February 2010 issue - Jazz Singers.com

Interview
Robert Rusch
By Ken Weiss
Robert Rusch, 66, has been involved with jazz
since the early ‘50s and has served as editor/publisher
of Cadence Jazz Magazine since 1976, producer of
CIMP and Cadence Jazz Records and runs a music
distribution center that handles national and international
recordings, many of the difficult to find variety.
He oversees arguably the world’s largest source of creative
improvised music from an out of the way, upstate
New York farm, managing to stay fiercely independent
and idealistic in presenting fresh and imaginative
music. It was only recently that he even started accepting
advertising in his magazine, fearful that it would
influence his work. Rusch has sparked many musical
careers by giving unheralded artists their first opportunity
to record. A few of the names of musicians that
have recorded for him include – Anthony Braxton, Andrew
Cyrille, Billy Bang, Dom Minasi, Frank Lowe,
Grachan Moncur III, Jemeel Moondoc, Joe Fonda,
Joe McPhee, Roy Campbell, Byard Lancaster, Prince
Lasha and Vinny Golia. This interview took place on
September, 19, 2009.
Jazz Inside: I need to start this interview with a disclaimer.
I’ve been writing a column for your magazine,
Cadence, for the past seven years but this will
be a fair and honest interview. In fact, I’m going to be
extra tough on you.
Robert Rusch: Fine, go at it.
JI: I’ll take a minute to run down the empire that
you’ve created over the years for those readers not
familiar with you. You publish Cadence Magazine,
which is devoted to covering creative improvised music.
You head two record labels, CIMP and Cadence
Jazz Records. You’ve got NorthCountry Audio, a
high-end audio equipment retailer. You run North-
Country Distribution, a wholesale and retail outlet
for recordings, and also publish books through Cadence
Jazz Books. You even sell crew socks and, in
the past, you sold diapers. Bob, you’ve been busy.
RR: Yes, it’s not insight; I basically characterize it as
I’m too stupid to know you can’t do this.
JI: What is your background in music and how did
you become a respected musical historian and critic?
RR: Yeah, respected or disrespected, I’m not sure. I
got interested in music fairly early. I’m 66 years old
and was born in 1943, so pop music at the time was
still related to rhythm music, for lack of a better term.
There were the trailings of the Big Band and the pop
singers were Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney and
Sinatra. I kind of latched on to Benny Goodman and
through that, Hamp. I was a kid and I liked to drum
so I latched on to anything that had long drum solos
on it. I took clarinet lessons which I failed miserably
at because, between what I could hear in my heart
“There are times that you record a musician that isn’t
on pitch… Sometimes that’s part of a musician’s ability.
It’s like complaining that Picasso isn’t drawing straight
lines … that’s not what he does, so don’t judge Picasso
by Rembrandt’s standards and don’t complain about
Rembrandt that he paints faces without distortion.”
and my head, took an awfully long time to get to my
fingers and it just didn’t work. I still continued to play
drums on an unprofessional level. I grew up in New
York City and came of age musically during the time
that bop was taking hold in the city. Birdland was active,
Basin Street was active, the second Condon’s was
active, the Royal Roost existed and after a little while,
the Five Spot came on. The Yankee’s ruled the roost,
I mean it was great. As a Yankee fan and a jazz fan, it
was great and, being young, you just thought this was
www.cadencebuilding.com
the way the world was. I would go to clubs at night
with friends and befriend musicians. I was so naïve I
remember calling up Ed Hall one day at nine o’clock
in the morning and got a very sleepy Ed Hall. I asked,
“Did I wake you up?” and he said, “Well, we played
till three in the morning.” Then it hit me that these
people are living in another world from where I’m living.
I bought a lot of records and did my first interview
when I was about 12 with W.C. Handy. I lugged
an old Dictaphone to Tuckahoe, New York, and that
thrilled me. I befriended people like Louis Armstrong
and Jimmy Cleveland and I went to rehearsals at Nola
Continued on Page 53
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Credit: Ken Weiss