B.A. Nilsson

Mosaic Records was founded, nearly forty years ago, with the mission of reissuing great jazz recordings in a way that best showcases a particular artist or label. The reissues are prepared from the best source material that can be found, with skillful audio restoration to minimize noise while maintaining the music’s integrity. This is the Criterion Collection of recorded jazz. When one of the limited-edition box sets sells out, you’ll find it on eBay and elsewhere for far more than the original retail price. As co-founder Michael Cuscuna wrote in 2017, “Charlie Lourie and I started Mosaic Records in 1982 and our first releases were in 1983. The company was almost an afterthought. The idea of definitive boxed sets of complete recordings by jazz masters at a crucial time in their careers was a small part of a proposal that we made to Capitol Records in 1982 to relaunch the Blue Note label. Even before Capitol turned us down, it occurred to me one night that the release of these boxed sets could be a business unto itself if we made them deluxe, hand-numbered limited editions sold directly to the public.” And so it has been, with each box set limited to a few thousand numbered copies, each boasting a booklet renowned for its scholarly essays and exhaustive discography. Now, 271 box sets later, Mosaic is closing its offices. If you’re on the list, you got the e-mail. (If you’re not, you can sign up at mosaicrecords.com.) It sounded a little alarming, especially considering the financial perils the company has shared in the past. But Cuscuna assures us that it’s a positive step. The email also invited the record label’s fans to an open house. Not the first one that Mosaic has held, but this would be the last. Until the beginning of November, Mosaic was in an industrial section of Stamford, Connecticut’s Waterside district, not far from the Long Island Sound. The company moved there in 2010, downsizing from a larger space nearby as it outsourced warehousing and distribution. But even though the company is closing its doors, the business will persevere with its principals working from their respective houses. “All of our computers are networked,” Cuscuna explains, sitting at the desk he’ll be saying good-bye to in a couple of weeks. “We share all our files, and we have gotomypc, so it costs almost nothing. I can roll out of bed and get on the computer and start working, so we don’t really need this office to be here. We decided this was the time to do it, because we’re shrinking. We’ve always been shrinking, for the last twenty or thirty years. Part of it is the economy, and part of it is the audience.” Stepping into the Mosaic office puts you in Scott Wenzel’s cubicle, such as it is. His desk is piled high with paperwork and the adjacent wall looks like a continuation of the desk. Wenzel joined the company in 1985 after excitedly phoning Lourie in response to a rave review he read of a Sidney Bechet set. Wenzel began there part-time, moving to full-time in 1989 when the company ambitiously took on larger office and warehouse space and more employees. Not surprisingly, Wenzel is a collector himself, and some of his overflow of 78s, LPs, and CDs are part of the merchandise being offered for sale at the open house, alongside partial Mosaic sets, booklets, and cover photos. Scott Wenzel Wenzel notes that he shares the collector’s joy in finding a long-sought LP or CD. Mosaic, he explains, “enhances that pleasure because we also provide booklets with essays and session analyses by the best writers, and the most up-to-date discographies. And we find rare photos, often from the sessions themselves.” Although his work as a Mosaic producer is his full-time job, “I attempt to play clarinet and alto sax.” He has a big band, with which he started playing in the 1980s before taking over the reins a decade later. “I’ve had Aaron Sax, tenor and alto player. (Trombonist) Eddie Bert was in the band. We had Johnny Amoroso, who was a trumpeter and singer with the Dorseys—in fact, I have 78s of him with Tommy’s band. So it’s been great with guys like that. And my drummer now, Paul Francis, was Lady Gaga’s drummer. I also have a trio of guitar, bass, and myself on sax. We’re getting more jobs now that things are opening up.” The walls of the second-floor office suite are lined with shelves divided books and recordings. Above them, an array of jazz performers on posters and caught-in-the-action stills. There are Mosaic sets on view that attest to the company’s admirable legacy; there is evidence on the shelves of research being conducted for Mosaic releases to come. Lourie died at the end of 2000, but Mosaic remains dedicated to upholding the values he and Cuscuna envisioned. Which became ever more challenging as, through the decade that followed, the business was forced to adapt to changes in record-buying habits. Michael Cuscuna “Another part of it is the record companies from which we license material,” Cuscuna explains. “They go through stages where they think, ‘Well, box sets are selling so we’ll do it ourselves,’ and they won’t license stuff —then five years later, after they’ve done nothing, they’ll license it. And there’s another problem that’s gotten worse over the past twenty years: The special markets divisions of all these companies, which clears and licenses material to third parties, are shrinking. Some of them have gotten to the point where one person is now doing the work formerly handled by fifteen. So obviously they can’t handle it all and a lot of people get left at the chapel.” Still, the range of artists and labels covered so far in those box sets is breathtaking, from early jazz pioneers like Bix Beiderbecke, Joe Venuti, and Eddie Lang, to such swing-era stalwarts as Artie Shaw and Woody Herman, to the distinctive voices of Anthony Braxton, Art Pepper, and Larry Young. Mosaic has been particularly attentive to the recorded legacies of Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Woody Herman, issuing multiple sets showcasing the music of each. They even flirted for a while with one- and three-CD sets issued as Mosaic Singles and Mosaic Selects, with a narrower focus for each. Although pandemic-inspired protocols slowed the process even more in 2021, Mosaic issued a magnificent Louis Armstrong set focusing on his later Columbia albums, and a box of saxophonist Joe Henderson’s complete Blue Note sessions from the 1960s. Up next is a unique Lennie Tristano collection: Personal Recordings 1946 – 1970, a set that covers twenty years of private recordings that include mid-’40s trio sessions with guitarist Billy Bauer and bassist Arnold Fishkin; duos and trios with bassist Sonny Dallas and drummer Nick Stabulas; live sextet recordings with a variety of notable players; and many solo piano recordings, some made at Tristano’s own Manhattan studio. “And there’s a groundbreaking free jazz session from 1948 featuring Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, and Billy Bauer,” Cuscuna says with an enthusiast’s grin. “Carol Tristano, Lennie’s daughter, is a drummer who lives in France with her husband, saxophonist Lenny Popkin. They went through all his stuff and picked enough material for six CDs. And each CD is like a different chunk of real estate. It’s great. It’s wonderful. It’s amazing that they’ve been sitting on that stuff for so long, especially the solo stuff.” After that, look for an 11-CD box set presenting the best of the long-defunct Black & White label. Founded in 1943, it recorded a varied roster of artists. “Guys like Cliff Jackson, Nat Jaffe, Art Hodes, Errol Garner,” Wenzel notes. “And it’s great straight-ahead stuff. There’s a little bit of Dixieland, too, with trumpeter Phil Napoleon doing one of his best sessions. These came out on 12-inch 78s, although some of them came out on vinyl—a lot of Joe Marsala came out on vinyl. “And there was Mike Lo Scalzo, a pianist who no one really knows much about, and Chuck Wayne’s playing some great electric guitar on it yet it’s a Dixieland band. Napoleon plays his ass off on it, using all the different mutes and he’s just great.” Cuscuna, passing Wenzel’s desk at that moment, adds, “For a dictator, he’s very good.” Cuscuna notes that the task of getting the rights to the Black & White material has been thwarted by the total lack of any ownership records. “And we looked everywhere. The last company that owned it was Pickwick Music, which used to be based in New York, until, ironically, it moved to Stamford in the ’80s. But we can’t find a trace of them. They sold their T-Bone Walker masters to Capitol, and we put those out on our T-Bone Walker set in 1990. But we can’t find anyone that lays claim to the other Black & White material, so we decided to just do it. It’s the first time we’ve ever tried to do something this way.” The search for clean masters of vintage small-label material is always a challenge. As Wenzel explains, “One of Joe Marsala’s dates has Dizzy Gillespie and Cliff Jackson on it, and one of their 78s had ‘On the Alamo’ and ‘Perdido.’ And nobody seemed to know if it had ever been issued! Turns out I got my hands on a copy at the Institute of Jazz Studies when Dan Morgenstern asked me to go through the acetates a few years ago. He warned me that there were a lot of dubs in there because guys had home cutting machines and made their own copies. Dan said, ‘You’ll know what’s crap and what’s not,’ so I went through them. And I came across this one. So when we were doing the transfers for the Black & White set a few months ago, I realized I had that copy! Dan is writing the notes for our set, and he says, ‘I defy anyone to find a copy of this on the commercial 78.’” Another source is eBay. Wenzel: “One of the guys that’s on (radio station) WKCR, a young 78s collector, told me, ‘Hey, they’re selling Mush Mouth Robinson.’ He was a blues singer that Black & White did a couple of sessions with, and in his band were Lil Armstrong and J.C. Higginbotham. So we got a clean...

B.A. Nilsson

Classics in Jazz: ‘I’ve Heard that Song Before. . .’

Mosaic on the Move: a Great Jazz Label Gets Smaller, Smarter

January 2022

Syncopated Times Radio

New Red Hot Jazz Archive Entries

Dixie Daisies

Six Brown Brothers

Bertha “Chippie” Hill (1905-1950)

Richard M. Jones’ Three Jazz Wizards

Chicago Hottentots

Richard M. Jones’ Jazz Wizards

Latest News

Anne & Jeff Barnhart: Dynamic Duo of Syncopation

Don Ewell, 1916-1983: An Appreciation

Trombone was Hailey Brinnel’s Fifth Choice

Hoagy Carmichael: Profiles in Jazz

Elia Bastida: From Classical Violin Student to Jazz Virtuoso

Humphrey Lyttelton: British Jazz Polymath

Building a 1920s Jazz Collection: 12 Essential Sets

A Visit with Galen Wilkes, Ragtime Renaissance Man

The 1946 Yerba Buena Jazz Band: Stomping Like a BIG Bear!

Classics in Jazz: ‘I’ve Heard that Song Before. . .’

Catherine Russell Enchants Crowd at Shanghai Jazz

Big Band Alumni Swing Again

Raising the Bar with Flora

Off the Beaten Tracks January 2022

Back Home Again in Arizona…

Miss Maybell & Charlie Judkins • Cares Will Be Forever Ended

Treemonisha’s Premiere, 50 Years On

Black Swan Classic Jazz Band • Dance Hall Favorites

Get The Syncopated Times App!

Or look at our Subscription Options.