{"id":627,"date":"2004-04-15T10:34:35","date_gmt":"2004-04-15T17:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2004\/04\/all_jazzed_up\/"},"modified":"2019-09-03T10:13:35","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T14:13:35","slug":"all_jazzed_up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2004\/04\/all_jazzed_up.html","title":{"rendered":"ALL JAZZED UP"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine just got back from Japan. He’s a record producer, Bill Reed by name, who\u00a0has also published two books: “Hot\u00a0From Harlem,”<\/span><\/em><\/b><\/a> a history of black entertainment that profiles key\u00a0figures, and “Early\u00a0Plastic,”<\/span><\/em><\/b><\/a> a memoir of growing up in West Virginia and coming to\u00a0New York, where he landed in Greenwich Village and became a bookseller, jazz aficionado,\u00a0literateur and cin\u00e9aste.<\/p>\n

In the prologue to “Early Plastic,” Reed tells an anecdote about the title that underscores his\u00a0turn of mind:<\/p>\n

Nearly three decades ago an urban morality fable appeared in The New York Times about a\u00a0woman awaiting her turn on free appraisal day at Sotheby’s. Ahead of her stood dozens of others\u00a0also queued up and clutching the requisite mooseheads, kitschy paintings and antique snuff cans,\u00a0etc. from grandma’s attic. Unlike most of the others’ would-be treasures, however, hers was a\u00a0small one in the form of an unassuming piece of jewelry.<\/p>\n

Upon reaching the front of the line — which stretched out the door and part of the way down\u00a0New York’s Fifth Avenue — she proffered the item to the auction house official seated at the\u00a0table. He examined it for a second or two, then gasped, “But madame, this is plastic.”<\/p>\n

Without\u00a0missing so much as a beat (and as if any further proof were needed that hope does indeed spring\u00a0eternal in the human breast) the undaunted woman immediately, ingenuously, and hopefully\u00a0replied: “Early plastic?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anyway, Reed went to Japan mostly on business and sold a lot of masters, including the\u00a0Japanese re-issue of jazz singer Pinky Winters’ “Rain \u00a0Sometimes”<\/span><\/em><\/b><\/a>\u00a0with a four-record contract.<\/p>\n

“Pinky is so well known in Japan that her name opened doors for me everywhere,” says Reed,\u00a0who has known and recorded the 77-year-old Winters for many years. She’s my calling card.” The\u00a0cognoscenti know her as a singer’s singer<\/span><\/em><\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n

One door Winters’ name\u00a0opened was that of a 58-year-old Tokyo physician, whose Web site Reed had come across two\u00a0years ago. “Check out some of the stuff at the\u00a0site<\/span><\/em><\/b><\/a>,” he says. “It has not just the most valuable collection of\u00a0jazz LPs<\/span><\/em><\/b><\/a> I have ever seen, but also vintage hi-fi equipment, lallique,\u00a0Tiffany lamps, cacti, sports cars, cat fish, ceremonial tea sets (!), etc.”<\/p>\n

Before he left for Japan Reed decided he wanted to meet the physician. So he sent an email\u00a0and dropped Pinky Winters’ name: “I am her producer.” “Dr. Takeshi Mikami wrote back\u00a0immediately: ‘Pinky Winters is my favorite singer,'” Reed says. “Soooo hip.”<\/p>\n

There could have been a hitch. You know how weird collectors can be. Would someone like\u00a0Quasimodo come to the door with drool coming out of his mouth over a battery-operated record\u00a0player and two old Perry Como records? Could his email correspondent have been a fabricated\u00a0cyber identity?<\/p>\n

On the contrary, Dr. Mikami turned out to be eminently sane, “a dear, sweet, gentleman with\u00a0five children, all of whom are also doctors,” Reed says. The good doctor invited him to be his\u00a0guest for an afternoon. “It was a truly mind-blowing experience. I even got a chance to listen to\u00a0‘Rain Sometimes’ on Dr. Mikami’s high HIGH end speaker system in one of several listening\u00a0rooms above his clinic.”<\/p>\n

Also mind-blowing, Reed says, is Japan’s top 10 list: “It’s remarkably stylistically diverse. A\u00a0vocal version of the Jupiter movement from Holst’s ‘The Planets’ was recently the No. 1 song.\u00a0That’s one result of ongoing musical literacy in that country. They still have music classes at every\u00a0grade level and nearly everyone there can navigate at least one instrument. Which brings to mind\u00a0what the great jazz drummer Max Roach recently (slyly and diplomatically) remarked re: rap:\u00a0‘People who voted for defunding of music education programs in public schools are getting what
\nthey paid for.'”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine just got back from Japan. He’s a record producer, Bill Reed by name, who\u00a0has also published two books: “Hot\u00a0From Harlem,” a history of black entertainment that profiles key\u00a0figures, and “Early\u00a0Plastic,” a memoir of growing up in West Virginia and coming to\u00a0New York, where he landed in Greenwich Village and became a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-a7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36032,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions\/36032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}