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Milt Gabler was born in Harlem, May 20, 1911, the eldest of six
children. He said he fell in love with jazz at a dance at Silver
Beach in the Bronx in the late 20's or early thirties. He worked for
his father at a hardware store on 42nd Street while a student at
Stuyvesant H.S. He talked his father into installing a record
department in his radio shop which quickly became the Commodore Music
Shop, the first jazz specialist store.
Circa 1933, at the bottom of the depression, he had reissued a few
Jack Teagarden items from the old ARC* dime store labels on the
Commodore label. He also ordered special re-pressings of out-of-print
Vocallion records by Pinetop Smith, Romeo Nelson, etc. When ARC
pressed beyond his special-orders for sale to Commodore's
competitiors, he started the UHCA label. UHCA meant United Hot Clubs
of America, which really didn't exist (but was a good idea). UHCA
eventually went beyond re-issuing jazz classics from Paramount,
Gennett, Okeh, Columbia, etc. to unearthing valuable unissued
material by early jazz masters.
When ARC discontinued the Okeh label in 1935, Gabler bought most of
the inventory for a dime each (which many years later resulted in his
being saluted as a Man of Distinction in a beautiful whiskey ad with
a mint Bix Okeh 78.). You could still buy such items across the
counter at the Commodore in the 40's.
The N.Y.Times obit reminds us that Gabler was famous for
"talking customers out of spending more mponey for records than he
thought they could afford." I recall a very old article about him
where the guy on the customer side of this kind of advice was the
Prince of Wales, a very hip royal for whom a 20's jazz standard was
named.
On January 17, 1938, Eddie Condon led a contingent of great jazzmen
into the Brunswick studio where Bobby Hackett, Geprge Brunies, Pee
Wee Russell, Bud Freeman, Jess Stacy, Artie Shapiro and Gerge
Wettling cut the first records soon to be released on the Commodore
label.
A few months later Jack Teagarden replaced Brunis for another
session. Other sessions led by Freeman, Stacy followed, including a
comedy record featuring Evertt Sloane, Bud Freeman and Minerva Pious
(Mrs. Nussbaum of the Fred Allen radio show) parodying Noel Coward's
Private Lives. It was called Private Jives.
The oft-repeated formula for a jazz label is expressed in a Bud
Freeman original, "Tappin' The Commodore Till". Several record stores
had issued material from Broadway shows on labels such as Liberty
Music Shop, Rabson's, etc. (They had a particular liking for Lee
Wiley's vocals and frequently used great jazzmen such as Stacy,
Freeman, Fats Waller and Joe Bushkin, etc. as accompanists) But
Commodore concentrated strictly on hot jazz, tho they eventually
succumbed to Lee Wiley's vocal charms. Soon HRS (Hot Record Shop),
Musicraft, Keynote, and eventually Wax, Prestige and Riverside had
their beginning in a retail location. Jazz Man & Dial on the West
Coast, Seymour's in Chicago and Delmark in St.Louis followed
suit.
But don't get the idea that Commodore was strictly a trad label.
Listen to the Mel Powell material (including Benny Goodman aka
Shoeless Joe Jackson), the wonderful Lester Young KC5 &6 sessions
(inaugurated with another purchase from Vocallion), the Coleman
Hawkins, Sidney Bechet, deParis Brothers. Ben Webster, Edmund Hall,
Teddy Wilson, Hot Lips Page (with Don Byas) and the brace of Willie"
The Lion" Smith albums indicate the breadth of his interest,
stretching the minds of those who only listen to "dixieland" and
hopefully indicating that modern jazz fans could do worse than to tap
into the Commodore till.
One of the most important contributions made by Commodore was its
release of the famous Stange Fruit Billie Holiday session when ARC
was afraid to release it due to the lyrics (about lynching)**. (I
always understood that Brunswick had done the session, were afraid to
release Strange Fruit but sold the whole session to Gabler,
but the obituaries all say that Gabler produced the session.) This
could have been why Billie signed with Commodore when her
Brunswick/CBS contract ran out.
The obits also state that Gabler was one of the first to make
recordings of Broadway shows. He is also credited with writing the
Hot Discography, an invaluable tool for the jazz collector in
those times when very few historical jazz performances were
available, but this was a project of Charles Delaney whose first
edition appeared in France in the 30's. However, Gabler did sponsor
the post-war edition in the U.S. in 1946, and it is true that he was
the first to print band personnels on record labels.
The Commodore was a meeting place for anyone interested in jazz and
one of the store's unheralded contributions to jazz history took
place after hours when Gene Williams edited the first jazz maagazine
in the US: Jazz Information. (Downbeat and
Metronome were, at that time, devoted to pop music, gave as much
space to the Freddy Martins and Sammy Kayes as to the Benny Goodmans
and Duke Ellingtons -- little coverage to combo jazz and virtually
none to blues.) This led to the publicaiton of Jazzmen and
the Jazz Record Book, the U.S. jazz books. (The discovery of Bunk
Johnson occurred during the writing of Jazzmen.)
Jelly Roll Morton did his last recording sessions for the General
label, a sideline of a better-than-average recording studio. When the
owner became more interested in improving the recording process he
sold Milt the General masters, consisting of a dozen each of piano
solos and band sessions (featuring Red Allen, Albert Nicholas, etc.)
by Morton, a nice session by neglected clarinet great Joe Marsala
(with Bill Coleman and Pete Brown), as well as an album of party
songs by Madame Spivey (immortalized in the film: Rod Serling's
Requium For A Heavyweight, starring Anthony Quinn.)
Albums by the Almanac Singers (Pete Seeger,et al) appeared on
Commodore long before a viable folk movement began, foreshadowing his
later activity at Decca with Josh White.
When CBS bought ARC in 1938 they did not acquire the Brunswick and
Vocallion trade marks which, with all the pre-1932 masters, had been
retained by Warner Brothers. Legal action eventually followed with
the result that Decca picked up the Warner Bros. rights. Gabler, who
had been pressing some of these masters on UHCA, was eventually
placed in charge of a reissue series on the resurgent Brunswick
label. 78 rpm albums by King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds,
Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Noone, Jelly Roll Morton, Pinetop Smith, Bing
Crosby, Wilmouth Houdini, Red Nichols, as well as anthologies of
Boogie Woogie (Speckled Red, Romeo Nelson, Montana Taylor, etc.), Hot
Piano (Mary Lou Williams, Frank Melrose, Alex Hill, James P.
Johsnon), and American Folk Miusic (including a few sides by Memphis
bluesman Furry Lewis.) The series was annotated by various jazz
experts including Gene Williams, William Russell, and Alan Lomax.
Eventually Milt Gabler's work at Decca took more and more of his time
as he rose in the executive ranks there. After the wartime record
ban, Decca picked up Milt's talent roster virtually intact: Billie
Holiday, Eddie Heywood and Eddie Condon. (Condon, however, continued
supervising sessions for Commodore by Miff Mole, Brunis, Pee Wee, and
the magnificent Wild Bill Davison.) Commodore acquired the Town Hall
concert performances by Stuff Smith, Gene Krupa, etc. produced by the
very colorful Baron Timmie Rosenkratz. Frank Foster and Frank Wess
did the last Coimmodore sessions in the early 50's by which time
Gabler had no time for the label.
But the label was revived in the mid-50's headed by Gabler's
son-in-law, Jack Crystal, (that's Billy Crystal's father!) who
managed the shop and was also busy with the legendary Central Plaza
Sunday night jam sessions.
The Commodore catalog was usually available in the UK on the London
label, and subsequent reissues appeared on Mainstream and on
Commodore labels produced by Columbia's Special Products division and
later by a firm involved with Chicago's Rose Record store.
Most recently there was a marvelous box by Mosaic of all the
Commodore masters, including some startling sessions somehow never
issued before.
At Decca, Gabler was the first to record Louis Armstrong with Ella
Fitzgerald. He also produced pop records by Peggy Lee, the Ink Spots,
and Bill Haley (incl. "Rock Around The Clock"), The Weavers, and many
others. Milt eventually wound up in the executive suite at Decca and
survived the merger with MCA to become chairman of the board. A few
years ago he sold the Commodore masters to what is now Universal
Records.
At the age of 90, Milt Gabler died July 20, 2001, survived by his
wife Estelle, a son, two daughters, two sisters, a brother, five
grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and a grateful world of jazz
fans and musicians.
Thanks for everything, Mr. Gabler, and (personally) for that record
shop/label formula. Milt Gabler's contributions go far beyond even
the splendid Commodore catalog.
I love the quote in the New Yorker "...New Orleans was the
cradle, we were the iron lung" (of jazz).
(The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and liner notes of the wonderful
Mosaic Records box set contributed to the collation of this
article.)
- Bob Koester
