metro.

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