Legacy Recordings

When I heard that we were going to be focusing our marketing efforts on a special re-issue of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (the world’s biggest selling album of all time), I knew we needed to do something special in the podcast world. This album truly has affected EVERYONE. I also noticed that whenever I mentioned this to people, they all had stories of growing up hearing the album, running home to watch the videos, etc.

So, in the beginning of January, Joe Vella (who produces a lot of our podcasts) and I came up with a concept: What if we ask musicians, celebrities, and cultural icons what THEIR first experience with Thriller was? and Thrillercast was born.

It has taken a lot of hard work and a lot of coordination with artist managers, publicists and label people (thanks to everyone who’s helped make it happen, and a special thanks to Thuy-An Julien for helping us get access to so many of the stars you will hear), but we think the 40-episode result is well worth it.

You can listen to the first episode starting today, as Daryl “DMC” McDaniels shares his stories of meeting Michael at the Grammys. The podcasts are completely free of charge. They will be available on all podcast providers, as well as directly ia http://www.michaeljackson.com/podcast. The series will be updated with a new episode each week throughout the year.

Please feel free to leave your feedback attached to this post, I look forward to hearing what you have to say about it. We’re really proud of our work and expect it to be one of the biggest podcasts in history!

In August 2005, Legacy producer Leo Sacks was sitting in a pizza parlor in midtown Manhattan, watching the surging floodwaters swallow New Orleans.

As the extent of the calamity became clear, Leo told his friend Andy Kowalczyk: “We need to start the healing; we need to make a record right away.”

Andy, a financier with a musician’s heart, agreed. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Their favorite street paraders, piano ticklers, trumpeters, rhythm-and-blues singers, Mardi Gras Indians and funkateers were scattered to the four winds. “I felt helpless to care for the people and the city that I love,” Leo says today.

But five weeks later these musical healers gathered in Austin to heal themselves. Christened The New Orleans Social Club, they made, over seven 20-hour days, the triumphant Sing Me Back Home (Burgundy/Honey Darling 2006).

“A treatise in great American music,” wrote The Boston Globe. “An awe-inspiring display of life-affirming power,” The Philadelphia Inquirer said. “Catharsis never sounded cooler,” offered Entertainment Weekly.

Leo recently returned from New Orleans where he is filming a documentary about the murdered New Orleans gospel legend Raymond Myles, tentatively titled A Taste of Heaven: The Heartbreak Life of Raymond Myles, Gospel Genius of New Orleans; here he shares some recollections about the making of Sing Me Back Home.

* * * *

From the diaspora of musical genius, we found Ivan Neville and Henry Butler, who share in their fingertips the history of Crescent City piano. We found those Sultans of Syncopation, bassist George Porter, Jr. and guitarist Leo Nocentelli, founding members of The Meters who know how to keep time in the dark. And we found the irrepressible drummer Raymond Weber, whose spirit is as strong as his heart is gentle. Raymond doesn’t need a watch to keep time either.

They wondered whether they would ever go home — or would want to go home again. For some it was a test of faith. Others saw it as opportunity to reaffirm their trust in the wisdom of the Universe.

Cutting live in the studio with nominal overdubs, the sessions became a testament to hope and the human spirit. We set up shop in a deep-dyed, down home studio on a lonely trip of asphalt called Wire Recording. Everyone gladly savored mundane pleasures: eating barbeque, playing ping pong, watching TV. There were homey touches, too, like the Christmas lights strung up over the vocal booth, but most importantly the endangered MCI analog tape machine that made the music sound raw and real. This sublimely funky setup thrilled our sonic skipper and co-producer, the wizardly Ray Bardani. “Old school!” he exclaimed to our host, Wire’s gracious owner Stuart Sullivan.

And when the tape rolled, the musicians rolled, too. They channeled their rage and fear and frustration, their heartbreak and heartache, their defiance and devotion — their vulnerability — into a celebration of The Old Neighborhood.

The healing came slowly, like an unspooling film, in snapshots, one frame at a time. Mac Rebennack couldn’t come to Austin but was happy to play his part as Dr. John on “Walking To New Orleans” – joining the session from New York. “You got all my fellas,” Mac said on the speaker phone. “Y’all know what to do.”

Plopping a plate of paprika-spiked fried chicken on his Hammond organ, Ivan Neville was determined to find a greasy vibe that would bring John Fogerty’s ageless anti-war anthem, “Fortunate Son,” down to where it needed to be. Listening back to that Hammond humming, George Porter blurted out, “Wat’cha gonna do with the money?!” Everyone knew who he was talking to, in Washington and down river in New Orleans. “That’s rollin’!” Ivan said, hollering like the Saints had just won the Super Bowl.

Ivan’s uncle Cyril sang about what so many of us refused to see until the storm clouds disappeared: what it truly means to be poor in black Orleans. Pouring his heartache and fury into “This Is My Country,” one of Curtis Mayfield’s most heartfelt prayers for social equality, Cyril deftly turned the song into an exile’s patriotic lament. “Those words from Curtis could have been written yesterday,” he said, biting into a piece of chocolate cake on his 57th birthday.

We asked Troy (Trombone Shorty) Andrews, fresh from a world tour as a featured soloist with Lenny Kravitz, how he wanted to sound on “Hey Troy, Your Mama’s Callin’ You.” “Bone dry,” he said. “But first I have to have some Popeye’s.” He dipped a biscuit into a bowl of red beans and rice, then closed his eyes, cocked his head and cut two cold-blooded solos — first on trombone, then, for a just response, on trumpet. The solos wrapped around each other like grandmas’ hands in prayer.

“After the storm, I didn’t even want to play,” Shorty said. “Now I feel like a musician again.”

Our beloved Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief Joseph Pierre (Monk) Boudreaux appeared in a floppy white tennis hat with his tambourine, looking like an apparition — and he almost might have been. “People said I got drowned in my house,” he said. His eyes were sad but he was grinning like a cocoa cat who had just cheated death. I wanted to play his card wild.

“Whaddya wanna do?” I asked, so he started to sing: “Why you wanna chase me from my hometown…”

Monk loves his Bobs — Marley and Dylan; it was only natural to attach a reggae groove. Cradling his battle-weary bass guitar, Porter called out the changes – you can hear them on the tape — and Monk’s poem about salvation, became a meditation on redemption.

Time had transformed the melody to “Loving You Is On My Mind,” a gorgeous instrumental that Leo Nocentelli composed for the Meters’ 1975 album Rejuvenation — it was now a poignant love letter to New Orleans. A portrait in cool in a Negro Leagues baseball jersey, a black beret and wraparound shades, Leo raised his arms in triumph, like Muhammad Ali. In that moment we knew he felt a tender reprieve from the sorrow that lay heavy in his heart.

Because in that moment we knew he wasn’t worrying about his home in Burbank, strained at the seams with fortune’s castaways –15 family members from New Orleans.

Some fine street paraders (Jeffrey Hills, Keith Frazier, Corey Henry) brought their borrowed instruments (tuba, bass drum, trombone) from Houston and marched to the beat of a medley built around “Jesus On The Mainline.” As they poured into the living room to celebrate their joyful noise with saxophonist Charles Neville, we found Henry Butler in the piano room, a portrait in solitude.

The room was situated apart from the main studio, so the band watched him on a monitor, this blind man blessed with infinite vision, as if he were a distant presence that they were keeping near to their hearts. Henry put his hand on my left shoulder and we walked to the vocal booth. I held my breath as he brought new meaning to “Somewhere,” from West Side Story. Henry had lost his home.

“But I survived,” he said.

Looking smooth as a star in a powder blue velour track suit and designer sunglasses, Deacon Joseph Carter, Jr., of the Mighty Chariots of Fire showered his volcano of a voice over the unbreakable beat of “99 1/2 Won’t Do.” “You got to make a hundred,” he screamed with divine inspiration, like a young Wilson Pickett. “Yes, sir!,” a worshipful Mister Leslie Sims, Jr., said, on his own walk to Jerusalem.

Soul Queen Irma Thomas bravely carried her own rugged cross all the way from her temporary home in Baton Rouge. She was a teenaged mother when she recorded “Look Up” in 1960, and she made no apologies because she asked for a lyric sheet. “I’m sorry, honey,” Irma said, “but I don’t remember the words.” With her kindred spirit Marcia Ball at the piano to guide her, Irma slipped back in time but never out of character: “Spot that silver lining/follow it till it’s through…”

The roots-rocking subdudes rolled into town, eager to roll tape: they had been road-testing a new arrangement of Earl King’s “Make A Better World” and were anxious to make him proud. Tommy Malone played guitar and sang with sass and swagger, and when Steve Amadee, Tim Cook, John Magnie and Jimmy Messa pitched in their gospel harmonies, their voices blended like a robust roux.

We could taste the hot sauce when Willie Tee arrived.
A kingpin of Crescent City pop and soul, a protégé of Cannonball Adderley and the mastermind of The Wild Magnolias’ Mardi Gras Indian music, Willie’s home, on the southern edge of Lake Ponchatrain near the breached 17th Street levee, had been swallowed up by eight feet of nasty water. The storm had brought him to Princeton University as an artist in residence, but his term was coming to a close and he was facing some tough choices:

Should he rebuild? Could he afford to? Would the future be friendly? Where should he live in the meantime?

Seizing the moment, Willie broke out a new version of “First Taste of Hurt,” a slice of ferocious funk he recorded with the revolutionary Gaturs in 1968. “Who were we to know/We did not have the wisdom/And now is not the time to question the decision…”

“I guess home is in your heart,” Willie said later, “wherever that is.” He died this fall, at age 63, of colon cancer, but it might as well have been of a broken heart.

Ultimately, John Boutte, a scion of the city’s renowned Boutte family, captured everyone’s mood with a wrenching version of Annie Lennox’s “Why.”

“I just want you guys to know,” he said, touching his throat, “I didn’t smoke at all today.”

And so the sojourners rebuilt The Old Neighborhood. They came together to find continuity and healing and rediscovered the gentle comforts of home. We were excited when Burgundy Records embraced the project. No one was getting rich, but there was a shared sense of purpose that gave the sessions the feeling of a mission. This was a labor of love that put some money in the players’ pockets and would benefit, after expenses, the Salvation Army and the LSU Health Services Center, which runs a clinic for New Orleans musicians.

The reviews certainly were gratifying; the members of the Social Club even taped an episode of the venerable PBS series, Austin City Limits. But they never anticipated the chilling phenomenon that may have cancelled out all the great reviews and prevented Sing Me Back Home from reaching a wider audience. It was the cruel, all too human reality that came to be known as “Katrina fatigue.”

Influential tastemakers at radio and retail, it seems, had determined that America’s appetite for the music of New Orleans had been satisfied before our record was released. The public, they presumed, was stuffed — like an oversized po’boy — on the sounds of the Crescent City.

And now here we are, two and a half years later. Countless lives are still in storm-tossed transition; the demolition of thousands of low-income homes abandoned since the storm has begun. Clarence (Frogman) Henry’s “Ain’t Got No Home” still resonates with the legion of the displaced, and that, to paraphrase Fats Domino, is indeed a damn shame. For all of us.

Classic with a twist or twisted classical?

One of the first things that I remember from when I started at Legacy was the main conference room. It was a large room with blue walls, a big table in the center and lots of chairs. Each wall had a collection of framed, black and white photos. The photos were of iconic artists that had recorded with Sony BMG. It was really quite stunning.

From the 1950’s through the 1980’s, both Columbia and RCA had staff photographers. These employees were responsible for shooting press shots, album packaging, live shows, etc. Their photos were used in a variety of ways. Many were published in the likes of Rolling Stone, New York Times, Billboard, etc. Others, for one reason or another, were stored in the archives and never published. For years, people asked how they could obtain prints of these phenomenal photos, but unfortunately, prior to the Internet, we had no easy way to process these requests nor take orders.

Last year we began a pilot called ICON Collectibles. It was a test designed to measure interest in artist memorabilia and artist photos. Along with several memorabilia auctions, we launched a fine art print store with select photos of Bob Dylan, Miles Davis and Glenn Gould. The response was so great that last week we finally made available a handful of additional artist photos. We now also have photos of Jaco Pastorius, Billie Holiday, Sly & the Family Stone, Johnny Cash, and Charles Mingus. These are museum-quality fine art prints, which are printed individually on premium, fiber-based archival paper. Certain limited edition prints are even signed by the photographer and numbered.

I’ve already chosen which ones I want in my apartment.

Two great Miles Davis stories. I am not sure these stories were for repeating, but nobody said not to tell anyone.

The first one I heard was from Carlos Santana (really, that’s a long story in itself):

Miles and Carlos were playing together at a show and Carlos was meditating. As he describes it, his eyes are closed, and he is centering himself, and yet he can feel Miles’ eyes boring into him.

Miles – Are you praying?

Carlos – Yes

Miles – I pray sometimes…

Carlos – Really?

Miles – Yeah, when I want some coke…I pray that the motherfucker is home.

The other story is from legendary rock photographer Jim Marshall, who asked Miles once why he was playing a green trumpet. To which Miles answered “I don’t ask you why you have a fucking black camera.”

Just when you thought today’s youth no longer cared about great music, a young Japanese organ player shows us how it’s done.

Yet another example of how great music is timeless and truly universal.

Who doesn’t love Neil Diamond? I grew up thinking I was named after a bittersweet Jessi Colter song, while my sister was named after the fabulous uplifting sing-a-long that is “Sweet Caroline.” I’ve had issues ever since.

We are finally getting to work on his catalog, around his new set due out the end of April. We meet today to decide which titles this initiative will comprise, based on Neil’s own vision of the restoration of his legacy. (With the exception of In My Lifetime, his catalog has never been re-mastered from the original tapes – we have a lot of exciting work ahead of us). Time to start digging for photos, liner notes (Who are the Neil Diamond writers?), ephemera (I am told Neil keeps notebooks for virtually every song he has written), etc.

And I hear is going to tour this year - big time. I’m so there.

Speaking of thrills, check out my friend Roy’s record collection. These are just his 45’s! His CDs are on another shelf not in this photograph. Post me you freak music collector photo and I will send you a handful of CDs to help your shelves buckle.

You know we’re missing the writers when ABC’s first coming attraction for the new season of Lost sends us into a frenzy of excitement – like kids counting down to Christmas. I have been thinking about this all week and making my plans to launch another addictive season of improbable intrigue and patchy acting.

Television series, films, and concerts have “event” status – and it got me wondering about recorded music. When was the last time you counted down to release day for something? Are we still psyched? I am not talking about merely buying an album the first week it is out, I am talking about feverishly waiting for that new release to hit the shelves - or the internet.  (Coincidentally, I have just this moment spotted a new Michael Jackson widget on the Legacy home page that counts down to the 25^th Anniversary Edition of Thriller)  First week sales of number one chart albums have been on the decline. Is it the caliber of artists? Is it a more diversified fan base – the Long Tail?

It’s not really about mass sales, it’s about individual thrill – is that consumer waiting for the album all the way at the end of the tail eagerly waiting for the Tuesday his or her niche record out? I hope so.  

So we’re into another new year. They keep on coming. And with it, a fresh start. Resolve. Optimism. And, though anxiety still fills the halls of SonyBMG, the company that’s home to the label I call home, I’m still feeling at least partially rejuvenated from the holiday break, more motivated in the fleeting afterglow of a year Legacy managed to defy the odds and actually more than hold it’s own, and hopeful that this is the year that we as a label, as a company, as an industry, stop the bleeding and find the new shape and scope that will be our next beginning. Do I know how we’ll do that? Do I have the “vision?” Man, you think I’d be sitting here writing this at this hour of the night if I did? Sorry.

But, corny as it is, what I have is this: I have faith in the music. And I have faith in the men and women here at Legacy who have faith in the music. I have faith in the men and women at the other labels here and around the industry who haven’t forgotten that music - no matter how we choose to enjoy it - still matters and can and should still come first. And let me tell you something - though we’re pretty beaten up, there are still a lot of us. Sure, there are those around still driven by their egos, still hanging on as long as they can before their bottom falls out. But you know what? There are a whole bunch of folks who can’t wax romantic for the 999th time about the wild convention in Bora Bora (there are plenty of others who can, but chose not to). There are a whole bunch of folks who, as one younger member of the Legacy family succinctly put it: “don’t remember ‘the good old days’”. As he said, “THESE are the good old days.” I wanted to kiss him for his perspective. He’s right.

These days ARE good. Well, maybe it’s more honest to say there are more good days here than one familiar with the music business in 2008 might believe. There’s so much great music out there and more and more legitimate and compelling ways to discover and enjoy it. And at Legacy, we’re offering our share. See for yourself: just before Christmas will i.am and Michael Jackson went into the studio and emerged with new versions of tracks for our 25th Anniversary Edition of Thriller that’s a blast. We finally managed to find our way to releasing the cache of Johnny Cash Television shows on CD and DVD and will continue to do more in the coming year. We got to work with artists like Son Volt and Derek Trucks, among others. We’re working on a Legacy Edition of Carole King’s “Tapestry” and Billy Joel’s “The Stranger,” in both cases having unearthed live performances from the period that are so spectacular that they’re hard to step away from. Literally. And there’s so much more done and doing - the incomparable Philadelphia International Records label catalog (when Mr. Gamble speaks we all need to listen. When Mr. HUFF speaks, we REALLY all need to listen!), Dennis Wilson’s mythical “Pacific Ocean Blue”, The Clash, Santana, Jeff Buckley, Common’s early stuff, The Foos’ “The Colour and the Shape”, Neil Diamond’s Bang Recordings, Miles…the list goes on and on and on. These days ARE good. Yes, there’s darkness, but there’s also light. Lots of it.

And so we’re into another new year. Maybe this will be the one. And maybe it won’t be. One thing I can tell you for sure though is that no matter what, we are going to keep doing the best we can for our artists and their music and their fans. I’m going to try not to let the bullshit get me or mine down. And I’m going to remind myself from time to time of something Taj Mahal once said to me during a conversation that I instantly recognized as one to cherish: Of the industry and company and selfish executives and the hating media, he said, simply and with a knowing grin, “hey man, you knew this train was going to Shanghai when you got on it.”

I’ve told that story now for the 999th time. And I just may never tell it again. With any luck, some day soon I won’t have to.