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John P. Hammond (aka John Hammond Jr.), a blues guitarist and singer who was one of the first white American…
In honor of its 70th, Verve is releasing music by the legends, including Archie Shepp, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald.
(Photo: Courtesy Verve Records)With a catalog that boasts recordings by everyone from Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz to Diana Krall and Jon Batiste, Verve Records is celebrating its 70th anniversary by taking a yearlong victory lap. Whether it’s special album releases, a Nina Simone remix project or a very special one-time performance in New York’s Central Park, the venerated label founded by jazz impresario Norman Granz is celebrating in style.
“I think some people might say, ‘Oh, it’s not like it’s your 50th. And it’s not your 100th,’” said Jamie Krents, president and CEO of Verve Label Group. “But it’s a really good opportunity to dig into the legacy of the label.
“And that’s especially true with the way of the world and with social media,” he added during an interview conducted in late December. “In many ways, the value of a record label is to be a storyteller for our artists and for our catalog.
“And I think part of it is we have an obligation to remind people it’s the biggest jazz catalog. It’s also one of the oldest, and it’s one of the oldest American record labels that’s still functioning and thriving and making new records. So we wanted to use the 70th as a moment to take stock of that, and we’ve been very deliberate about what we’ll do.”
Cautioning that he didn’t want to sound like an infomercial, Krents highlighted the continued success of the label’s vinyl series. There’s Acoustic Sounds (“our audiophile quality series that we launched in 2020”), Verve Vault (which started last year as a mid-priced vinyl series) and the Verve Record Club, which also began last year and offers monthly limited edition releases to subscribers.
The anniversary offers an opportunity to open the vault with special releases such as a 1960 recording of the Oscar Peterson Trio (with Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen) at Detroit’s Baker’s Keyboard Lounge. “That was supposed to be a live record for Verve that never came out,” Krents revealed. “And now we have the chance to do it right. Dr. Peterson’s wife and his daughter, who are still living in Canada, are very onboard.”
There’s also a recording from a March 1957 Louis Armstrong concert at a high school auditorium in Illinois that will see the light of day sometime during the second half of this year. Captured at the start of the Civil Rights Movement, it features Pops at a time when he spoke out against Federal policies, Krents pointed out.
“We’re also going to do the Ella [Fitzgerald] Cole Porter songbook. It’s the first Ella recording for Verve, and it makes total sense: It’s an acknowledgement that this is Ella’s house,” he added. “Verve was founded as a label for the great Ella Fitzgerald. She couldn’t get a record deal that was fair or that she wanted. So Norm Granz, her manager, started it as an independent label. In fact, we still have the plaque from when she and Norman first opened Verve in 1956 sitting in our lobby. And it’s a continuum. An artist like Samara Joy is a very worthy new chapter to that level of jazz vocal greatness.”
“I’m immensely grateful to have the backing of such a historic label, known for the release of great music by even greater artists,” wrote Joy, in an email. “Some of the first Verve recordings I listened to were Pres And Teddy, featuring Lester Young and Teddy Wilson; The Genius Of Bud Powell; April In Paris by Count Basie and His Orchestra; and Ella Fitzgerald’s Mack The Knife.”
Though the lineup hasn’t been officially rolled out, Joy may be part of the Sept. 2 Verve SummerStage concert in Central Park. “We’re not allowed to announce it right now,” Krents said. “But it’s going to be a lot of the linchpin artists of the current roster with some special guests.”
The 70th anniversary will also see the return of the Verve Remixed series, which initially ran from 2002 to 2013. With tracks that eventually found heavy rotation in hotel lobbies and as public radio interstitial music, the compilations were co-produced by Dahlia Ambach Caplin, current senior vice president and head of A&R for the Verve Label Group.
Verve’s influence unexpectedly showed up in early January at the SFJAZZ Center during a concert by Chris Botti, who released three albums on its Verve Forecast sibling label at the start of his career. The trumpeter referenced five of the greatest tenor saxophonists in jazz history, and three — Wayne Shorter, Michael Brecker and Joe Henderson — had recorded for the label. And joining Botti on the front line were two other Verve alumni, tenor saxophonist/multi-reedist Chris Potter and guitarist Mark Whitfield.
“We’re just trying to put out and celebrate timeless music here, whether it was recorded in the ’50s or it’s being made now,” Krents concluded. DB
Hammond came to the blues through the folk boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which he experienced firsthand in New York’s Greenwich Village.
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