A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH BOB RUSCH


If Bob Rusch ran an internet start up, he would probably be a very wealthy man. He has that kind of dedication to his art and craft, something that isn't just sorely lacking in this day and age, but missing entirely. As the man behind Cadence Magazine, Rusch has seen his publication become the standard for avant-garde music. And where the big three, Downbeat, Jazziz, and Jazz Times, scramble to retool and reformat themselves to meet the demands of the MTV generation, Cadence has looked the same for as long as I can remember. Like the New Yorker, Cadence and its writers are well respected. But Rusch does not stop there. He is also the owner of Cadence Jazz Records and CIMP. And somewhere in there, Rusch still finds time in the day to run a successful distributor. So if he tells me something, I would listen. The guy has been doing it a long time. That means he doesn't do it for the money. We all know that there is no money in jazz. He does it because he loves it. I am honored to present to you, one of the most prominent figures in creative improvised music, unedited and in his own words.


FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.

BOB RUSCH: You know, Fred, I don't know how I got into it. I got turned onto Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, and by the time I was eleven years old. W. C. Handy was the first interview I ever did.


FJ: When you were eleven?

BOB RUSCH: Yeah, I was a precocious little kid. I was the kind of kid that would track them down and call them up. Whatever the fascination is, you see the fascination. You don't see the other aspects of it. I was going to Birdland as a very early teenager. I was ingratiating myself or hanging out with a lot of musicians, going to rehearsals, recording dates, and going to all the clubs, Birdland, Bohemia, and the old, original Five Spot. I found out later that all these people that I was hanging around with, a lot of them anyway, were junkies, but I never, never saw it. I never saw the drugs.


FJ: Is there one interview that stands out?

BOB RUSCH: It probably would be Mel Lewis. I interviewed Mel Lewis about a year before he died. He had had some cancer scare and between the time the interview as scheduled and he actually took it on, he had gone into getting radiation treatment again. He was not in great shape and he sat down for eight hours with only one break for a telephone call and maybe he got up once to go to the bathroom. He talked non-stop. He was extremely giving. It came close to a hundred thousand words. That interview stands out. Another interview that stands out was W. C. Handy because it was the first one. Some interviews stand out because they are so painfully horrible.


FJ: Any in particular?

BOB RUSCH: My interview with Eddie Gladden, I think most of the responsibility was on my part because I just didn't have the skills to draw him out or he just had nothing to say and it was a painful series of hours and I ended up with just nothing. I just could not get a handle, couldn't draw the guy out or anything. On the other hand, you get someone like Milt Hinton. I sat down with him for twenty minutes in an airport between flights or something and got more material than I got out of four hours with Eddie Gladden, and that is not to disrespect any of the participants. Some people talk more and also, quite frankly with somebody like Milt Hinton, not only was he loquacious, but he's got one hell of a lot of background. He always has been very outgoing.


FJ: How long have you been publishing Cadence?

BOB RUSCH: I started in January 1976.


FJ: How much of a struggle was it initially and has it gotten any easier?

BOB RUSCH: It was an extreme struggle. I said I was going to give it ten years. If after ten years it can't start taking care of us, we'll pack up our bags. And at about nine and a half years, it started to finally, the magazine and the various things to do with the magazine, we started to be able to cover some health benefits and stuff like that. For the first ten years, nobody got paid here, nobody. I didn't get paid. Nobody got paid. And now, although nobody gets paid anything what they are worth, we do make payroll and we cover health insurance for everybody so I feel pretty good about that.


FJ: Cadence is respected for its coverage of progressive music, was that your vision from the outset?

BOB RUSCH: The first issue was very broad. After about the third issue, my interest went almost completely to jazz and blues and over the years it has gotten to all improvised music. It was not necessarily progressive. I like good music. I like art, so while some music is enjoyable on certain levels, a lot of music is enjoyable the same way as a sculpture or painting.


FJ: I was in a used record store in Boston, a stone throw away from Berklee a couple of months ago and they had old issues of Cadence for sale and something struck me as unique in Cadence. Downbeat has just recently changed its format, as have Jazziz and Jazz Times, but for the most part, Cadence has remained the same.

BOB RUSCH: It has been our mandate. Our mandate has been to cover the scene. So whatever the scene is, if the scene changes, we change. Whereas the other magazines are going after special considerations and so therefore they have to tailor to whatever that demographic is. We look a little less homegrown, I suppose. You know what it is, Fred? When it comes to steering the ship, it is my vision. I'm just not creative in that way. I just say, "Give me the information. Put it out there. I don't need all this fancy stuff." I know what good music is. I just don't know what it is to be commercial. Our feeble attempts have been met with the same kind of silence as our non-efforts, so why waste time on it?


FJ: I know that you are hands on with the labels, but how hands on are you with the magazine?

BOB RUSCH: I read everything that goes into it. After twenty-five years, I have to be less hands on than I was because there are not enough time to do everything. We are a small group of people here. We have been doing this monthly for twenty-five years.


FJ: Let's touch on the label that spawned from the magazine and CIMP.

BOB RUSCH: The Cadence label started in 1982, I believe. It was a reluctant venture. Musician friends of mine were saying, "Why would you start a label? Everybody will hate you. Listeners will hate you. Musicians will hate you. No one will be happy." We put out what we thought was excellent music and it evolved over a period of time. It was a sounding board for the CIMP label, where all of the mistakes we made with Cadence, we tried to avoid with CIMP. CIMP and Cadence are two different labels. Cadence puts out music that can't seem to find a home. CIMP, Creative Improvised Music Project, the name itself actually is an indication of the evolving nature of my interests and I think where jazz is sort of going. CIMP is all originally produced by us. We pay advances, which is unheard of most of the time. The only reason anything comes out of CIMP is we think it has an artistic excellence to it. There is no concern whether it sells or not. We treat everybody the same that is basically on the label. It is not the greatest advance in the world, but it is far more than the industry, the business would suggest. Out of the first hundred, there has only been two that have covered their costs. That is not our concern. I'm not complaining because in the same way, it is the most satisfying, gratifying work I have ever done. People want to get heard, so they would gladly record for nothing. In fact, I have had musicians tell me, not only would they have done it for nothing, but they would have paid me. We realize we could have saved considerable amount of money by playing this game, but we just do it the way we are going to do it. We are unapologetic about it. If the record sells, we pay royalties. We usually don't own the sessions outright and we pay advances. People say, "Why do you do this if it doesn't make any money?" I say, "Well, do you like art? Do you like sculptures? Do you like anything?" They say, "Yes." I say, "Do you have a piece in your house that you may have paid more than it's worth per pound in plastic or metal or whatever it is?" They'll say, "Yes." "Well, when you come down in the morning and you look at that sculpture, do you say God damn it, you haven't made any money for me today." It gives back all the time to us. That is not to say that we don't want to sell it. We do want to sell it. We would like people to hear it. We want the musicians to be heard, some of them who are completely unknown and some of whom may never be recorded again. We would like the world to hear them. Frankly, there is nothing that pleases me more than when we get to the point where we send these guys a check. That is a really nice, satisfying thing.


FJ: Do you find that it is still a challenge?

BOB RUSCH: Oh, God, Fred. It's a challenge sometimes just not to be discouraged. That is sometimes a challenge. It is not a fair world so it is very easy to get jaded and green-eyed in this business because everything seems to happen to everybody else and no one pays attention to what you think is the most important thing in the world. You have got to remind yourself that all the work that I have done, whether it is Cadence Magazine or CIMP, I've done because I think it is important. I think that someday, somebody will look back at Cadence and for no other reason they will say, "Hey, here is a magazine that documented over forty thousand records. Most of these didn't get documented any place else. Here is a magazine that let musicians speak in an open forum with lengthy interviews." So I have to psych myself up that the work I'm doing will be important probably after I'm dead. We all have to kid ourselves in whatever we do and that is how I kid myself. As far as the CIMP work, they are successes when they come out. They are artistic successes. That is the criteria. We would love to sell them. But we don't want to be on our knees with compromises that would be insulting to the listener's ears or insulting to us as a business. If we don't sell these things and we lose money, that's fine. I will throw them in the ocean before I will devalue them.


FJ: How have Jazziz, Jazz Times, and Downbeat covered CIMP and Cadence material?

BOB RUSCH: It has been very interesting. Jazz Times has been pretty supportive. They have reviewed a lot of our material. We've been very appreciative. They have reproduced the covers and they have done things. Jazziz, which I would have expected nothing from, has been remarkable in that they have given us as much coverage as they have. They have been very fair. Of course, you can never have enough (laughing). It is amazing some of the stuff they cover. I sometimes wish that some of the people that were listening to this music were reading this magazine now, because they are not. The ones that are reading that magazine are not going to be listening to the kind of music that we are doing. Downbeat has been notable in its silence. I think it has reviewed three records from the CIMP series. We have sent them numerous copies, multiple copies and it has been very contentious with them. We have done a lot of advertising. We knew it would be a waste of time, but we felt we had to do it for a variety of reasons. We put a lot of it in Jazz Times because they worked with us, quite frankly.


FJ: What prompted you to form Cadence North Country, the distribution arm for countless labels?

BOB RUSCH: The magazine has a very open policy. Obviously, there is going to be a lot of stuff that is not mainstream and can not be found anywhere and when we started reviewing some of this stuff, we had readers start writing in wondering where could get it or where they could find the stuff. So we started to pick up some things from people. We had labels ask us to distribute their stuff. So one thing sort of led to another. The next I knew we were distributing. We are exemplary in that area. I pay all our labels for the whole box. We don't take it on consignment. We don't bullshit them around. We pay them. We do exactly what we will say we will do.


FJ: How many labels are you distributing now?

BOB RUSCH: Close to a thousand. And distribution is a time consuming, bloodsucking effort.


FJ: Is that the most difficult aspect of the three ventures?

BOB RUSCH: It is the least rewarding and the least interesting. It is a constant battle. You are battling for position in the industry. Sometimes it is discouraging.


FJ: Have you seen the audience for progressive improvised music getting younger?

BOB RUSCH: Yes.


FJ: What do you attribute that to?

BOB RUSCH: I'm getting older.


Fred Jung is Jazz Weekly's Editor-In-Chief and Interview Specialist. Comments?  Email Fred.